Virtual Reality in Storytelling
Understanding the constraints and benefits of virtual reality and 360 videos for telling stories and exploring ideas of culture and identity
01. Overview of Virtual Reality and Common Features
We experience the world through our senses and perception systems such as taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. Technology and media enable us to use our senses to experience different worlds and expand our horizons. For example, when we watch a 2D movie, we use our sense of sight and hearing to go to another world and experience things we will not in our own life. Filmmakers, producers, and designers are always trying to make people really go INTO a movie world, and thus comes 4D movies (a 4D film may include rain, mist, bubbles, fog or smoke, wind, temperature changes, strobe lights, scent, vibration, and motion) and theater interior design. With more senses involved, the world we experience becomes more real and immersive.
Similarly, virtual reality is another way to immerse ourselves, but it can bring more possibilities. Not only movies, but it can also be used in the field of video games, education, sports, etc. Virtual reality came to the public’s attention in the late 1980s and 1990s, but what is exactly “virtual reality”?
“ Virtual reality is the term used to describe a three-dimensional, computer-generated environment that can be explored and interacted with by a person. ” — — Virtual Reality Society
There are many common features of virtual reality:
(1) The ability to allow the person to view three-dimensional images;
(2) As the person moves around their environment, the field of vision will also change correspondingly;
(3) Provide an instant response in real-time as they explore the surroundings. All of these features aim for nature and free-flowing interaction to give people an enjoyable and memorable experience.
This is a cool example usage of VR: viewing the world of the ocean while riding a real roller coaster:
02. VR storytelling — culture and identity
VR provides a whole new way to do storytelling. However, storytelling through VR is not like making a movie or a play. In VR, audiences have to be guided through the experience of a story, which makes storytelling in VR closer to UX design. The immersion and interaction will be the unique experience audiences can get from seeing a story presented through VR.
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Because of the immersion and interaction which VR can provide, it can help with building empathy, especially towards culture and identity. Here are some examples:
Example 1: VR tour of a famous “China’s Mona Lisa.”: Along the River During the Qingming Festival (清明上河图）
If I was asked to recommend one VR video, I’ll definitely recommend this one. VR technology brings new life to this famous static painting. Moreover, it also helps the public to understand this painting and the culture it represents.
Along the River During the Qingming Festival, also known by its Chinese name as the Qingming Shanghe Tu, is a painting by the Song dynasty painter Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145). It captures the daily life of people and the landscape of the capital, Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng) during the Northern Song.
The painting is considered to be the most renowned work among all Chinese paintings. Magnifying this painting twenty times, you will see scenes like below:
This painting reveals the lifestyle of all levels of Northern Song society from rich to poor as well as different economic activities in rural areas and the city, and offer glimpses of period clothing and architecture. It is amazing to see how every single people and building in a painting becomes alive through VR. I was super moved when I put my VR headset on and stand in the middle of the street, seeing businessmen pushing carts across me, officials riding tall horses, and ordinary girls buying her favorite snacks on the street.
Example 2: Google Earth VR
Google Earth VR puts the whole world within our reach. With Google Earth VR, we can go anywhere in virtual reality. Whether you want to go back to your hometown when you are in a foreign country, enjoy the sunset at Santa Monica beach, or strolling lower Manhattan, there’s no shortage of things to do or ways to explore.
In the real world, there are lots of limitations such as time and budget so that we cannot travel wherever we want. As a result, it’s hard to understand other cultures without even seeing it. With the help of VR, I think it helps people understanding other cultures in the first step: experiencing it. Just like learning a language, the best way to learn is to put yourself into an environment where people speak that language, Google Earth VR put people into a near-reality environment where people can see and experience another culture.
Example 3: 360° Travel inside the Great Pyramid of Giza — BBC
Produced by BBC, this is a short tour inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. There’s a narrator in this video and it makes this video more immersive by saying “Now you are in the heart of the Great Pyramid of Giza”, “Going along this path..”, etc. With only black and white in the scene, the uniqueness of this tour is that audience can really feel the narrowness and the darkness inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, and I even saw some comments mentioning that it is’ very scary yet real.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is a defining symbol of Egypt and the last of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World, this way of storytelling can help people in our era feel closer to the culture which is long long time ago. This reminds us that VR can not only help people understand culture laterally but also longitudinally.
03. Empathy and engaging with communities
Empathy is a possibility to realize what other person feels as a result of his/her experience. Very often this notion is understood as the ability to empathize with a human or to put oneself in his/her place. There're always discussions about whether VR, as a new storytelling tool is a viable intervention for inducing a state of empathy.
While some experiments show that watching a documentary in VR was not substantially different from watching it on YouTube with respect to the extent to which an individual empathizes with the emotional experience of another person, other shows that it can change people’s empathy level from emotions to behavior. One example is an experiment conducted at Stanford University in 2011. It is about the difference in attitude to the environment depending on the existence of VR experience. Participants of the experiment were divided into 2 groups. People from the first group just read about the tree which had been cut down. The members of the second group had to do it personally in the virtual world. After that, all the participants declared that they felt responsible for the state of the environment. However, this was not the end of the experiment.
From my perspective, VR cannot generate empathy but it may lead empathy out from our heart if used appropriately. The reason is that even though current technology can make people immersive, it’s not immersive enough. In another world, VR can’t be immersive enough to make one feel as homeless, or disabled. The environment is just simulated and the audience knows it.
As a result, when doing storytelling with VR, an immersive virtual environment should be tuned appropriately in order to invoke empathy because subtle things in the video piece can make a huge difference. Immersion makes us more emotional concerning what we experience, good use of VR storytelling can help the community to understand each other better.
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