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Dark cloud cleaner: virtual reality interactive film production
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Dark cloud cleaner: virtual reality interactive film production
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Content
DARK CLOUD CLEANER: VIRTUAL REALITY INTERACTIVE FILM PRODUCTION
By
Wenxiao Li
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF THE ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(DESIGN)
May 2022
© 2022 Wenxiao Li
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………….………iii
Abstract ..……………………………………………………………………………………...….iv
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….1
Chapter 1: Interactive Media…………………………………………………………………...…3
Pre-rendering Interactive Media (Interactive Films) ……………………………………..3
Real-time Rendering Interactive Media (Games)…………………………………………4
Chapter 2: Virtual Reality…………………………………………………………………………7
History of VR……………………………………………………………………………...7
Remarkable VR Projects…………………………………………………………………..8
VR vs. Traditional Film………………………………………………………………….10
Chapter 3: Thesis Project: Dark Cloud Cleaner……………………………………………….…12
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………12
Background Settings of The Story……………………………………………………….13
The Storyline and Its Meaning…………………………………………………………...14
Storyboarding…………………………………………………………………………….16
Environment and Assets design………………………………………………………….17
Moving Problems and Solutions Faced by Current VR…………………………………17
Future Plans………………...……………………………………………………………21
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….21
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..23
iii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figures 1: The 4
th
Wall …….……………………………………………………………………11
Figures 2: VR Storyboard Layout…………….…………………………………………………16
Figures 3: Interior Design in Unity……...……………...….……………………………………17
Figures 4: Driving in VR Simulated Driving Equipment….……………………………………18
Figures 5: Interchanges and Space Alignment….………………………………………………20
iv
Abstract
There has never been a technology that can achieve virtual reality's immersion to
moviegoers for film production. Unlike traditional movies that have gone through more than a
hundred years of development, VR films are still in the early stage. Most theories like editing
techniques or shooting techniques for traditional movies cannot be applied directly to VR film
production. As a designer, I would like to contribute some of my thoughts to the industry.
My design research analyzes the differences between VR interactive cinema and
traditional cinema, showing the potential of VR as a narrative medium and the problems it faces.
I have developed some of my ideas through this research into an interactive short VR film. It is a
story that reflects my experience in recent years, a self- discovery, and technical experimentation
and exploration.
1
Introduction
With the explosion of the meta-universe in recent months, virtual reality has once again
become a hot topic of public concern. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg directly renamed the
company Meta,
1
and their company's Virtual Reality (VR) division Oculus launched the second
generation of portable VR devices, Quest2, with its excellent performance and low price of $299,
quickly seized the market. As of November 17, 2021, Quest2 has sold 10 million units.
2
The
success of Quest2 means that the market for home VR has gradually opened up, and more
advanced technology makes it easier for a family to own a VR device worth more than a
thousand dollars two years ago, just like owning a game console or a TV.
The rapid development of computer graphics technology and graphics hardware is
another key element in bringing VR interactive films to the masses. In recent years,
enhancements in software and hardware have enabled home gaming computers to output high-
resolution photo-quality, real-time rendered images. A picture that used to take tens of minutes
or hours to render can now be rendered by commercial game engines in less than one-sixtieth of
a second and form a high frame rate motion picture. Such rendering technology is exactly what
virtual reality needs. Virtual reality is highly dependent on ultra-high resolution and refreshes
rates, and because virtual reality headsets need to be worn closer to the human eye, higher
resolution and higher frame rates can provide a more immersive experience. In 2017, virtual
reality was called blurred reality by some people because the hardware at the time could not do
1
Salvador Rodriguez, “Facebook changes company name to Meta”, CNBC, 2021,
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/facebook-changes-company-name-to-meta.html
2
Chaim Gartenberg, “Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 has shipped 10 million units, according to Qualcomm”, The Verge,
2021, https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22785469/meta-oculus-quest-2-10-million-units-sold-qualcomm-xr2
2
high-resolution rendering and display. The upgraded hardware devices and rendering technology
seem to tell developers that it is time to create more VR works.
The movie Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 2018,
3
deeply
shocked me in the cinema. Even at the time, VR was no longer a novelty; Ready Player One
undoubtedly helped popularize the concept of VR, its uses, and its future potential to reach a
mass audience. For me, VR is a new immersive experience that allows me to feel like I'm in a
different space altogether. In 2018, I bought my first VR headset and started researching the
possibilities of virtual reality. In its infancy, today VR is still imperfect. The industry needs more
people to study and explore the theories and possibilities for future development.
