Celine Tricart - "Slices of Life" - Launchpad weekly update

[tricartceline]

WEEK 1

Wow. Here we go. Things are getting real.  :s :s :s

DOUBT

It took me a while to finally sit down and think about my launchpad project. Something was wrong. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that the project I applied with - a live action tourism/education/game experience - was just not right for this program. 

It's the Unity training course at the beginning of the Bootcamp that opened my eyes: The future of VR, for me, is game-engine based. Yet, I'm a filmmaker, and I love working on location, with "real" sets, actors, a crew etc. I love those moments when everything goes wrong - we're 2H behind schedule, the camera is over-heating, the actor wants a gluten-free donut and suddenly it seems that nothing - NOTHING can save the day. And then BOOM! That's when it happens. A brilliant idea, out of nowhere. A new shot, a new scene to "make it work" but is SO MUCH better than the original idea. I just love that. Constraints ARE creative.

START FROM SCRATCH

Most of the VR content I’ve been watching lately is either game demos or marketing pieces for brands or famous intellectual properties. I think the potential of VR storytelling is somewhere between the two, it’s the missing link between gaming and traditional filmmaking. I would like to explore this unchartered territory, and design a VR experience that would be narrative – with a beginning and an end – but with elements of interactivity, like a choose-your-own-adventure book. 

The best of both worlds: live action content, projected in a game engine. 

I then decided to give up the tourism/education/game experience I had in mind, and instead to focus on a project I started a couple of months ago. It is called "Slices of Life"

THE STORY

“Slices of Life” is an eight-minute interactive Virtual Reality experience that explores the concepts of happiness and regrets. Our main protagonist is an elderly woman named Eva who, at the dusk of her life, is tortured by regrets and “What ifs?”

Eva has, as most women in the 21st century, tried to combine her busy career with a family life. As she lies in her hospital bed and contemplates the choices she made throughout her life, she wonders if she could have been happier by focusing more on either one of them.

In a traditional “Magical Realism” twist, the viewer is invited to pick a key moment in Eva’s life and change the choice she made, re-orienting her life either towards a more career-focused storyline, or on the contrary, a more family-orientated journey. 
 

WHERE I AM NOW

I shot the memories in live action 3D, and now remains the difficult task to make a prototype of the experience in the game engine Unity. Myself being a filmmaker and not a programmer, I'm currently working with a friend of mine who is familiar with Unity and VR. I hope to have a prototype before the end of summer. Unfortunately, I do not own an oculus rift, so it is quite complicated to test the prototype. The Samsung gear VR isn't compatible with the built as we're playing multiple high-res video files at the same time...

I hope to find a way to bypass this issue soon.

More to come soon! Any notes, feedback from my fellow launchpader are always welcome!

Celine Tricart

[aleemhossain]

Cool concept. So many time travel stories focus on changing events on the macro level of history. I really like this intimate magic realism idea, though, it's so much more personal and focused... how do small choices in just our own lives impact our particular future. 

I can imagine how you'll show us the memories and give us opportunities to change the past decisions... but how will we see/feel the impact on the future? Will it be changes in the hospital bed scene? Or will we see other parts of her current-ish life?

[erica_layton]

Celine, are you in LA? Would be happy to help you source a DK2 to borrow! (I'm up in SF/SV area, but can get message out to peeps in LA)

[NataliaVR]

Same here Celine, the more I make 360 videos, the more I want to play with interactivity and agency for the viewer. Right now I am still debating if I will submit the current 360 project I am working on, or rather develop a new one that would be more Unity-based... full CG through, no video, as this doesn't seem to be working that well in Unity.
I would also encourage you to reach out to the Google ATAP team for the beta of their story development toolkit that they have been using on all the spotlight stories, seems to let you create interactive stories, even if it's more CG-based for now it seems.

[tricartceline]

@aleemhossain: thank you! The idea is as follow: The memories are "floating" in the VR space around the viewer, if you pick one, it erases the storyline and re-launch it to show the ripple effects of this change. The twist is that the hospital bed scene will never change. Eva will slowly understand that no matter what choices we would have made, there will always be "What ifs". At the end, she makes peace with herself and her past.

@erica_layton Wow that would be amazing! I'm in LA!

@NataliaVR The Google ATAP team? I don't know them... Do you have contacts there I can reach out to?

Thank you all!

[tricartceline]

WEEK 2

Finally!!
Thanks to the great work of one of my friend who is a Unity guru, I have a first working prototype of my VR experience "Slices of Life"!

WHAT IS IT? (reminder)

“Slices of Life” is an eight-minute interactive Virtual Reality experience that explores the concepts of happiness and regrets. Our main protagonist is an elderly woman named Eva who, at the dusk of her life, is tortured by regrets and “What ifs?”

Eva has, as most women in the 21st century, tried to combine her busy career with a family life. As she lies in her hospital bed and contemplates the choices she made throughout her life, she wonders if she could have been happier by focusing more on either one of them.

