Cinema Unframed: exploring the screen in virtual reality, through live installation and mobile app

This project will adapt and combine key research outputs from the Digital Transformations project 'The Audiovisual Essay: a digital methodology for film and media studies' into an 18-24 minute interactive 'VR essay film', comprising three episodes that explore the foundational role of framing, editing, and sound within the film-making process. Each episode will allow users to explore and think through one of the key paradigm shifts associated with rise of VR: the transformation of the letterbox frame into 360 degree space, the abandonment of continuity editing and montage, and the dissolution of the traditional 'sound mix' into an interactive binaural soundscape.

The original project explored the use of digital video-making as a methodology for conducting research in the fields of film and media studies. In particular, it tested different ways in which the 'audiovisual essay' (or 'video essay') could complement traditional written scholarship on film and media to engage with digitally native audiences. The rise of VR over the last eighteen months opens radically new opportunities for the video essay to do so. This project explores the possibility of channeling the immersive power of VR for critical and educational ends, and in particular of using VR as a tool for communicating research on film and media to new audiences. By creating a VR essay film, the project will make possible a range of active dissemination and public engagement activities in collaboration with BFI Education. These will significantly augmenting the impact of the original project across three key groups of beneficiaries: new 18-30 year old cinemagoers, international VR creators, and the (so far latent) UK-based VR production sector. In doing so, this project follows Mark Zuckerberg's $2 billion gambit that VR provides one of the keys the future of screen media.

The project will capitalise on the intense current interest in VR, both among consumers and within the creative industries, to significantly escalate the impact of key research outputs from the original project. It will do so through four pathways to impact:

i) International knowledge exchange through collaborative VR production
In September 2015, Disney invested $66m in US-based VR production startup Jaunt. In the 18 months since, Jaunt has become a leading global content producer, while the UK's VR industry remains latent. This project will form a small step towards the development of an indigenous UK virtual reality industry. It will do so by bringing leading international VR agency Vrtov into a collaborative UK-based production. The resulting knowledge exchange will then be passed on within the UK through subsequent VR productions. In tandem, the PI will collaborate with BFI Education to organise a public event to encourage conversation and collaboration between UK creatives engaged in or interested in VR production. Beneficiaries of this pathway to impact will include the film-makers themselves, the UK crew employed on their project, VR-curious creatives, and the UK's future VR sector.

ii) International exhibition as a live installation at major industry-focused film festivals.
The VR film will be installed at numerous industry-focused, international film festivals. In tandem with this festival exposure, the PI and project partners will collaborate on a publicity campaign targeted at the creative industries - through panels and workshops at festivals, articles and interviews in industry publications and websites, and practitioner-focused blogs and podcasts. The primary beneficiary of this pathway to impact will be the emergent international VR production community. Through the knowledge exchange that results from the VR film's international release, the project will make a direct intervention into the present and future of VR film-making.

iii) Collaboration with the British Film Institute on a live installation at BFI Southbank and subsequent educational activities.
Transforming research outputs from the original project into a live VR installation at the BFI will provide a compelling vehicle for audiences to engage with film and media research. In particular, the PI will collaborate with BFI Education to ensure that the project will feed directly into the BFI's current five-year plan, which focuses on engaging with new 16-30 year-old audiences. This will be done by integrating the live VR experience into BFI Education's programme of activities - for example, by organising school visits around the installation for Key Stages 4 and 5, by providing accompanying class plans, and by targeting one session of the public event at young creators.

iv) International release via free downloadable apps, viewable through easily accessible and low-cost headgear.
Each of the above activities will be carefully timed to provide a springboard to the next. As the VR film progresses through its various exhibition platforms, its public profile will cumulatively increase. The project will capitalise on this building momentum by actively disseminating the VR film online immediately after its exhibition at BFI Southbank. By utilizing popular VR aggregator apps (for example Within, Arte VR, and Kaleidoscope), this final pathway to impact will focus on extending the benefits of the project to as wide range of domestic VR users as possible.