We’d Like to Give You Some Presence: Cinematic VR Narration and the Sense of 'Being There' View Digital Media

Workshop Presentation
Simon Weaving,  Zi Siang See,  Benjamin Matthews  

Presence (the sense of "being there") is a much discussed and complex topic in the world of VR, AR and XR. In this highly creative approach, the researchers will be investigating one of the fundamental aspects of presence - the positioning of the viewer in the story world - through the creation of first stage of development of three short cinematic VR works (CVR) that engage the viewer in different ways (as invisible witness, acknowledged witness and embodied witness). The development process will include story ideation, scriptwriting, and pre-viz for the three short works, with the research identifying where differences occur for the three movies. The researchers will present their development process, assets (script, storyboard etc) and insights in an online session at the conference.