The fascinating thing about virtual reality as a medium for carrying information is that it
has incomparable advantages over traditional information carriers such as books and videos; VR
is a virtual space parallel to the real world, giving viewers an unprecedented sense of immersion.
VR blurs the concept of the camera so that instead of watching a movie on a two-dimensional
screen, viewers can enter the scene where the story happens and even interact with it to change
the direction of the plot. However, this does not mean that virtual reality will replace cinema; VR
will become a separate medium, just as photographs have not replaced paintings. So even though
some of the theories related to film production can be applied to virtual reality filmmaking, some
are not connected. The theoretical system of virtual reality needs to be built up gradually, just as
it was for film a century ago.
My thesis project, Dark Cloud Cleaner, is an interactive VR film about my own
experience, which contains my experiments in understanding the production of virtual reality
3
Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg (Warner Bros. Pictures,2018),
https://play.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GX9q5dgf0LMILwgEAAAF0?camp=googleHBOMAX
3
films. It is also a process of self-exploration, which will show some perspectives on my own
experiences in recent years. VR as an immersive medium is perfect for first-person narratives.
Interactive Media
Pre-rendering Interactive Media
Pre-rendered interactive media means that the text or video material used in work is
prepared in advance. There are ways for the viewer to interact with the work and participate in it.
In contrast to traditional books or movies, the story in pre-rendered interactive media can be non-
linear and branching. This means that the audience has the ability to change the course of the
storyline through different decisions leading to different endings.
Interactive fiction (IF) is an older interactive media or computer game type. Adventure is
a text-only interactive fiction produced by William Crowther
4
, which tells the story of cave
exploration. After improving computer graphics, this game was added with illustrations and
voice-overs. There is a large number of Interactive fictions produced by developers to this day.
Interactive film is another form of interactive media based on film. The addition of video
and image information gives this film more possibilities. A portion of the film is viewed in the
same way as a movie for most of the time, but it differs from a traditional movie in that the
viewer can make decisions instead of the characters while watching the film, leading to a
different direction for the plot. This interactive film is produced with different footage based on
different branches of the script, and in general, there are multiple endings to the film. For
example, The Complex, produced by Wales Interactive, was shot with real actors.
5
The audience
can make different choices at key moments, some of which affect the story and some
4
William Crowther, Colossal Cave Adventure, CRL, 1976, PDP-10
5
Paul Raschid, The Complex, Wales Interactive,2020, PS4
4
inconsequential. Ultimately, depending on the audience's choices, they will see nine different
endings. Another type of film completely disrupts the linear narrative order viewers can watch
various clips by their own preference or choice, which means they see the unsympathetic order
may be different. Her story developed by Sam Barlow is an example of such a film in which the
player as if using a computer, performs a keyword search and watches the collected video
information to try to reason out the story's killer, which is like a puzzle game.
6
The advantage of interactive films is that they allow for a stronger sense of audience
involvement, leading to a more immersive experience. Viewers will more easily empathize with
the content or characters, making them feel part of the story. Even good screenwriters can do this
in their screenplays, but interactive films make it easier to create this empathy. Traditional films
usually have only one end, which usually doesn't satisfy everyone. Interactive films allow
viewers to interfere with the story, protect their favorite characters, and gradually guide the story
to its ideal ending.
Real-time Rendering Interactive Media
Real-Time Rendering Interactive Media represents works in which most of the images
are generated in real-time by the computer's graphics processor, and this interactive media is
more like a branch of video games. The Interactive Media & Games Division as a major in the
USC School of Cinematic Arts illustrates the close and inseparable relationship between games
and interactive media. Games can be divided into many categories, focusing on gameplay, fun to
play, etc. Some of these games focus on narrative, and some of the scripts for these games are
written by Hollywood movie writers. Thanks to the increasingly improved computer graphics
6
Sam Barlow, Her Story, Sam Barlow, 2015, Android
5
technology, real-time rendered game graphics have become comparable to movie graphics.
Compared to pre-rendered media, real-time rendering can bring the viewer a greater sense of
interaction and involvement. Viewers can talk to the characters in the story by roaming through
the scenes.
Sleep No More is an interactive play based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth, produced
by British Company Punchdrunk.
