This week I managed to get a script onto paper. It isn’t written in the form of a traditional script, but gets nearer to a treatment. I thought this was more appropriate for my short experience (60-90 seconds) and it gave me much more liberty to deconstruct interactivity.

I won’t include the full breakdown in this post, but the experience takes place in a movie theatre and consists of three characters: a concession-stand employee, a movie-goer and an Ophelia-like screen actress. As of now, my main objective is to induce an altered state of consciousness, akin to that of dreaming. In its current state, it gives the user the constant possibility to switch between the movie-goers POV and a bird’s eye view. I have chosen to limit this freedom at two critical moments in the story: the beginning or set-up of the action and the climax/ending. I believe this will make for a more satisfying experience, since it provides a circular paradigm (given the specific context of the experience).

As for the storyboard, I went into TiltBrush a couple of hours and sketchily explored an idea I have for what a storyboard can be in VR. Since space will become more and more narrative in VR, I thought a storyboard could become a structure which reflects this story. I made a theatre which incorporates the ambiance and color palette of the intended world I want to create, and made it an exhibition place. Inside, there will be a color key for different characters, the interface, and different POV’s. The corridors diverge when viewpoints diverge.

I opted for this method because I think of story as structure and structure and story. Wasn’t it Goethe who said to think of architecture as frozen music and music as liquid architecture? There’s an undeniable relationship between how we perceive spaces and how we perceive abstract expressions of emotion. For now, I am exploring this idea in the context of VR experiences. Storyboard could be an exhibited narrative space.