MAF Day 2 - Masterclass: Blue Zoo HooDoo

Speakers: Tom Box and Catherine Salkeld

#bzshorts

Catherine Salkeld pitched the idea HooDoo for the bzshorts project. Bzshorts, as the title suggest is a commitment for the Blue Zoo Studio to make a few short films throughout a year. The idea pitched for bzshorts are voted, and the one which win the voting will be developed for shorts. Consideration for bzshorts is a concept that pushes the studio forward.

HooDoo

Salkeld was inspired by the idea of tourist going on a holiday, breaking things. She imagined for  HooDoo to have a touristy feel, and its designs are inspired by vintage travel posters. Oculus is the VR goggles that they will be using so that people don't have to move around. The key to immersive storytelling in VR is having a few sub stories happening simultaneously in the whole setting in order to replicate reality; similar to a theatrical play with the player having first person point of view.

There are many challenges faced when making HooDoo. Here are some of them:

• Cues that help the audience focus on the narrative. For instance they deliberately made the section of the world break while the PoV camera was set to a fixed place to prevent audience from strolling away from the main set where the narrative takes place.
• Sound and music are crucial for the VR experience is to use sound to tease the viewers to make and do things for the narrative to progress.
• In HooDoo, they also attempt to use FMOD. A plugins to attach the sound of VR on different places in the scenes. WAV files can be attached to characters so that the volume varies in accordance to the position of the character. Procedural and sounds also follows where the viewer is looking, such that the music on the foreground reflects situation in the scene that's in front of us.
• Making sense of the simultaneous stories happening in the set for the viewers to not miss the important bits.

Conclusion

VR offers a more interactive way of telling stories, and it is a platform of creating a new and convincing content for animation. VR is its own niche in the world of commercial entertainment, and I don't think it can replace the method of existing animated films even when the basic principles of animation applies. This opportunity of trying out VR is a privilege for me as I can hardly get my hands into cutting edge gadgets in day to day life. I am fascinated by the development of VR technology throughout the years. The future is happening, and I got to enjoy it!! (couldn't be more critical than that)