7
Unlike traditional plays, the audience no longer has to sit in a
theater seat, but instead gets on stage and participates in the play's scenes. The audience will be
able to hang out in a five-story building in which the play's actors will perform separately. In a
traditional play or film, the audience's point of view is fixed, and directors craft each shot to
show the audience what they want them to see. Sleep No More weakens the concept of the
camera, and the audience can now enter the story scene like a ghost. This greatly enhances the
immersion of the story and means that the writers and actors need to work harder if they want the
audience to understand the story because a stronger sense of immersion will bring more
information.
The engagement that comes with a narrative-focused video game is much more intense.
Rather than participating in the drama like a ghost in Sleep No More, the player takes on one or
more of the game's characters. However, it is not easy to define a game as an interactive movie.
With the development of digital technology, the difference between games and movies in terms
of graphics is becoming less and less defined, and the criteria for determining them are becoming
more and more blurred, with current real-time rendering technology producing graphics that are
comparable to pre-rendered movie effects of more than a decade ago. This also allows game
makers to let players play the game as if they were treating it like a movie, using movie effects
7
Sleep No More, directed by Felix Barrett (Punchdrunk, 2011)
6
level graphics, movie scriptwriters, and even actors. In recent years, game reviews in the gaming
press often write that the game's plot makes it feel like watching a twenty-hour-long movie.
In the game Death Stranding, producer Hideo Kojima brought in Norman Reedus, Mads
Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, and other stars to make them into digital avatars.
8
Rockstar's Red Dead
Redemption 2 introduces the concept of cinematic footage, and when the player turns on this
feature, the player's POV will simulate the camera movement of a movie shoot, making it feel
like you're watching a movie that players can control.
9
These examples clearly indicate that some
games are becoming less and less just games and more and more like interactive movies.
Quantic Dream is a studio dedicated to developing interactive films. Their Heavy Rain,
10
Beyond: Two Souls
11
, and Detroit: Become Human
12
is more in line with the concept of
interactive films, where players can control multiple characters in the game to drive the plot
forward. Unlike traditional games that require players to perform difficult actions, players only
need to perform simple actions to play the game. In Detroit: Become Human, players can control
three main characters, based on the player's choice, may lead to the death of one or more of the
main characters, but these do not affect the story. Such gameplay leads players to play the game
when the plot is not like watching a traditional movie based on linear development; the
developers have created a three-dimensional world, in which every decision made by the player
may lead to the ending in a positive or negative direction.
Whether it's a game that increasingly resembles a movie or a movie that adds interactive
elements, real-time rendering games give a sense of immersion that ordinary movies and books
8
Kojima Hideo, Death Stranding, Kojima Productions Co., Ltd., 2019, PS4
9
Christian Cantamessa, Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Games, 2018, PS4
10
David Cage, Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream, 2010, PS4
11
David Cage, Beyond: Two Souls, Quantic Dream, 2013, PS4
12
David Cage, Detroit: Become Human, Quantic Dream, 2018, PS4
7
cannot give. Players can identify that they are the characters themselves, and they feel guilty for
the bad decisions they make and happy that the characters are ushered to a good ending.
Interaction makes the player's emotions more easily touched to create empathy.
Virtual Reality
History of VR
The development of virtual reality devices can be roughly divided into several key points
in time. As early as the 1930s, the concept of virtual reality glasses was well-known by writer
Stanley G. Weinbaum; in his novel Pygmalion Glasses, the novel mentions that people who put
on these glasses can feel a virtual world through the senses of sight, hearing and smell.
13
This
and the existence of VR headset devices on the market now the device's function coincides. In
the 1950s, the first VR prototype, Sensorama was made by Morton Heilig.
14
That is a fixed
device, but then the audience can see the three-dimensional film through it. And smell the smell
of the movie scenes. In the 1960s, heavy head-mounted VR needed to be hung from the ceiling
VR by Ivan Sutherland and his students Bob Sproull produced, because it needs to be suspended
from the ceiling, they named it Sword of Damocles.
15
After more VR devices began to be
designed, these devices have always existed only in the laboratory or for aerospace purposes.
