#17: Cosmo Scharf on VR storytelling, insights from filmmaking, & VR meetups

Cosmo Scharf is a film student and co-founder of VRLA. He talks about some of the challenges of VR storytelling and the differences between a free-will VR environment vs. a traditional 2D film. Film has a series of tools to direct attention such as depth of field, camera direction, cues to look to left or right, contrasting colors or movement in the frame. Some of these translate over to VR, but you can’t use all of them since there’s no camera movement, focus or framing in VR.

cosmo-269x200He talks about the process of starting a meet up in Los Angeles called VRLA, and that a lot of people in the film industry are seeing VR as the future of storytelling and entertainment.

Cosmo also sees that VR experiences are a spectrum from ranging from completely interactive like a video game, semi-interactive cinematic experience, and the completely passive. There’s not a whole lot of people are looking into the completely passive experiences yet, but that’s what he’s interested in exploring as a film student.

He strongly believes it’s the future of storytelling, video games, computing as well as disseminating information in general, and he’s very excited to get more involved in the VR industry

Reddit discussion here.

TOPICS

  • 0:00 – Founder of VR LA. Initially interested in VR after hearing about Valve’s involvement in VR. Reading /r/oculus and listening to podcasts and heard a podcast about starting a meet up.
  • 1:44 – Film industry’s involvement and how many were new to VR? Weeks after the Facebook acquisition, and so there were over 200 people who came out.
  • 2:34 – What type of feedback did you receive? A lot of people in the movie industry are seeing VR as the future of storytelling. Cosmo wants to provide emotionally-engaging experiences.
  • 3:22 – What type of story things are interesting to you. Not a lot of storytelling in VR happening yet. VR is early. Differences between film and VR. Filmmaking rules and practices to use 4 frames for 100 years. VR is a new medium. How do you effectively tell a story without relying upon the same filmmaking techniques.
  • 4:36 – What are some of the open problems in VR storytelling? How to direct someone’s attention. With filmmaking you can use depth of field, camera direction, cues to look to left or right, colors or movement in the frame. Some of the cues in real life are if others are looking in a direction and which direction sounds are coming from. Passive vs. Interactive VR: completely interactive like a video game, semi-interactive cinematic experience, and the completely passive. Not a whole lot of people are looking at the third way.
  • 6:22 – Familiar with Nonny de la Pena’s work. She attended VRLA #1. It’s interesting in terms of VR as a tool for building empathy. When you’re placed virtually in someone else’s shoes, you’ll feel what they’re going to feel. You can connect to people via a 2D screen, but you know that there’s a distance. With VR, you’re in it and completely immersed and engaged.
  • 7:31 – What about choose your own adventure vs. a linear film: VR experience similar to Mass Effect where you have different options to say to characters. Your response will change how the story unfolds. Would like to see a natural feedback between you and the AI characters
  • 8:22 – Where would like to see VR going? We’re still very early with VR, no consumer product is out yet and that will determine if VR is a real thing. Strongly believes it’s the future of storytelling, video games, computing & disseminating information in general. HMDs will be portable. Convergence of augmented reality with VR. Hard to determine how the industry will evolve within the next month, but most exciting industry to be a part of. All of the leaders of the consumer VR space are at SVVRCon.

Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio

Rough Transcript

[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.

[00:00:12.056] Cosmo Scharf: My name is Cosmo Scharf, and I created and founded VRLA, which is a meetup event for people interested in virtual reality in Los Angeles. And I've always been interested in VR since I heard about the Oculus Rift. I didn't really get seriously into it until I read about what Valve was doing in their research in virtual reality. I read an article about people's reactions to it and I thought, wow, this is going to be way, way cooler than I could ever have imagined. I wanted to be a part of it somehow. I'm not a programmer, I'm not a game designer, but I wanted to throw myself into this industry however I could because I just thought it was way too exciting to be left out of. And I started listening to podcasts, and I started listening to the Oculus subreddit every day, and I was listening to Reverend Kyle, it was his podcast, and they were talking about meetups. And I thought to, later that night, to look online on the meetup website. and there was nothing in Los Angeles, and so two days later I created VRLA. We had our first event in April at Digital Domain, and it was really awesome. We had about 150 people there. The great thing about being in Los Angeles is that since we're so close to Hollywood, the crowd there is a lot of visual effects people, a lot of movie directors and producers, and we hope to continue growing. Our second event was just announced for June 23rd at the MXR Lab.

[00:01:44.899] Kent Bye: Right. And so, yeah, being in LA, it seems like you would pull in not just like primarily, mostly Hollywood and filmmakers and graphics people. But I'm curious about if some of those people were already looking into virtual reality or if most of them were just beginning.

[00:02:00.019] Cosmo Scharf: Well, I think the interesting thing is that our first event was like a few weeks after Facebook bought Oculus. And so that definitely gave us a healthy boost in attendance, I think, because suddenly all the people that were kind of curious about virtual reality now realized that it was something really to pay attention to, more so than before. And so I think a lot of the crowd there already knew pretty much about virtual reality, although there were a good amount, like maybe 20, 25 people that had never tried it before, which is definitely cool to introduce them to VR for the first time. That's always fun.

[00:02:35.053] Kent Bye: Maybe just share some of the feedback in terms of the people that you were talking to and what they were talking about.

[00:02:41.298] Cosmo Scharf: Yeah, well I think everyone had a good time and if you check out the video there's lots of smiles on people's faces and that's great to kind of foster that. You know, a lot of people in the movie industry, you know, the smart people in the movie industry are looking at VR as the future of what they're doing. And that's what actually, I'm currently a student at USC for film production. That's my official title. and as a student, but I see VR as the future of storytelling and creating emotional and engaging experiences. And I think the people at VRLA see that as well, and that's why they were there.

