Mind Media

Catalog description

The medium of motion pictures will be will be transformed by virtual reality technologies. But the emerging hybrid form will likely have less to do with the iconic VR headset and immersion, than in the newly possible flow of expression in the other direction, out of the participant. This class looks at the true potential of virtual reality as its mutability, to put ordinary users in the role of director of visual media as they already are in their dreams and fantasies. Democratizing media by breaking it down into discrete more easily remixable parts has historically, from DNA to alphabets to movable type led to an explosion of expression and knowledge creation. Motion pictures, perhaps our most convincing medium, is now undergoing such a transformation thanks to virtual reality technologies. Specifically, we will look at how tools like depth cameras, motion capture, and machine learning can treat a scene as a collection of elements instead of a collection of pixels. We will work with the real-time 3D rendering capabilities available, even in your phone, for the instant contrivance of visual reality using compositing, the transformation of images and models as well as virtual camera moves. The class will also consider how the more conceptual dissection of film by cinema scholars and psychologist into things like plots and character types might be templated into reusable formulas for non-experts to create an emotionally satisfying dramatic arcs.