In the nineties, VR really came into the homes of consumers. Game console giants Sega
and Nintendo launched their VR products, VR-1 and Virtual Boy. Because the computer
graphics were not well-developed, these two products did not shock consumers after their
13
Carolina Cruz-Neira and Marcos Fernández and Cristina Portalés. “Virtual Reality and Games”, Multimodal
Technologies and Interaction 2018, 2(1):8, 1, https://doi.org/10.3390/mti2010008
14
Tomasz Mazuryk and Michael Gervautz,” Virtual Reality - History, Applications, Technology and Future”,
Vienna University of Technology, 2, https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/
15
Tomasz Mazuryk and Michael Gervautz,2
8
release. As a result of the terrible user experience these two products received a lot of bad
reviews. The manufacturers' attempts to sell civilian VR devices failed for the time being.
In 2011, 18-year-old Palmer Luckey built a VR prototype in his garage at home,
16
which
later developed into the Oculus Rift; eventually, Oculus was acquired by Meta (Facebook) to
give birth to the Oculus Quest2 this opened the VR market landscape. In the last decade, VR
devices were born in spurts. The major game manufacturers' cell phones have entered the
development of thousands of VR devices. Users can buy VR headsets in the market from about
$5 to $2,000. The difference between this VR explosion and twenty years ago is that most of the
devices can roughly meet the needs of the user experience; part of the product's performance far
exceeded the expectations of users.
Remarkable VR Projects
Henry is a pre-rendered VR short film produced by Oculus Story Studio in 2015; the
story tells the birthday of a hedgehog called Henry.
17
The short film eventually won the
Outstanding Original Interactive Program at the 68th Emmy Award. The whole film takes place
in Henry's home, and the viewer's point of view is fixed at his family's dining room table. The
audience watches the lovely Henry carefully preparing his birthday cake and celebrating his
birthday at home. The audience seems to be a ghost in Henry's house who can observe his every
move; Henry's cute behavior also received the audience's, unanimous love. Oculus Story Studio
created a real-time rendering of the short film Dear Angelica in 2017, a VR film in a completely
16
Greg Kumparak, “A Brief History of Oculus”, TechCrunch, March 26, 2014,
https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/26/a-brief-history-of-oculus/
17
Henry, directed by Ramiro Lopez Dau, (Oculus Story Studio,2015), https://www.oculus.com/story-
studio/films/henry/
9
different style from Henry.
18
The hand-drawn images of Dear Angelica are different from the
3D rendering of Henry, which is more like a painter telling a story to the audience in utilizing
hand- drawings in a 3D space. This form of storytelling may be more like a sand painting in 3
dimensions rather than a traditionally animated film. These two works are very good examples of
VR narrative, but they lack interaction.
Half-Life: Alyx is a work that will change the status quo of VR games in 2020.
19
Valve
developed it, which can be called the first VR 3A game. As mentioned above, games are also an
interactive narrative medium, and Half-Life: Alyx is a VR game that demonstrates the
development team's commitment to the possibilities of VR interaction. The game contains a lot
of interaction not achieved by previous VR games. For example, players can interact with most
of the items in the scene can pick them up and take them away. They can even take a marker to
write on the whiteboard or glass. When players try to ignore the game's rules directly through the
wall, their eyes will be covered. These features make this game have a rich interactive system
and playability.
On the other hand, Half-Life: Alyx seems to have been a great success in the graphic as
well. Valve knows very well what the advantages of VR are, and they show the players giant
floating buildings at the beginning of the game, more than 30 meters high alien machines. These
scenes originally existed only in the movie, but when used in VR with a huge size to show out
for the player, it is very shocking. However, Half-Life: Alyx has constantly been developed to the
game's standards. This makes it somewhat difficult, resulting in a portion of players who are not
18
Dear Angelica directed by Saschka Unseld (Oculus Story Studio,2017),
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1174445049267874/?locale=zh_TW
19
Robin Walker, Half-Life: Alyx, Valve, 2020, Microsoft Windows
10
good at the game not being able to experience its entire content. Also, the story of this game is
actually not very attractive.
These works are fantastic, and their emergence demonstrates the development and
possibilities of VR. They cannot be called perfect in the early stages of technology development,
but these attempts can become a valuable experience for later developers.
VR vs. Traditional Film
The first thing that VR brings to storytelling is a sense of immersive engagement. Instead
of sitting in a movie theater watching a movie, the audience can enter the environment where the
story occurs. When viewers watch a cinema in a movie theater, they are separated from the world
of the movie by the movie screen. In the book Virtual Reality Filmmaking, Celine Tricart refers
to this distance as the 4th wall, which indicates the separation between the audience and the stage
or screen.
