Interview, Fireside Chat
a16z Podcast | Writing a New Language of Storytelling with Virtual Reality
- Virtual reality is emerging as a new storytelling grammar in its early developmental stage, where creators are currently learning basic elements and adapting to a medium that feels like a "human interface" designed to mimic senses rather than an observable technology.
- Content expectations include a divergence where intense first-person shooter experiences are predicted to remain poor due to user discomfort, while calmer third-person perspectives and nonfiction narratives are currently resonating strongly with audiences.
- Filmmaking rules are in a transitional phase; while stationary cameras were initially standard, creators are beginning to experiment with breaking these conventions for creative results, though the definitive conventions equivalent to traditional cinema may take years to establish.
- Production technology trends indicate that spherical camera equipment will soon be available as off-the-shelf solutions, with current file sizes for short-form pieces under a gigabyte requiring streaming infrastructure like Amazon AWS.
- Visual quality is forecast to improve dramatically over the next few years, moving beyond current pixelated limitations and incomplete fields of view, yet the medium will not initially support significant social interaction due to barriers between visual fidelity and immersive experience.
- Commercial adoption models suggest a long-term timeline for mass home purchase, leading to a reliance on shared physical locations with added sensory elements, while Hollywood studios are currently producing marketing materials and short standalone experiences rather than full-length features.
- Industry investment from major players like Facebook is expected to drive a "virtuous cycle" between hardware, developers, and content, with mass adoption anticipated to occur anywhere from one to ten years in the future, mirroring the delayed takeoff of the smartphone market.
- The medium will likely evolve through multiple versions of cinematic VR, starting with spherical video players with stereo vision and binaural audio, before achieving a state where the quality of full two-hour films created by copying traditional structures remains uncertain.