The Setup

On May 3rd Google released a Google Doodle celebrating the French illusionist and film director George Méliès. While a quick search will yield more info about his life, I wanted to zero in a collision I saw in the video between the medium of immersive VR and story.

Watch the video for a bit, and then click the preview below it for the 1:20 mark.

The full video:

The full video stopped at the 1:20 mark:

The Turn

It’s at this point where the medium actually evolves from a 360 picture to a story. Why? Because now, we have a villian. Now the king we’ve been watching (amongst the other characters) has been promoted to main character. Now we have conflict: the sinister man in green has now separated the king and queen! He blocked the character’s goal, created conflict, and thus, created a story!

Other Clues

To be fair, the story established the villain in a few swift brush(?) strokes:

  • The lights dimmed
  • The book fell over creating a break in the soundtrack. That ‘break’ told the audience that something was about to change.
  • …then the piano went low and minor
  • The new character is wearing a saturated lime green suit. This is strikingly different than the rest of the scene which is slightly desaturated. This character is about to shake things up!

From our training as story-consumers we were, in a matter of two seconds, told very clearly and without any words that this was the bad guy.

And there you have it: medium evolution from picture to story in two seconds! Neat-o!!

What else did you see in the video that solidified the story? Let me know in the comments! (And then share with everyone on the planet…or at least to your Facebook wall 🙂 )