In a traditional “Magical Realism” twist, the viewer is invited to pick a key moment in Eva’s life and change the choice she made, re-orienting her life either towards a more career-focused storyline, or on the contrary, a more family-orientated journey. 

WHERE I AM NOW
The main storyline of Eva's life plays well apart from some minor sound issues. It took a while to find the right combination of resolution / frame rate / codec to have the multiple live action footage play in real time in the engine. Finally we settled on a top-bottom format, 1920x2160 30fps in H264. Here is how it looks like:

WHAT'S NEXT?
We have to debug the audio problem, and implement the "choice" moment. I think we will use the "gaze-select" option although it would be much better to use the Touch controller for example. Unfortunately, very few people have a Touch so the "gaze-select" option is probably the best idea.

WHAT'S IN MY WAY?
Things are moving forward painfully slowly. I'm not a game engine person, I'm a filmmaker. I'm grateful I found someone to help me for the Unity side of things but he can work on the project only during his weekends. I wish I could afford to hire him to get the job done 😞 
Also, I don't have an Oculus Rift, so it's very hard to troubleshoot and test the demo. I go visit a friend who has one once in a while, but it's obviously not great. I hope I can borrow an Oculus soon to facilitate the process.

More to come soon! Feedback and advice always welcome!

Celine Tricart

[Mindshiftvr]

Hi Celine, We are in similar thinking. I came back to VR this time thinking I was going to do Cinematic VR but after climbing Mt. Everest, playing Bullet Train and Eve Valkyrie I took a radical turn to polygons. It's been years since I used a CAD program. I found someone to partner up with who can do back flips in Unity. Lucky break. Everything seems to be conspiring in my favor and I hope I am able to produce something good. I also do not have an Oculus Rift and have to slum it between friends who do for now. Kind of like indie film making.

I spent almost two years in bed from 2009 to 2011 recovering from non-hodgins lymphoma. I will be very interested to see your piece. I have a linear screenplay sort of similar to this from my life experience at that time. The main scene never changes.

If it makes you feel better I do not think any of us can work on this full time. My partner and I do these marathon three day stints and we have put in four of them now. It is interesting that the scholarship concept is a little backwards on this.

[akababa]

Your concept sounds incredible! I can’t wait to see where this takes you :smile:

[tricartceline]

@Mindshiftvr : Thank you for your kind words! I'd love to hear more about your story! Maybe it's something that can be told with the tools I'm developing. You're right, things are going slowly but it's probably the case for everyone! :smiley:

@akababa Thank you! Me too I can't wait :wink:

[tricartceline]

WEEK 3 & 4

Time flies... wow. My third Launchpad weekly update, here we go!!!  B)

WHERE I AM NOW 

The prototype has come a long way! The sound issue we had two weeks ago is almost solved and we have started to work on the design of the background. The idea is to symbolize the fact that we are standing in the lead character's memory world, hence the idea of using synapses-looking shapes in the background, firing waves of energy. Here is the "first draft":



In the meanwhile, I was looking at my live action footage and I realized it could also become a "traditional" 3D short film. A friend of mine accepted to edit it and I have now a very cool final cut for it. The downside is that I must now post-produce both the "flatties" version AND the VR version... Just like if I didn't have enough on my plate already!  ::sweat:

Oh, I forgot to say, I've made a webpage about the project on my website. Here it is:
http://www.luciddreamsprod.com/wordpress/slices-of-life-vr/


WHAT'S NEXT

We have reached the point where we need to design how the interactivity works. As a reminder, in "Slices of Life", the participants will be invited to pick one of the memory in order to change it and see the ripple effects on the rest of the character's life. 

We had two options:

- To use the controllers (Touch controllers for the Oculus - which I DONT HAVE)

- To use the "gaze-select" tool

I personally prefer the controllers option, because it makes the experience more real, more visceral. The only reason I'd pick the "gaze select" option is if we have a chance to make this experience compatible with the Samsung GearVR which is, I think, kind of impossible considering the horsepower needed to run the experience. What are your thoughts on that? The controllers can also be replaced by tapping the touchpad when looking at the right memory. 

Visually, we can have the participant holding the controller since the beginning of the experience but the controller is invisible until the "choice" moment. 

When the choice moment comes, the controller becomes visible.

When the participant points at a memory, it slowly comes closer and the voice over explains the choice. The participants can point at as many memories as they want to see all the choices they can do.

Once the participant has chosen a memory, they pull the trigger (or tap the touchpad), which slowly erases all the memories and then starts a new modified storyline. 


WHAT'S IN MY WAY?

Things are going well, I'm happy with the new prototype and I have a sound company willing to donate the sound post which is awesome! I'm still looking for a sound studio that would let me record the voice over for no/little money. This is my new priority!  🙂
I haven't been able to get an Oculus to work on the experience, let alone a touch controller. I'm still looking for a loaner in Los Angeles. :sweat:

That's it for now! 
Feedback and advice always welcome!

Celine Tricart