Grammar of VR Storytelling: Analysis of Perceptual Cues in VR Cinema
Jayesh S. Pillai, Manvi Verma · 2019
With the advent of 360° film narratives, traditional tools and techniques used for storytelling are being reconsidered. VR cinema, as a narrative medium, provides users with the liberty to choose where to look and to change their point-of-view constantly. This freedom to frame the visual content themselves brings about challenges for the storytellers in carefully guiding the users so as to convey a narrative effectively. Thus researchers and filmmakers exploring VR cinema are evaluating new storytelling methods to create efficient user experiences. In this paper, we present, through empirical analysis, the significance of perceptual cues in VR cinema, and its impact on guiding the users’ attention to different plot-points in the narrative. The study focuses on examining the experiential fidelity using “Dragonfly”, a 360° film created using the existing guidelines for VR cinema. We posit that the insights derived would help better understand the evolving grammar of VR storytelling. We also present a set of additional guidelines for effective planning of perceptual cues in VR cinema.