Cinema Unframed: exploring the screen in virtual reality, through live installation and mobile app

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This project will adapt and combine key research outputs from the Digital Transformations project 'The Audiovisual Essay: a digital methodology for film and media studies' into an 18-24 minute interactive 'VR essay film', comprising three episodes that explore the foundational role of framing, editing, and sound within the film-making process. Each episode will allow users to explore and think through one of the key paradigm shifts associated with rise of VR: the transformation of the letterbox frame into 360 degree space, the abandonment of continuity editing and montage, and the dissolution of the traditional 'sound mix' into an interactive binaural soundscape. The original project explored the use of digital video-making as a methodology for conducting research in the fields of film and media studies. In particular, it tested different ways in which the 'audiovisual essay' (or 'video essay') could complement traditional written scholarship on film and media to engage with digitally native audiences. The rise of VR over the last eighteen months opens radically new opportunities for the video essay to do so. This project explores the possibility of channeling the immersive power of VR for critical and educational ends, and in particular of using VR as a tool for communicating research on film and media to new audiences. By creating a VR essay film, the project will make possible a range of active dissemination and public engagement activities in collaboration with BFI Education. These will significantly augmenting the impact of the original project across three key groups of beneficiaries: new 18-30 year old cinemagoers, international VR creators, and the (so far latent) UK-based VR production sector. In doing so, this project follows Mark Zuckerberg's $2 billion gambit that VR provides one of the keys the future of screen media.