20
This results in the movie story taking place in another world and is irrelevant to
them. This distance makes it difficult for filmmakers to create a sense of immersion. VR easily
solves this problem, even though in the short film Henry the audience only watches the whole
story from the perspective of a ghost, but when Henry the Hedgehog looks at the audience, the
20
Celine Tricart, Virtual Reality Filmmaking: Techniques & Best Practices for VR Filmmakers 1st Edition, (New
York: Routledge, 2018), ISBN: 978-1-315-28041-7
11
eye contact can make the audience subconsciously think that they are also part of the story. This
is a wonderful feeling for the audience.
Second, real-time VR provides players with interaction possibilities that traditional
movies cannot bring. The audience will have a different understanding of the movie and
expectations when watching it. This is the reason why traditional movies cannot satisfy
everyone. However, in the world of VR, viewers have the possibility to change the story. This
increases their involvement and allows everyone to protect their favorite characters and create an
ending that meets their expectations.
The 360-degree view of the VR experience is able to bring more information to the
viewer. This is both a benefit and a detriment, depending on how developers exploit this feature.
Traditional film footage has been carefully designed to show the audience what the filmmakers
want them to see. Since the information will only come from a two-dimensional screen, it makes
it easier to focus the viewer's attention. In VR movies, information comes from all directions,
and the audience has access to more information, which leads to information overload. It is
Figure 1 The 4th wall
12
difficult for viewers to distinguish what is essential and what is not, thus making it more difficult
for developers to design.
Even though VR has many advantages compared to traditional movies, this does not
mean that VR movies will take the place of traditional film someday. They are just different
mediums for carrying information. Just as photography has not replaced painting and films have
not replaced books, the emergence of VR movies has only given storytellers an additional option
to choose a more suitable medium as a storytelling vehicle.
Thesis Project: Dark Cloud Cleaner
Introduction
Dark Cloud Cleaner is a very personal film, a science fiction story based on my
experiences in the United States in recent years. The story encompasses four years of self-
discovery, loneliness, perception of identity, and confusion about an uncertain future. It is a
phase in my life that I wanted to document uniquely. According to my design research above,
real-time rendering VR can give users a more immersive experience and interact with the
environment, so I chose to create a real-time rendered VR interactive film. However, the cost of
a better experience is a more complex production and higher hardware requirements. For more
realistic graphics and frame rate performance, I will be using a PC rendering platform coupled
with the Oculus Quest2 wireless streaming solution, which is one of the best VR devices on the
market today. Since this is a real-time rendering project, I will be using a game engine; unity is a
great game engine, it has better support for VR projects than Unreal, and it is more suitable for
indie game makers, so it will be the development tool I use.
13
The Background Setting for the Story
This story takes place in the future. In the 2050s, the earth's waste disposal had become a
complex problem for governments to face. Before that, the earth's garbage was mainly burned
and then buried in landfills, but some small countries could not find a place to bury the waste
residue after burning. This made the increasing amount of garbage a problem for some countries
to deal with, so the governments of these countries aimed at the space plan to launch the burned
trash residue into space in a package. At this time in the future, rocket launch technology was so
sophisticated that almost all countries could send their trash into space. The first country to throw
its trash into space was condemned worldwide, but the action did not affect the earth, so more
countries began to follow them. The problem of waste on earth was temporarily solved. In the
2080s, an increasing amount of garbage in space orbited the earth in its orbit. As governments
have been ashamed to put garbage into space for the past 30 years, there was trash dropped in
secret, and their orbits were not planned, which led to the chaos of garbage in space. When the
containers filled with garbage started to collide the garbage residue began to leak.
More and more granular garbage was scattered in space, gradually blocking part of the
sunlight, resulting in a reduction in the efficiency of the solar power system on earth and slowing
down the growth of plants, a phenomenon known at the time as Dark Cloud. Dark Cloud had a
profound impact on humanity in the decades that followed. The rupture of the garbage container
produced a chain reaction of debris crashing into other containers. Increasingly, the Dark Cloud
began to affect the earth's agriculture, electricity, and spacecraft in space. By 2117 governments
decided to send humans to clean up the Dark Cloud, and these people became known as
Cleaners.
14
Cleaners are in an extremely high-risk profession, and they travel in cheap spaceships on
missions in space. Due to the presence of the Dark Cloud, their communication devices with
earth may be cut off at any time. But because of the relatively high pay, there are always bold
people willing to take the risk to become cleaners, and the protagonist of the story is also one of
them.
