Software
8i for hologram creating, 360 filming on greenscreen backdrop
Company
Times LifeVR
Timing
10 minutes
Instructions UX
At the beginning, text suggests how to position yourself for the experience and then gives a tutorial on how to move in space, by assigning you little tasks.
Narration
Buzz Aldrin is the narrator and is there as a hologram to tell you the story of how we can go to inhabit Mars. It is a fixed 3D film and Buzz appears and disappears in different scenes to tell you the story.
Subtitles
The logo and instructions/credits done in a 3d/2d way. In the intro, the text zooms by you with the space station, but it is just the company logo.
Story Arch
It’s an exploring experience. The first bit is a tutorial on how to explore and move in the space with some tasks, the mission is essentially that you go around and learn about the space station.
Cinematography
Done with 360 filming and CGI at a high quality. Buzz is a hologram so his prescence in this artificial environment makes sense, you are on a pod which then opens and closes with new scenes so you have the idea that you are on a control panel at all times and can focus on the content of what he is saying.
One effective treatment was when they played footage of Kennedy speaking, they made the footage like a hologram in the space, with a couple of glitches so it blended well with the environment.
Framing
The shots were full environments, you have no body, but Buzz is looking directly at you so it feels like he is teaching you about his vision. The pod remains the same and is to scale so you don’t doubt your purpose in the story or your role.
Color Palette
It was in color and rendered to look as real as possible. Some props were obviously CGI which was a bit of a problem.
Composition
You are standing on a pod podium that moves and has items appear and disappear from it. The pod is usually in the center of the environment or story it is telling.
Point of View
You are the protagonist listening to Buzz talk to you. Eye contact was quite effective.
Looking Around
You look all around, but mostly the story happened directly in front.
Storytelling
The storytelling was fixed and you couldn’t go forward or back in time
Sound
It was immersive voice over sound, sound effects were mapped and placed in the space which encouraged me to turn and look around. There was no music to underscore this, but it was trying to recreate reality instead of creating a new kind of experience.
EEL VR Storytelling Research 