As we’ve noted many times on this site, virtual reality is the Wild West of filmmaking. From the tech used to make VR films to the scripts that are written for it, everything is new. Luckily for our retinas, a lot of very smart people are trying to figure it out. High at the top of that list: Saschka Unseld, the Pixar veteran who is now the creative director of Oculus Story Studio.
Through the two VR experiences Story Studio has made already—Lost and Henry—and the ones it has forthcoming, Unseld and his team are slowly learning the grammar of what plays well inside a headset. “The way comedy works and the way empathy works is very different in VR than it is in film,” Unseld says in the latest video from the Future of Storytelling.
The biggest things they've learned so far? Make eye contact. Don’t get too close to crying characters. And appreciate that you no longer have a fourth wall. "That kind of one-on-one relationship that I have in VR is something very primal and you feel like that you don’t have in any other medium," Unseld says.
Check out the full interview with Unseld, who will be speaking at the Future of Storytelling summit next month, above.
