Future of Holographic immersion and how we see this shaping movie industry
Since the beginning of cinematography in the late 1800’s, the seventh art has gone through lots of changes. In less than 100 years, we saw it growing from Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon to George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, bringing innovations both in technical and narrative aspects. Movies have always influenced technological advances. Things like the internet, mobile devices and teleconference appeared first in our imagination and later turned into something real. At the same time, technological advances also influenced movie making. Will we be able to experience a “holographic room’’ in the future just like we do in today’s 3D screening rooms?
Left: scene from A Trip to the Moon. Right: scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
To predict the next changes, we have to understand how people interact with media today. Nowadays, almost 40 years after the first Star Wars, the consumption of media has shifted from more traditional mediums such as television to our own computer screens, changing the scene completely. Now we have a mixture of different and more liberal content for all interests. According to a new study, younger audiences watch more hours of video on YouTube and other digital outlets than on TV. This shows that the future of media is happening online, and whatever is coming next will relate to the way online media works.
In short, audiovisual content shown online has the following unique characteristics: the viewer is in control of what to see and when to see it; he can easily share the content with anyone (making videos go viral); the themes are broader and more liberal and the viewers are more active, commenting and giving their opinions instantly.
With these concepts in mind, YouTube is already experimenting with a new way to show videos on their platform. It’s called ‘’Choose Your View’’ and it allows creators to upload different camera angles from the same performance, letting viewers choose their view and how they want to experience the video: https://www.youtube.com/user/MadilynBailey/ChooseYourView.
YouTube is also working on a next exciting step: streaming 360-degree videos. This will be especially important for H+, as it pushes forward the holographic experience of products such as Holus and Magic Room.
On the gaming side, a British filmmaking company has just released the first live action first-person shooter. This is a good example of how people can combine different technological aspects to provide new experiences to the user and create new genres of gaming. In this case, they blended together first-person gaming, live video, live acting, live audio, live streaming and live user participation. You can check out the video here:
I think the future of media resides in these types of combinations. What if we could watch a movie from the inside, following the story as we walk next to the characters? Or play a game like the one above but with both real and holographic enemies, so we wouldn’t know whether they exist or not? The possibilities are endless and H+ is already blending holographic and user-shared experiences with other mediums like gaming and story-telling.
As we all know, new things are created when combining old things in a different way. It would be amazing not only to see Princess Leia’s hologram inside a flat screen, but also see her right next to us in a ‘’holographic-type’’ genre movie in the future.
- Lukas, Videographer
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