“It’s a great time to be talking about VR because this is almost the entry point into a mass, public consciousness, public user-experience where people are still trying this technology for the very first time,” Cossar explains. “I think there’s a willingness with people to share ideas about what works and what doesn’t work, that the language of the space is still being written and it’s still being understood. People are still taking on a huge degree of experimentation in the way that they’re telling stories in terms of finding what works and what doesn’t.”
Cossar has overseen the curation of a special Virtual Reality program for this year’s film festival, with patrons set to engage with a series of uniquely immersive experiences. In bringing everything together, Cossar has seen the industry come along in leaps and bounds.
“It’s a little bit of a wild west, but at the same time it’s a very exciting space to see develop in very quick succession,” he muses. “I look at some of the things that I saw nearly a year ago compared to some of the things I’ve seen in the last couple of months and the increase in sophistication in some ways has been very impressive, definitely.”
The integration of VR within cinema is an on-going source of fascination for Cossar. He’s excited to share some diverse and terrifically creative pieces in which the two worlds collide. “There’s a lot of really interesting ideas in terms of building stories, building worlds and also encouraging an audience’s journey through these pieces. The thing is, everyone’s going to see these things differently and that’s part of the nature of the medium.
“I was reading something interesting the other day, where somebody was saying that the role of the director in VR is to almost act like a matador with a cape for the audience… the thing with the direction is suggestiveness and how you encourage the viewer’s attention.”
Beyond inspired storytelling, the program will also offer an examination of some of the wider applications of virtual reality. “There’s a standalone event that simply has the title, How Will VR Change Your Life?,” reveals Cossar. “We have someone who’s representing film and cinematic VR but also speakers who are more connected to VR in the context of engineering, advertising and marketing, and gaming.
“The idea is to have something that is interdisciplinary and that looks at what is the actual potential for this outside of storytelling and entertainment applications. I think when people see VR currently, they do see it in terms of that consumer technology and in terms of what they will take from an experience, but it’s very interesting to see what its horizons are elsewhere in ways that we don’t usually expect. Talking to the University of Melbourne, they were saying that their main application of virtual reality on campus is in medicine and surgery.”
Cossar is confident festival patrons will connect with the Virtual Reality showcase and share in his excitement.
“I’ve had some headsets in the office and some of my colleagues have tried some of these things as well and it’s actually a real joy to watch other people watching VR for the first time,” he says. “You see people discovering the space and you can almost see some of the cue points, or some of the times where they might laugh or react, you can imagine the place in which they are in some of these stories.”
With accessibility and consumer interest at an all-time high, virtual reality has effectively announced itself as the new black… again. But, creatively speaking, are we in the early-stages of an earth-shattering revolution when it comes to VR? Or is it about to echo the trajectory of 3D technology, its fizzling out an inevitability? There’s no way of knowing for sure, which is why it’s best to get on board now.
“There’s certainly a degree of legitimate excitement, a degree of legitimate hype and a degree of legitimate cynicism all at play at once when you’re talking about VR emerging,” explains Cossar. “There’s a huge amount of public curiosity as to what is the potential of this technology, I guess in terms of film and storytelling, but also outside of that: how it will impact our lives, what is the reality in terms of what is happening with it at the moment and where it has the potential to go.”
BY NICK MASON