The Storyline and Its Meaning
Due to the limitations of technology nowadays, it is easy to wear VR devices for a long
time and make people feel uncomfortable. The concept for my interactive film is similar to the
form of a TV series, launching the first episode of the story initially. The first episode of the film
is an introduction to the whole story. I used the four-act screenplay structure when writing the
script, which is a more common technique in scriptwriting.
In the film's first act, the viewer first sees my dream, a collection of dreams that I have
been having in recent years. After graduating from high school, I left my hometown in Wenzhou
and went to Shanghai, then after my sophomore year of college, I followed my parents and
immigrated to the United States. During the following holidays I traveled back and forth between
the United States and China, and then in 2019 I started my graduate studies in the US. After this,
my hometown became an unreachable place that I could only reach in my dreams. I had a similar
but different dream repeatedly during those years, and when I went back to my high school to
prepare for my college entrance exams. I always dreamt that I was in the classroom, staring at
some math problems that I had long forgotten to solve, and looking forward to eating a bowl of
rice noodles that are unique to my hometown after class. But alas, not once could I eat that rice
noodle either because I couldn't find the store, or I woke up before then. In my dreams, I always
appeared in my hometown home, in a house that had already been sold and I had lived in for 18
15
years with my parents. At the beginning of the film, viewers can walk through a scene similar to
my old home and interact with some of the objects in the scene that hold my memories. But all
this will eventually disappear, and at the end of the first act, they will wake up on a spacecraft.
The story takes place a hundred years later, but the scene in the dream is a millennial-style
decorated Chinese house, this is because this scene is my own connection to the main character
in the story. This dream is my dream and not the dream of the protagonist.
In the second act the audience will receive a series of messages, as they play a Dark
Cloud cleaner on a space mission, they will find out that this is their last day of work in space,
after which they can be released back to earth. The station's AI assistant will tell the audience the
story of Dark Cloud through holograms and play a message from family and friends celebrating
his or her return to earth. My motivation for coming to the U.S. was similar to the protagonist to
become a Dark Cloud cleaner, in that we both wanted to improve our current life through higher
income. The government in the film gives Dark Cloud cleaners a minimal amount of protection
in space, which makes them feel lonely and insecure while working. Such loneliness and
insecurity connected with my emotions when I was in the United States, as I was more
introverted.
The third act is the conflict, and the climax will exist in the section. The audience will
play the role of the main characters to carry out the last day of the mission. The audience will
come to space to carry out the task of cleaning up the dark clouds, in the process he or she will
face difficulties and crises. This section is very similar to my life in the United States before
2019; I did much physical work during this time to support the expenses needed in the United
States. I did hard but simple and boring work in the warehouse of a food distribution company,
and the cleaner job is a reflection of my old job.
16
The fourth act in a series of films is usually a reversal, such as a protagonist encountering
a more significant crisis after solving it. In this chapter, when the player was relieved to have
solved the problem in space, the ship was then destroyed because of the accident, which means
that they could not return to earth and lost the possibility of survival. The story will end here as
an open ending. The crisis the audience encounters in the film actually reflects the impact of
Covid-19 on the world, where they themselves have a chance to return to earth but are trapped in
the universe because of a crisis.
Storyboarding
The storyboard is widely used in movies, games, animation, etc. It allows for quick
visualization of the entire storyline, making post-production just that much easier. The VR
Storyboard template I used is a version integrated and optimized by Vincent McCurley.
21
21
Vincent McCurley, “Storyboarding in Virtual Reality
”, Virtual Reality Pop, 2016, https://virtualrealitypop.com/storyboarding-in-virtual-reality-67d3438a2fb1
Figure 2 VR storyboard layout
17
Environment and Assets Design
There are three main scenes involved in Dark Cloud Cleaner, a Chinese apartment, a
scene in a spaceship, and a space scene. I used Autodesk 3DS Max modeling and Substance
Painter in asset and scene production to draw the textures. Most of the textures come from the
free texture library Quixel, and of course, to finish an indie game or short film requires many art
assets, which is a vast number for a project I'm working on alone. I use the strategy to model
some of the more essential models myself, while some of the less critical assets I use are free or
paid models on the Internet.
