srn2020oxford 26 Jul 2021 Panel 2, Spectatorship, VR

Alves, Rubio Tamayo & Durán Fonseca – Screenwriting and Virtual Reality: renewing concepts and methodologies on narrative and spectatorship

Pedro Alves (Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto, Portugal)

Jose Luis Rubio Tamayo (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain)

Estefany Durán Fonseca (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain)

Panel 2 – TECH 1 (VR, IMMERSIVE)

Tuesday 31 August (Day 1), Session 1, 10 am

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Alves-Tamayo-Fonseca_Abstract OPEN/DOWNLOAD

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6Comments

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1

Paolo Russo on 26 Aug 2021 at 5:31 pm
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This is an incredibly rich, comprehensive and insightful paper, with so many take-home points for further discussion. It has clear structure, interesting/relevant examples and is well-presented too. As I look forward to further developments in your research, I do have so many questions I’d like to ask. I’ll try and summarise a few here below:
– Can you elaborate on the difference between Narrative interest (level 1 of the VR experience) and Narrative level tout court (level 3, with its own 0-3 sublevels)?
– Likewise, the difference between sublevel 3 of the Narrative Level (encompassing interaction/emergent narrative/environment) and the Interactive level? They both seem to be about interaction anyway.
– In reference to Dooley’s argument in favour of short VR formats (max 10 mins), is there a body of scientific/data evidence to support that?
– Re: Ogle’s 15 interactive models: have you tested this paradigm(s) or are we to take it for granted?
– Use of colour in scripts (e.g. Vargas, Cooper and Tieche, Alves, Rubio Tamayo and Duran Fonseca): I can see the usefulness, but wouldn’t this undermine the use of colour in revision round protocol? Or is that not use for VR scripts?
– Finally, a bit of a provocative suggestion re: your conclusion: great to leave creative freedom to author to find whatever script template/format suits them best, but isn’t the whole point of using standards so that a whole industry can speak and understand the same “language”/paradigm easily?

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Deborah Klika on 28 Aug 2021 at 1:43 pm
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I enjoyed the detail and offering of a standard script format for VR storytelling. I agree with Paolo’s comment/query about narrative interest level and the interactive level. Thank for preparing this presentation.

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ELEANOR YULE on 30 Aug 2021 at 6:07 pm
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This is fascinating and a really useful tool – do you think it could also help some 2D screenwriters to communicate screen ideas which are more aurally or visually based, as often this is hard to discern from a written screenplay.

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Pedro Alves on 31 Aug 2021 at 3:37 pm
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Thank you Paolo, Deborah and Eleanor for your kind comments and interesting questions. We will try to answer them all:

To sum it up very briefly, within the virtual sphere, in a narrative context, we find three levels of interest for the viewer. It’s important to distinguish between Levels of Narrative Interest (A, B, C) and Narrative Level (0-3), the last one related with the Interactive Level and others.

Levels of narrative interest refer to components in the scene (Duran Fonseca, Rubio-Tamayo, Alves, 2021). They may be characters, objects, but also actions, etc. They are divided in three levels, focusing on their “potential” interest for developing the different levels of the plot. The model organises them, in order to improve how stories are going to be conceived, designed, and created. An accurate analogy is the fact that they operate like a “Zoom”, by allowing screenwriters (and other content creators) to “zoom” in and out in a given character/object/action, etc.

Level A: It’s in summary the focal point of the plot. It hosts the specific focus of the action. It would be the answer to “What is happening?” It’s in summary the focal point of the plot.

Level B: Their components are secondary but essential to sustain the components of level A. It’s what users may observe understood as a “useful distraction”. It’s part of the environmental context of the action. It can be key for the understanding of the action because it answer to the question “Where is happening?”. Their components are secondary but essential to sustain the components of level A. It’s what users may observe understood as a “useful distraction”.

Level C: It’s the farest away from the viewer/ user and it answers a practical purpose, which is to put a limit to the view. To cage the narrative. It’s part of the environmental context but it does not have a role in the development of the narrative. It’s considered as the “landscape” and it’s essential for sustaining the plot.

On the other hand, Narrative Levels are subdivided in four ones, arranged by numbers in order to distinguish it from the Levels of Narrative Interest, from zero (no events, a fixed picture) to 4 (an interaction similar as we understand to “physical world”).

Regarding the difference between level 3 in the Narrative Level and the Intectactive Level, the main distinguishing factor between them lies in the focus of the taxonomy. When we talk about narrative level, specifically the sublevel 3, we do it from a narrative perspective. We think about how the construction of the story allows the user to have a certain interaction within the context of the narrative even if it is not relevant in the development of the story.

However, when we focus on the term agency, that defines the possibility of interaction in a VR world, we can find that the interaction can be understood in two ways, depending of where you put your focus on, either narrative, if we want to focus on the development of the story and that would be the interaction user-scene; or technology if we focus on the role of the gear and tech on the story, and that would be the interaction user-technology.

In addition, Narrative Levels and Interactive Levels have a sort of interrelationship. Generally speaking, a VR environment which shows a high level of interaction and possibilities regarding the spatial exploration, may offer developers the possibilities to create more complex stories and, therefore, narratives.

We are still deepening our research in order to clarify the time optimization matter in VR, looking into that kind of data and scientific evidence. As we said, this is an ongoing research. Nevertheless, Dooley’s argument for a short VR format is duly supported by Jones’ interview and Jerald’s The VR Book in her 2017 paper published in Studies in Australasian Cinema. We believe they are important concerns regarding the design of VR narrative paradigm, as they bring into equation concerns about spectatorship (or usership) and how the experience can go from good to bad depending on the length of the VR experience. But we agree they must be explored more.

Ogle’s 15 interactive models are important for us to understand the major possibilities offered by each paradigm for a given VR project. They do not offer a standard or universal direction for VR narrative experiences’ design, but several possibilities on how to relate author, VR project and users with different interactive relations and dependences.

Regarding the usage of colours in the script template, other colours might be used, or even the colour highlight tool (instead of only using colour directly in the letters). Revision protocol is still important in VR narrative scripts, and we believe colour might also be used (in a clear fashion) within this template. However, there is the need of establishing series of codes in order to improve the protocols.

As for the aim to reach a template that the whole industry can use, it is our goal to reach a template that is as universally accepted and used as possible. But we are still not there. We need to keep experimenting and trying to find the best template for VR projects. Furthermore, we are not naïve to believe that our template already solves this problem, as it still lacks usage, testing and problem identification and resolution. That is why we finish our paper urging VR creators and authors to try to use this template and tell us if it works or not (and if so, why does it not work). In future VR projects’ production, we will also be testing this.

We also agree with Eleanor: we believe this tool helps 2D screenwriting to communicate in a more aural or visual fashion, without losing the scene description and the continuity perception between moments and scenes.

We hope we answered all of your questions. Thank you very much for the feedback.

Pedro, Estefany & Jose

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- 5
  
  srn2020oxford on 1 Sep 2021 at 12:58 pm
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  Same here! Thanks
  
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srn2020oxford on 1 Sep 2021 at 12:58 pm
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Thank you for the incredibly exhausting answers! Really great paper, and really good Live Panel discussion yesterday! This is some very interest research you’re undertaking!

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SRN 2021

Alves, Rubio Tamayo & Durán Fonseca – Screenwriting and Virtual Reality: renewing concepts and methodologies on narrative and spectatorship

READ ABSTRACT & BIOS

WATCH PRE-RECORDED PRESENTATION

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