Tricart - Virtual Reality Filmmaking: Techniques & Best Practices for VR Filmmakers

Figure 7.1 Sisters Otherworld Creative

In two weeks with a production team of three, we created Sisters and a few months later we polished it up a bit and released it. Since then, its been downloaded over 2.5 million times across mobile platforms and is our most popular experience. Something about the particular subsection of horror makes it accessible to everyone (kids, young adults, even moms), and it also, unintentionally, is a very social experience. People love playing it but they also really love watching (and filming!) others playing it.

A big part of indirect control is about getting players to react naturally to authored stimuli. A horror atmosphere calls for heightened awareness and responses. The spatial sound cue of a door opening in a caf on a rainy day elicits a very different response than if the same sound cue is played against a dark and stormy haunted house.

Its also just fun! I think theres something about the horror genre that allows people to loosen up. The threat isnt real, they can cede control and indulge in fear in a safe environment. When we craft horror experiences, we shoot for a specific subsection of horror ghosts and creepy dolls and spooky atmospheres are fair game, intense blood and gore and hyper-realistic visuals are not. We aim for that level of fun horror, and work to create a visual and audio style that complements the story but also leaves plenty of room to remind the player it isnt the real world.

I think as creators in VR we have a responsibility to our audience to take care of them, and with genres like horror we have to remember that VR really is intense. It really can feel like youre there and the experience we give our audience in VR creates memories much more akin to real-world experiences than any stories we might tell on a 2D screen or on paper.

Shari Frilot, Founder/Chief Curator of New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival

I think people get excited about VR and excited about the feelings that it creates because it engages with your biochemistry. What makes you laugh, what makes you cry, thats biochemistry. Not only does VR do that, but it engages with your sense of place, where your body is, and that engages your survival instincts, what makes you live or die, what helps you instinctually avoid the bullet, avoid the tree thats falling, and thats something that you dont get so much in a theater. You always know youre in a theater, even though youre losing it in a tragedy or a horror story. You always know that youre in the safety of that theater. When youre in the VR headset, you dont know that. You really dont. You have to remind yourself that youre not actually in the situation that you perceive when youre in a VR experience.