Moving Problems and Solutions Faced by Current VR
Movement in virtual reality has been a difficult problem to solve. The traditional home
device solution for the game moves in two ways: to use the controller on the joystick instead of
walking and to let the player select the target location and then teleport them. The problem of
joystick movement is easy for the player to quickly feel motion sickness. This is due to the
human visual nerve receiving the motion picture, but the body does not correspond to the
Figure 3 Interior design in Unity
18
movement, so the brain's protection mechanism prompts people to feel sick. Teleport mitigates
this problem to some extent, but it also makes the player's immersion plummet. Simply moving
from one point to another is impossible to happen in reality. I have never been able to accept
these solutions, so I did not use either of them in my previous projects.
An earlier project I worked on, Ruin of Road, is a VR racing game. When the group and I
were negotiating what kind of game to make, we agreed that we shouldn't let the movement
issues break the game's immersive atmosphere. The platform we were using at the time was the
HTC Vive, a wired device, which made it particularly difficult for players to walk freely in
space. So, we had the idea of letting them sit and play the game, and that's how we ended up
making a racing game.
Moreover, the final results proved that this method is effective, and players who had
strong reactions to motion sickness did not feel discomfort when playing the game. After I
started using Oculus Quest as a development tool, walking around in a VR environment became
Figure 4 Driving in VR simulated driving equipment
19
more feasible because it no longer required a cable to link to a computer but rather was now
streaming over Wi-Fi. Players could now take it with them and walk freely in space. I took this
approach in the Tree Hole project I made. It is a VR installation where participants can paint
through VR or record to leave their little secrets in a virtual forest. To enhance the feeling of
walking in the forest, it was ideal for participants to be able to walk freely in the space, and Tree
Hole proved that walking in virtual space does not cause discomfort.
The solution that allows players to walk freely is not necessarily perfect, and the problem
that should be addressed initially is space management. The VR experience needs to take place
in a room or enclosed space, which means the size of that space is fixed. If players are allowed to
walk through the space in a disorderly manner, it is likely to result in the need for too much
space or for a player to run into obstacles. And when the film transitions, or as the player enters
another scene, the new virtual scene may not overlap with the real space. The audience may
therefore hit the wall. Due to this, it is necessary to analyze the space used and to plan for each
transition. My approach is to introduce a concept of interchange. An interchange is a passage
between two locations. It can be an elevator, an interactive object, a trap, or just a location in
space. It can be placed anywhere in space, and when the player encounters the interchange, they
will be transported to the same location in another scene relative to the real space. For example,
the physical space in the scene in the figure represents all the space needed for the VR
experience, outside of which obstacles such as walls may exist. So, developers need to ensure
that players always stay within this space. Players first enter level A to play; when the story
requires players to enter level B, they will be in the Interchange A to B is sent to level B, and
20
then in the Interchange B to C into the C level. When each scene or level is designed in this way,
the entire physical space can be effectively used.
Physical walking can solve some of the problems, but it can also cause some limitations
when the level is no longer an indoor space but an outdoor scene, such as my project in space.
Players will no longer be able to walk freely in this space because the size of the virtual space is
much larger than the physical one. At this point, joining the carrier can effectively solve this
problem. Install a set of simulated driving equipment, such as a simulated racing steering wheel
or simulated flight equipment, in the physical space. When the plot requires players to need a
vehicle, they can drive or ride the vehicle by placing it in the same location in the virtual space.
The equipment should be placed at the edge of the physical space, and when it is not needed in
Figure 5 Interchanges and space alignment
21
the virtual scene, it should be covered with an impenetrable barrier. It allows players to not cause
safety problems by hitting it when they walk around. In my project, since I don't have any
piloting equipment, I have made it possible for the player to fly in the space by a jetpack.
Future Plans
Dark Cloud Cleaner still looks crude at the moment and needs more time to become
polished. In the future, I will develop more possibilities for the story structure. In the previously
mentioned Sleep No More, the viewer is free to explore all the stories in the building while they
happens. The idea that the audience needs to watch the play several times to understand all the
plots seems very appealing to me. However, the idea of compressing the duration of a short film
but requiring the audience to repeat the experience to fully understand the film or change the
ending of the story could be more of an advantage of interactive film and virtual reality. My
expectation is a bit like the concept of Groundhog Day
22
or Source Code
23
, where the
protagonist goes through the time loop, again and again, to finally break it. At the end of my
film, the player is trapped in the universe, but if you add the concept of time loops, players can
gradually change the ending through multiple playthroughs to eventually return to earth.