[00:03:21.170] Kent Bye: And so coming from a film background, I'm curious about some of the projects that are really interesting to you or what you want to see happen in immersive storytelling.

[00:03:31.006] Cosmo Scharf: Honestly, I really haven't seen a whole lot of story stuff yet in VR. I think we're, you know, the whole industry right now is extremely early in terms of hardware and software. And there's a fundamental difference between telling a story in VR and telling a story on a movie. And that has to do with the four corners. You have borders and you have, you know, you point the camera in a certain direction and that's all you see is whatever is contained in that frame and filmmaking. And so we've had rules and practices of how best to use that technology for a hundred years. And now we have a new technology, which is a new medium that has no borders and you can look around and you can feel like you're somewhere else. And now the question is, how do you effectively tell a story when you cannot rely on the same techniques that have worked for traditional filmmaking? So, that is something that I'm interested in figuring out, as well as my fellow organizer, Johnny Ross, who's also very interested in storytelling in VR.

[00:04:36.461] Kent Bye: And so what do you see as some of the biggest open problems when it comes to immersive storytelling in VR?

[00:04:41.829] Cosmo Scharf: A lot of it has to do with where to direct your attention. So again, with filmmaking, or traditional filmmaking, you can play with the depth of field. You can point the camera in a certain direction. There's lots of cues that you can use to say to the viewer, you should look here in the frame. You either look to the left because there's high contrast. There's certain colors, there's certain movement in the frame. But in virtual reality, you don't have any of that. You can't rely on that. So I think, I guess some of the cues in real life that we rely on that draw our attention when someone looks that way, you're going to look. If you hear a sound coming from behind you, you're going to look behind you. So I think actually 3D audio plays a lot into kind of drawing your attention. Another thing to think about in terms of storytelling in VR is passive versus interactive. I like to think of it as there's three different kinds of VR experiences. You have the completely interactive like video game where you can walk around and do whatever you want and you can explore and use your hands, et cetera. And then there's the semi-interactive, which is more like a cinematic experience where perhaps some of the camera movement is controlled, but you can still maybe pick up objects or maybe read lines and the characters would talk back to you. And then there's the third, which is completely passive. So you're sitting down and you're just, all you do is look around. And I think the third one is perhaps the most interesting to me, probably because not a whole lot of people are looking at that right now. Although I have met some people at SVVR yesterday that are working on that, so that's cool.

[00:06:22.719] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know Nani de la Peña has been sort of working in this space for, you know, a number of years. I'm just curious if you've, you know, had discussions with her, you know, and what you think of her work.

[00:06:32.165] Cosmo Scharf: I actually, she was at our first event at VRLA number one. I actually haven't tried it. I know about what she's doing and I think it's very interesting, particularly in terms of VR as a tool for generating empathy, because when you can be placed virtually in someone else's shoes and you can look around as if you were someone else, regardless of who that is, you feel what they're going to feel. Whereas when you're looking at a screen, maybe you can connect with a character, but there's going to be a screen that you're staring at. It's a screen, and you know it's a screen, and you know it's a movie, and you know that you're in a movie theater, or you know that you're in your living room watching something. But when you're in VR, you're not watching something, you are in it. And that is what is so great and what holds so much potential as a means for telling a story.

[00:07:31.453] Kent Bye: And have you thought about sort of this choose your own adventure component where it starts to branch out where, you know, often in film, it's really you're kind of fixed to a linear perspective.

[00:07:41.423] Cosmo Scharf: Yeah, I'm particularly excited about a type of VR experience similar to Mass Effect, where there's a whole big story, but a character will be talking to you, and you have a few different options of what to say to them. Say there's voice recognition in the game, and you say whatever the line is, the character talks back to you in a completely natural way, and that totally changes how the story and the rest of the game plays out. So, I don't think anyone's really working on that right now, I'm not sure, but I would love to see the kind of, you know, natural feedback loop between the player and the, I guess, artificially intelligent character. I think that holds a lot of promise.

[00:08:22.726] Kent Bye: Great, and finally, where do you see all of this going? I mean, with the Facebook acquisition, you're getting a lot of interest and excitement, but what would you hope to see in terms of realizing the potential of VR?

[00:08:33.463] Cosmo Scharf: Well, the crazy thing is we're still extremely early. We're all living in this bubble right now at SVVR and VRLA, where all of us are nerds and we're all really excited about virtual reality, but we have to realize that there still is no consumer product out. And that's really, when that launches, that's going to determine you know, if this is truly a real thing. And I strongly believe that it is. I strongly believe that it's the future of not only storytelling and not only video games, but of computing and disseminating information in general. The hardware will get better, the software will get better. I think in terms of head-mounted display specifically, they're going to become completely portable and just eventually something that you can just put on your face and walk around with all day. Another important thing is the convergence of augmented reality with virtual reality. When you have cameras on the Rift, that adds an entirely new dimension of what you can do. I'm very, very excited about that, but it's really hard to determine precisely how anything in this industry is going to play out even in the next month, as we've seen with Facebook, for example. So really no one can tell the future. But it's definitely easily the most exciting industry to be a part of. And I'm extremely fortunate to be here at SVVR, where literally all the leaders in this space are. And to be in the same room with them is incredible.

[00:10:01.564] Kent Bye: Great. Well, thank you so much.

[00:10:03.345] Cosmo Scharf: No problem. Thank you.

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