Thinking Outside the Box: Ignition Immersive Does VR

by John Noonan

“Film culture has moved into a beautiful language of faster edits, depth of field, cutaway; this visual language that people are highly attuned to and understand. Then suddenly, we’re given a new technology like VR and people are going ‘Well, it’s really exciting now that people can look around a room that they’re in!’ and the truth is, it’s not that exciting.”

Surprisingly, those are not the words of a silver screen director besmirching the juggernaut of new technology. Those are the words of Darren Vukasinovic, the ‘Chief Dreamer’ at Ignition Immersive, a Melbourne based VR film production studio that wants to do away with your preconceived notions of virtual reality. (“We come at VR as being an all-encompassing theatrette in which we can project story and experience.”) Over the last month, Darren and his team have been working alongside screenwriter and playwright Linda Aronson to turn her screenplay Cardboard Box into an original piece of narrative work; the kind where technology works in sync with art.

“When I reached out to Linda and she showed me Cardboard Box, I was like, Hallelujah!” he explains. “Here’s something where we’re not treating it like we’re always shooting in 360 degrees, we’re treating it like a 360 degree playing field of play for visual stimulation.”

Linda, who highlights Pulp Fiction, 21 Grams and Memento as examples of doing parallel narratives right, has been writing for nearly four decades and has seemingly been longing for the opportunity to produce something that doesn’t just connect with the audience, it literally immerses them in the story. She happily admits that Cardboard Box was written long before the technology was available and has been trying to find someone to bring her story to life.

“I talked to Ubisoft in Paris,” she says. “They were very interested but they couldn’t quite grasp it. And I talked to Universal and they couldn’t quite grasp it. So, I just wrote this newsletter and sent it out to see if anybody was out there.”

And indeed there was. Having been to one of Linda’s masterclasses seven years previously, Darren had been receiving Linda’s newsletters for some time and, having seen her plea for assistance, decided the time was right to reach out.

Sitting with FilmInk at the base of Ignition Immersive, and not giving too much away about what the overall structure of Cardboard Box will be like, both Darren and Linda are keen to emphasise that rather than the novelty VR might be perceived to be, it’s really the next stage in the journey of cinema. A champion of non-linear and complex storylines, Linda appears to have found the perfect way to encapsulate the parallel narrative.

“After the novelty has gone, there has to be story,” she enthuses. “And the exciting thing is the idea of split screens, and using many different sensory experiences to go make something that is beyond screen. Our job is to make sure there isn’t sensory overload, but also to see how far we can push it!”

Darren likens the idea of filming in VR to the ‘70s era of Australian cinema, what he describes as the ‘Wild West Era’ where people took more chances and to hell with the consequences. Having seen what could be done with the process in America, there was nothing there that he thought couldn’t be ‘home-grown.’ Whilst Darren will of course wave the flag for Australian cinema, it’s his fact finding mission abroad that lends a sombre note to what he says next.

“There is a little bit of a sentiment in Australia that we’ll wait for it take off,” he explains. “I strongly believe that if you wait for [VR] to take off, the barrier to entry for us, as the Australian film industry, will become a lot higher. When you deal with VR, you’re dealing with the combined titans of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. So, if you want to wait until this is an industrial channel with a given audience, it is going to be very hard to establish credibility and excellence in that market.”

Seemingly an extension of the wild west approach married with cutting edge technology, Ignition Immersive have set themselves quite a task. After three weeks pre-production, Cardboard Box will be going into an even shorter production and post-production. However, as a final note on the topic and when pushed for a release date, Darren is keen to point out that like technology itself, Cardboard Box doesn’t have a definitive ending.

“Films are kind of made and then relatively abandoned at the end when you lock off the edit,” he tells us. “And then they’re put out into the world. We kind of see this as something we’re going to add dimensions to in terms of the story. So, the direct answer is something quite good and astounding in the middle of August, and then [later] something even more astounding and matured.”

Click here for more on Ignition Immersive.