WEEK 1 - ON BOARD A VR FILM CREATION JOURNEY

Starting this trimester with the possibility of creating something new and unique, my team and I sat down to decide and finalize a story for the creation of a VR film. Yes, a Virtual Reality film.

With just the thought of a VR film, it gets people thinking of the project scope. Our main aim is to create a film with a new and modern form of storytelling that allows viewers to feel and embrace the immersive-ness of the story. We want it to be different from the rest.

Hence, as we pitched this idea, it was warmly welcomed. It was a very ambitious idea at the beginning, so we needed to scale it down drastically. We are aiming to create three different levels/environments for the film inside a clock tower that symbolizes the sleep cycle of the character. These were initial thoughts that came to mind. (insert Amit’s reply to our email)

After a few hours of brainstorming and mind mapping, we derived a functional story with a good flow of events. This entire week, I was incredibly proud of the team for showing up to every group meeting. As a team leader, it is my duty to stay ahead of the tasks and be proactive in my decision making, which is why I would send constant emails to keep everyone in the loop.

Being the first week, we made a WhatsApp group, we designed a basic draft for the presentation pitch (which is due next week), and started collecting/compiling reference materials for mood boards and concept art. I also set a Google drive folder to ensure everyone has all of their work sorted in one place for backup, and made separate

folders for each one to compile their work for the trimester. I am doing my best to pump everyone up as this project might just be the gateway to a creative work of art.

As spoken with our lecturer, we will need to get some technical stuff prepared for the presentation.

These include:

• Panoramic render of scene R&D

• Convert to 360-degree video with app to view on the phone R&D

• Shader test for the glowing fish we are planning to implement

I have taken this up as my self-directed learning as I will be in charge of transforming our film into VR. I have a VR device at home and would use it to constantly test shots during our production phase. I am still in process of research but it will be documented in the upcoming presentation next week.

As a startup, we also built a tentative production timeline until week 5 for everyone to follow through.

This includes:

WEEK 1- concepts, story, planning, research

WEEK 2- refinements to story, planning, presentation

WEEK 3- modeling & texturing

WEEK 4- animations and finalization of room 1

WEEK 5- scene 1 should be rendering, must begin with room 2 assets

With this, I am really excited for this project and am looking forward to a great trimester production with my team!