Analysis of the narrative communication characteristics of virtual reality experiences: meaning-making components of the immersive story
Main Article Content
Abstract
Virtual reality is a technology and media that has evolved dramatically in the last decades. Undoubtedly, the medium has developed its own dynamics and narrative characteristics, due to the possibility of interaction and the ability to allow the viewer/user to focus on different levels of action. In this research, the relevant narrative characteristics in virtual reality are described based on a literature review. Secondly, a sample of online experiences of 360º virtual reality, or cinematic virtual reality (CVR), are analyzed to determine the characters and possibilities of narrative features presented. This analysis can help establish parameters and guidelines for the creation of virtual reality and 360º immersive contents in heterogeneous audiovisual and multimedia fields. The results show both the narrative and aesthetic possibilities of the analyzed videos and their technical and expressive possibilities, in terms of the ability to integrate narrative structures, as well as content in the use of innovative formal resources. In this sense, 360º immersive video becomes an added value of considerable dimensions.
Downloads
References
Abba, T. (2009). Hybrid stories: Examining the future of transmedia narrative. Science Fiction Film and Television, 2(1), 59-75. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/269118.
Aitamurto, T., Won, A. S., Sakshuwong, S., Kim, B., Sadeghi, Y., Stein, K., ... & Kircos, C. L. (2021, May). From FOMO to JOMO: Examining the Fear and Joy of Missing Out and Presence in a 360 Video Viewing Experience. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14). https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445183
Anthes, C., García-Hernández, R. J., Wiedemann, M., & Kranzlmüller, D. (2016, March). State of the art of virtual reality technology. In 2016 IEEE Aerospace Conference (pp. 1-19). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO.2016.7500674
Aranda, J. H., & Baig, S. (2018, September). Toward" JOMO" the joy of missing out and the freedom of disconnecting. In Proceedings of the 20th international conference on human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services (pp. 1-8). https://doi.org/10.1145/3229434.3229468
Aylett, R. (1999, November). Narrative in virtual environments-towards emergent narrative. Proceedings of the AAAI fall symposium on narrative intelligence (pp. 83-86). https://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Fall/1999/FS-99-01/FS99-01-014.pdf
Aylett, R., & Louchart, S. (2003). Towards a narrative theory of virtual reality. Virtual Reality, 7(1), 2-9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-003-0114-9
Bates, J. (1992). Virtual reality, art, and entertainment. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 1(1), 133-138. https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.1992.1.1.133
Bordwell, D. (2013). Narration in the Fiction Film. Routledge.
Brooks, K. (2003). There is nothing virtual about immersion: Narrative immersion for VR and other interfaces. Motorola Labs/Human Interface Labs. http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~brooks/storybiz/immersiveNotV irtual.pdf
Cavazza, M., Lugrin, J. L., Hartley, S., Le Renard, M., Nandi, A., Jacobson, J., & Crooks, S. (2005). Intelligent virtual environments for virtual reality art. Computers & Graphics, 29(6), 852-861. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2005.09.002
Cipresso P., Giglioli I. A., Raya M. A., & Riva, G. (2018). The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research: A Network and Cluster Analysis of the Literature. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02086
De la Peña, N., Weil, P., Llobera, J., Giannopoulos, E., Pomés, A., Spanlang, B., ... & Slater, M. (2010). Immersive journalism: immersive virtual reality for the first-person experience of news. Presence: Teleoperators and virtual environments, 19(4), 291-301. https://doi.org/10.1162/PRES_a_00005
Dooley, K. (2017). Storytelling with virtual reality in 360-degrees: a new screen grammar. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 11(3), 161-171. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2017.1387357
Erdem, M. N. (Ed.). (2018). Handbook of research on transmedia storytelling and narrative strategies. IGI Global.
García Jiménez, J (1994). La imagen narrativa. Paraninfo.
Gambarato, R. R. (2013). Transmedia project design: Theoretical and analytical considerations. Baltic Screen Media Review, (1), 80-100. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=153943
Haolun, Q., & Ziyao, L. (2020). Narrative Characteristics of Virtual Reality Films. International Journal of Advances in Social Science and Humanities, 12(7), 1-8. http://www.ijassh.com/index.php/IJASSH/article/view/330
Harley, D., Verni, A., Willis, M., Ng, A., Bozzo, L., & Mazalek, A. (2018, March). Sensory VR: smelling, touching, and eating virtual reality. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 386-397). https://doi.org/10.1145/3173225.3173241
Javanshir, R., Carroll, B., & Millard, D. (2020). Structural patterns for transmedia storytelling. PloS one, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225910
Jones S., Dawkins S. (2018) The Sensorama Revisited: Evaluating the Application of Multi-sensory Input on the Sense of Presence in 360-Degree Immersive Film in Virtual Reality. Jung T., Tom Dieck M. (eds) Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64027-3_13
Kang, J. (2017). Study on Characteristics of Digital Realism Aspect for HMD based Virtual Reality Films. Journal of Digital Contents Society, 18(5), 849-858. https://doi.org/10.9728/dcs.2017.18.5.849
Larsen, M. (2018). Virtual sidekick: Second-person POV in narrative VR. Journal of Screenwriting, 9(1), 73-83. https://doi.org/10.1386/josc.9.1.73_1
Laurel, B., Strickland, R., & Tow, R. (1994). Placeholder: Landscape and narrative in virtual environments. Acm Siggraph Computer Graphics, 28(2), 118-126. https://doi.org/10.1145/178951.178967
Lo, W. C., Fan, C. L., Lee, J., Huang, C. Y., Chen, K. T., & Hsu, C. H. (2017, June). 360 video viewing dataset in head-mounted virtual reality. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM on Multimedia Systems Conference (pp. 211-216). https://doi.org/10.1145/3192927
Louchart, S., & Aylett, R. (2004). The emergent narrative theoretical investigation. In the 2004 Conference on Narrative and Interactive Learning Environments (pp. 21-28).
