Understanding virtual reality filmmaking
Use of Virtual Reality tools to animate a workshop for the creation of playful and atypical collective audiovisual works.
The QIFF (Quimper Images & Films Festival), a young festival (2nd edition in 2023, produced by l’association Gros Plan) dedicated to innovation in the field of animated images, proposed for the second time a virtual reality film-making workshop, led by Benoît Labourdette.
In one afternoon, for several groups of people who follow one another, I propose to the participants to experiment in a playful way with the Virtual Reality camera, to explore new paths of creativity: distorted images, amazing body movements and postures, quadraphonic sound, photography, binocular video and “planisphere”... I propose successive exercises, viewed collectively and shared between each other. After each step, we move on to a new experimentation, based on the participants’ desires.
The principle of the workshop is to do and then watch. Each exploration is collective, in the form of a chain (the camera is passed around), in the spirit of the literary “cadavres exquis” of the surrealists. The participants are also invited to take pictures of the workshop in progress, and then put their pictures online in the sharing space. They leave with a QR code, which allows them to access the films and photos made.
Through play, risk-taking, experimentation, and time for looking and dialogue, everyone’s thoughts on the subject of Virtual Reality have room to form.
Interview of Benoît Labourdette in the Usbek & Rica media to evoke the stakes of this workshop.
Discover the productions and the collaborative documentation of this workshop:
https://www.benoitlabourdette.com/_docs/projets/2023/2023_qiff_vr/
Announcement of the workshop in the festival catalog
Understanding virtual reality filmmaking
Hands-on workshop open to allThe films called “VR” (Virtual Reality) are films, linear or interactive, shot with 360° cameras, that we view either on screen by moving in the image with the mouse or the finger, or with a headset placed in front of the eyes by turning the head.
This workshop questions this new technology in an interactive way!This session is open to everyone, without registration, during which you will be able to make small 360" films, very playful, and see the result!
Workshop led by Benoît Labourdette, filmmaker, educator, expert in new media and cultural innovation.
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(Article header photo: Adeline Boit)
In 2022, during the first edition of the QIFF festival, I had led a similar workshop, of which you can see the films :
https://www.benoitlabourdette.com/_docs/index.php?dir=projets/2022/2022_qiff_vr
- 2023_vr_atelier_qiff_film_1.mp4 (MPEG4)
Thinking about virtual reality...
Virtual Reality, this project of total immersion in an imaginary world, linear or interactive, which has been in the state of successive prototypes for more than 40 years, seemed to start “taking” in creative and industrial terms in 2015-2016. We have seen the appearance of many tools, experimental projects, public support for production, broadcasts in festivals, installations of VR headsets in museums, symposiums ...
For my part, I have always thought that a new technology should be thought outside the frame, that is to say questioned, beyond the objectives given to it by the industrialists, in its anthropological, sociological, philosophical, political dimensions, and not only aesthetic. Thinking of a 360° spherical narrative is in my opinion not at all sufficient to seize the potentialities, and possible risks, of these new tools.
So since 2017, I have been exploring bushwalks, exploratory and playful, to question the issues of Virtual Reality technology. I believe that the “side step” is a real tool for thinking, building critical thinking, so basically freedom, ie democracy. Virtual Reality is already often used in the field of technical engineering. Still, few audiovisual creation projects have been realized in VR. On the other hand, it is conceivable that little by little, with the “metaverse”, VR will become part of our daily lives. We are not there yet, so it is time to question this technology and its future uses, to remain conscious in the world of tomorrow. I believe that for this, putting it into practice is a very good way.
Here you will find a selection of experiments with Virtual Reality that I have conducted since 2017, which I hope will inspire cultural action, audiovisual creation, museography and education. Workshops in libraries and media libraries, notably at the Centre Pompidou, atypical films, cultural actions in cinemas, animation of professional meetings, conferences, animation of workshops at the Fémis, contribution to the colloquium of the Louis Lumière school...
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Understanding virtual reality filmmaking
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