Next generation Fantasy story telling

[w1dg3t]

Next generation Fantasy story telling

R/AR/VR

It was Boxing Day and I was sat as you do after Christmas relaxing watching TV. Harry potter and prisoner of Azkaban was on and I was thinking about setting up my Oculus Touch. It’s quite hard getting out my sofa as its low down and comfy so I build up my inner strength so I can beat the lazy factor that kept me trapped in harry potter land and get on with the task at hand.

It was at the moment I began to realize that the future of storytelling can and will be so much more immersive. Whilst Using the Oculus in the past 6 months and seeing what people have achieved filled me with a sense of excitement of what’s to come. Titles such as Henry the tale of a lonely Hedgehog who finds it hard to keep friends as his prickles keep hurting people. Is A pleasant children’s story with metaphorical meaning that made you question yourself and the others around you? One of the other titles that stuck in my mind was Invasion, alone on a frozen lake with a 6ft rabbit who I wanted to call Harvey for nostalgia sakes. As Harvey “the 6ft rabbit” was a favorite story of mine when I was growing up. So I’m stood on the lake with my new friend and as you look around a flying saucer swirls into view and promptly lands in front of you. The door opens. This is where aliens decide to attack, and to their surprise, your new friend decides to save you. How were they to know you just made friends with a 6ft rabbit.

The next story that opened my mind was Colosse, this is the story of a hunter in a world not to detached for ours.  As you are made very aware of how scale can work in a VR form you look up at the gigantic prey and you can’t help but feel a strong feeling of empathy towards it. Like you are watching a wildlife documentary and routing for the Zebra to flee from a lion.

This is a brief glimpse of how strong a storytelling tool virtual reality can be I feel it has only just dipped it’s toe ever so gently in the water. You are transported to an environment whether magical, fantastical or reality based because you actually have the feeling of presence and are literally involved in the story. You feel a connection like never before which leads to greater empathy and understanding which in turn leads to a higher level of communication. In fact, some might say a storytelling tool with the power to open the eyes of the world.

This brings us to augmented reality I’ll start with Pokémon go, there were others before it but when Pokémon go was released the concept of augmented reality traveled around the world overnight. Millions of people downloading an app on their phone so they could go hunting for Pokémon in the real world as reality merged with graphics when you looked through the screen of your phone.  The genius behind this could not really fail as everyone who grew up with Pokémon now had a job and a smartphone plus children who were equally interested and it proved an instant success. Myself not too much of fan but I can clearly see what this technology has to offer. Personally, I would like to see  Wi-fi chopped up into community control like councils or small villages towns cities etc. These people would then hold the rights to what augmented reality flies through the air in their area whether its advertising or gaming or something we are yet to see.  I see that as a form of income for communities anything inside your property is private but outside goes to council control this would also stop augmented reality pollution and graffiti you don’t want everyone putting what they like up everywhere think about it.The first game I would like to see in an augmented world would be a Zombie apocalypse. You are on your phone slid into a AR headset whilst walking around your local area shooting zombies as they jump around corners or you are using the Microsoft HoloLens to view the zombie hordes chasing you up the street. This appeals to me more than hunting down the little Pokémon. The next game I would like to see would be more detective based, we all know how big this genre is form Miss Marple, to Sherlock Holmes to CSI to X-files whatever generation you are from one thing is for sure, you have had your fair share of who done it’s and detective stories streamed into your brain from a young age. So imagine you hear of a little village in the middle of the Chiltern hills (England) they have the rights to their own WI-FI and a local programmer has made a little game. Where on a couple of nights of the week you are invited to come and try and solve his murder mystery for a price of course. So you arrive at the village flick your phone up or put your HoloLens on and start to walk around. You find a dead body and talk to a few witnesses find some clues that lead you to the graveyard, you see where I’m going with this. The best thing about this is the environments are already made the whole world is your stage.

This leads to the HoloLens this piece of innovation set to change the way everyone interacts with the world is upon us and soon will be helping us with our everyday lives making things that little bit easier. The real-time rendering and spatial mapping is what makes this tick the possibilities again are endless. so let’s start by spatial mapping your house, you walk around and make sure you map every surface wall, table etc. Anything you want your holograms to interact with so let’s say you’re a hunter and a whole bunch of super intelligent human eating monkeys have escaped from a science lab and are hiding out in your house. Stupid super intelligent monkeys only chose to hide out in a hunter’s house. So you are stood there and these monkeys are swinging from your ceiling sticking their head out the rubbish bins generally doing anything to annoy you. You grab your AR compatible rifle and go hunting. Ok you get the picture, basically there will be many variations of this and your imagination is the only real limit here.

I am talking to you about story telling I just needed to set the scene a little. So now we have a basic understanding of how powerful the new tools/toys are. This is where we go back to harry potter the story’s start with a Harry up against it living in misery with a horrible family who generally treat him as a second-class citizen. Then little things start to happen as the fantasy starts to begin to entwine with reality until at some point you are thrown straight into the magical world of harry potter. Let’s talk Peter Pan a story of Wendy and her siblings who are under increasing pressure to behave and grow up which sets in motion magic events that entwine with reality, enter Peter Pan the boy who never grew up who introduces them all to Neverland a magic kingdom full of adventure. Alice in wonderland again a young girl who finds it hard to conform to everyday life until one day she sees a white rabbit and she follows it into wonderland. Matrix? Lion the witch and the wardrobe a group of children escaping the bombings of WW2 are moved to a big house in the country. Where strange events again combine with reality until they find their way to Narnia. This list goes on and on and this style of storytelling has grown and evolved with us, as humanity goes throw different events and experiences and as it has grown so has our ways of telling stories. Be it talking, writing, drawings, animation, films and our technology has evolved with it too until now we are at a stage where we can mix three different realities and truly bring these worlds to life in ways we could never have dreamed of when I was a child.

I remember Sitting watching E.T. for the first time a story of a family who had lost their father and the boy trying to comes to terms with it starts to interact with Alien visiting earth that had been left behind. “In the not too distant future you can have an alien friend living in your garden.”

Of course, we sit here at the beginning of these technologies but I think the ideal scenario would be a seamless integration of AR and VR. So we can evolve storytelling to the next level and relive and experience the old classics like never before whilst creating new ones.

R/AR/VR

                                                           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4