Lum, H.C., Elliott, L.O., Aqlan, F., & Zhao, R. (2021). Virtual Reality: History, Applications, and Challenges for Human Factors Research. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 64(1), 1263-1268. https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181320641300
MacQuarrie, A., & Steed, A. (2017, March). Cinematic virtual reality: Evaluating the effect of display type on the viewing experience for panoramic video. In 2017 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR) (pp. 45-54). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2017.7892230
Marfil-Carmona, R. (2017). 3D, 360 grados y periodismo inmersivo. La influencia de la innovación tecnológica en la representación documental y el lenguaje audiovisual. Cine, imagen y ciencia, 1(1), 195-214. http://hdl.handle.net/10481/51367
Mateer, J. (2017). Directing for Cinematic Virtual Reality: how the traditional film director’s craft applies to immersive environments and notions of presence. Journal of Media Practice, 18(1), 14-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682753.2017.1305838
McAdams, M. (2016). Transmedia Storytelling. In Conference Paper: World Journalism Education Congress (pp. 1-7).
McErlean, K. (2018). Interactive narratives and transmedia storytelling: Creating immersive stories across new media platforms. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315637570
Men, L., Bryan-Kinns, N., Hassard, A. S., & Ma, Z. (2017, March). The impact of transitions on user experience in virtual reality. In 2017 IEEE virtual reality (VR) (pp. 285-286). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2017.7892288
Metz, C. (1974). Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Oxford University Press
Prósper Ribes, J. (2019). Suspense y narrativa: características y organización temporal. Miguel Hernández Communication Journal, 10, 297-315. https://doi.org/10.21134/mhcj.v10i0.309
Radianti, J., Majchrzak, T.A., Fromm, J., & Wohlgenannt, I. (2020). A Systematic Review of Immersive Virtual Reality Applications for Higher Education: Design Elements, Lessons Learned, and Research Agenda. Computers & Education, 147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103778
Reyes, M. C., & Zampolli, S. (2017, June). Screenwriting framework for an interactive virtual reality film. In 3rd Immersive Research Network Conference iLRN. https://doi.org/10.3217/978-3-85125-530-0-15
Rico Garcia, O. D., Tag, B., Ohta, N., & Sugiura, K. (2017, March). Seamless multithread films in virtual reality. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 641-646). https://doi.org/10.1145/3024969.3025096
Riba, A. (2014). FOMO versus JOMO: del miedo al placer de desconectar. Harvard Deusto Marketing y Ventas, (126), 12-16.
Reyna, J. (2018, March). The potential of 360-degree videos for teaching, learning and research. In Proceedings of INTED2018 conference (pp. 1448-1454). https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2018.0247
Rodríguez, T., Baños, M., & Rajas, M. (2015). Posibilidades de co-creación y comunicación de valores de marca en Mundos Virtuales. Revista Prisma Social, 14, 222-273. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5435328
Rodríguez, T., Baños M., & Rajas. M. (2016). Docencia en el campo expandido: estudio de caso sobre aprendizajes en red. Opción: Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, 32(8), 597-618. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5901110
Rothe, S., Buschek, D., & Hußmann, H. (2019). Guidance in cinematic virtual reality-taxonomy, research status and challenges. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 3(1), 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/mti3010019
Ryan, M. L. (2015). Narrative as virtual reality 2: Revisiting immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media (Vol. 2). JHU Press.
Scolari, C. A. (2009). Transmedia Storytelling: Implicit Consumers, Narrative Worlds, and Branding in Contemporary Media Production. International Journal of Communication, 3, 586-606. http://dspace.uvic.cat/handle/10854/2867
Steuer, J. (1992). Defining virtual reality: Dimensions determining telepresence. Journal of communication, 42(4), 73-93. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1992.tb00812.x
Ulrich, F., Helms, N., Frandsen, U., & Rafn, A. (2019). Learning Effectiveness of 360° Video: Experiences From a Controlled Experiment in Healthcare Education. Interactive Learning Environments, 29, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1579234.
Visch, V. T., Tan, E. S., & Molenaar, D. (2010). The emotional and cognitive effect of immersion in film viewing. Cognition and Emotion, 24(8), 1439-1445. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930903498186
Yu, X. (2011). Research and Practice on Application of Virtual Reality Technology in Virtual Estate Exhibition. Procedia Engineering. 15. 1245-1250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2011.08.230.