Conclusion
Virtual reality interactive film is a medium-full of potential, even if it currently has many
limitations. Research into this industry should be a joint effort between hardware manufacturers
and filmmakers. When VR headsets and related peripherals become more powerful, creative
22
Groundhog Day, directed by Harold Ramis (Columbia Pictures, 1993), https://www.hulu.com/movie/groundhog-
day-d33fe2b9-9865-4b95-b440-86c11cae13d1?entity_id=d33fe2b9-9865-4b95-b440-86c11cae13d1
23
Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones (Summit Entertainment, 2011),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezm1y5UULI4
22
artists will be able to use these better devices to produce their work. But more importantly,
filmmakers or game designers need to think about how to use existing technology to create a
stronger sense of immersion. This film shows my attempt at VR interactive film, which is mainly
optimized for scene switching and movement in VR. Of course, this program is not completely
perfect; it cannot be applied to all situations. Therefore, my exploration of VR will not end, and
more developers will continue their research on VR.
23
Bibliography
Barlow, Sam. Her Story. Sam Barlow. Android. 2015.
Barret, Felix. Sleep No More. New York: Punchdrunk, 2011
Cage, David. Beyond: Two Souls. Quantic Dream. PS4. 2013
Cage, David. Detroit: Become Human. Quantic Dream. PS4. 2018.
Cage, David. Heavy Rain. Quantic Dream.PS4. 2010.
Cantamessa, Christian. Red Dead Redemption 2. Rockstar Games. PS4. 2018
Crowther, William. Colossal Cave Adventure. CRL. PDP-10.1976.
Cruz-Neira, Carolina, Marcos Fernández, and Cristina Portalés. 2018. "Virtual Reality and
Games" Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 2, no. 1: 8.
https://doi.org/10.3390/mti2010008.
Dau, Ramiro Lopez, director. Henry. Oculus Story Studio, 2015. 12:00.
https://www.oculus.com/story-studio/films/henry/.
Hideo, Kojima. Death Stranding. Kojima Productions Co. Ltd. PS4. 2019.
Jones, Duncan, director. Source Code. Summit Entertainment, 2011. 1:33:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezm1y5UULI4.
Kumparak, Greg. “A Brief History of Oculus”, TechCrunch, March 26, 2014,
https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/26/a-brief-history-of-oculus/.
Mazuryk, Tomasz, and Michael Gervautz.2018.” Virtual Reality - History, Applications,
Technology and Future”. Vienna University of Technology, 2.
https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/.
McCurley, Vincent. “Storyboarding in Virtual Reality”. Virtual Reality Pop. May 22, 2016.
https://virtualrealitypop.com/storyboarding-in-virtual-reality-67d3438a2fb1.
Ramis, Harold, director. Groundhog Day. Columbia Pictures, 1993.
1:41:00. https://www.hulu.com/movie/groundhog-day-d33fe2b9-9865-4b95-b440-
86c11cae13d1?entity_id=d33fe2b9-9865-4b95-b440-86c11cae13d1.
Raschid, Paul. The Complex. Wales Interactive. PS4. 2020.
Rodriguez, Salvador. “Facebook changes company name to Meta”, CNBC. October 29, 2021.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/28/facebook-changes-company-name-to-meta.html.
Spielberg, Steven, director. Ready Player One. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2018. 2:20:00.
https://play.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GX9q5dgf0LMILwgEAAAF0?camp=g
oogleHBOMAX.
Tricart, Celine. Virtual Reality Filmmaking: Techniques & Best Practices for VR Filmmakers 1st
Edition. New York: Routledge. 2018, ISBN: 978-1-315-28041-7.
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Unseld, Saschka, director. Dear Angelica. Oculus Story Studio, 2017. 12:00.
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1174445049267874/?locale=zh_TW.
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Abstract (if available)
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Li, Wenxiao
(author)
Core Title
Dark cloud cleaner: virtual reality interactive film production
School
Roski School of Art and Design
Degree
Master of Fine Arts
Degree Program
Design
Degree Conferral Date
2022-05
Publication Date
04/11/2022
Defense Date
04/09/2022
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
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Tag
interactive film,OAI-PMH Harvest,Storytelling,virtual reality
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), Hanson, Eric (
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), Wojciak, Ewa (
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Tags
interactive film
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