Doug Liman, director of Edge of Tomorrow and The Bourne Identity -- not to mention the upcoming Dark Universe (DC’s Justice League Dark movie) and Edge of Tomorrow 2 -- embarked on his first foray into virtual reality with Invisible, an episodic drama that requires a VR headset like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive to view.
Invisible isn’t just a first for Liman, though; it’s one of the first ever (possibly the first) live action, scripted, narrative projects made exclusively for virtual reality.
The short (five to seven minutes) episodes concern the Ashlands, a wealthy and powerful family who possess the power of invisibility, passed down to some members through the luck of genetics. When the Ashland patriarch, the current generation’s grandfather, dies, he grants the young Tatiana, whose chief concern is humanitarian work, control of the lucrative family company. Naturally this pisses off Tatiana’s great uncle Gordon, who’s enacting his own sinister plot to artificially grant himself the family power of invisibility.
With a VR headset strapped to your face, in each and every scene you’re free to look around. In many scenes you need to if you want to keep track of what’s happening -- there are often multiple conversations or fights going on within the same scene, and it’s up to the viewer where to look. The resolution of what you’re viewing suffers due to the limitations current of VR technology, which combined with the infrequency of cuts can make Invisible feel like an old soap opera. But the series is by nature inescapably modern, and these are just some of the challenges inherent to making live action content for VR.
“I knew the challenges would be great -- that to bring that kind of story to life in VR really was going to test the boundaries of what was doable in scripted VR,” Liman told IGN during a visit to Jaunt Studios in Santa Monica, Calif. Jaunt made Invisible along with Liman’s company 30 Ninjas and Conde Nast Entertainment.
“It was going to be fast-paced at a time when people were saying you can’t edit in VR -- we were going to have to figure out a way to prove those people wrong. And it was going to involve action,” Liman continued. “The tricks that Hollywood’s developed over the last 100 years don’t really work in VR … you can cheat in action and, you know, shake the camera a little bit and you don’t quite see what’s happening, but your mind fills in the gap. You can’t do that in VR. You can’t even fake a stage hit in VR. You know, if someone’s going to get hit they actually have to be hit.”
Invisible was conceived by Liman and Melissa Wallack, who wrote the 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club. They considered pitching it as a film or a traditional TV series, but as Liman focused more on his work in VR with 30 Ninjas he realized Invisible was a good fit there.
The director’s foray into VR was inspired partially by Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, a well known New York “interactive work of theater” in which participants wander between rooms watching various scenes play out without much concern for chronology or continuity.
“I never was able to follow the story in “Sleep No More,” Liman said. “[But] I was really compelled by the combination of scripted scenes and my ability or my freedom as a viewer to control my experience within that. And really that’s what inspired me to want to try scripted VR.”
He said VR’s ability to make users feel like they’re in another place is what ultimately cemented his interest in the format. “If you look at the Bourne series I really was like, I’m going to transport you to France. I’m not going to fake it -- we’re really shooting in France, you’re really going to go to Berlin, you’re really going to go to India. Like you’re taking the audience places. VR has the ability to do that on a whole other level,” he said. “For a filmmaker like myself, that, you know, all I care about is the audience, to give the audience that [immersive] experience is so immensely satisfying.”
Virtual Reality is, as it stands, incredibly limited. Invisible was shot using Jaunt’s own custom VR cameras, but even so the seams are frequently visible. Modern audiences have become used to a certain look and feel in the media they consume, and Invisible by necessity sidesteps, inverts and often straight up ignores the rules of modern filmmaking. And although Invisible is platform agnostic, appearing on all available VR platforms, its audience remains limited to tech early adopters who’ve bought in to virtual reality at this infant stage.
Liman believes that will change. “I don’t think there’s anybody who’s put on a VR headset who hasn’t recognized that this is a tectonic shift that’s going to affect all aspects of our lives from this point forward. I don’t think it replaces movies, I don’t think it replaces TV shows, but it is for sure a tectonic shift,” he said.
“The technology used to make films today is radically improved from where it was 50 years ago, people shooting on film and editing on a flatbed. But people were making great movies 50 years ago,” he continued. “I think people [will] look back on Invisible in ten years and be like, ‘I can’t believe they were able to make that with the technology that existed back then.”
“Invisible is groundbreaking because it just works as a piece of entertainment. It’s not a proof of concept,” he said. “It’s a really fun, compelling piece of entertainment that is immersive in exactly the way I dreamt it could be when we started out.”
Invisible is available now for Samsung’s Gear VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, with more platforms to come.
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