VR and the death of the frame? Filmmaking in an age of immersive technology

In light of immersive 360-degree and 3D capture technologies, which give the end-user retrospective control of the angle of viewing, the visual language of traditional filmmaking might appear fundamentally disrupted. This paper expands upon the relationship between film and virtual reality (VR) in the context of heritage interpretation. It explores the continuity between the two media, but also the disparate conventions and traditions that they draw upon. If we acknowledge that no medium is transparent then we must also consider how the practitioner’s tools and decision-making affect media content and its meaning. While in VR these decisions are more likely to define the ways in which the audience can interact with content, in film the composition of the frame plays a significant role in channeling the audience’s attention in a predetermined way. The frame is an integral component of photography and filmmaking. The continued relevance of such filmic conventions in a time of technological upheaval is a key question here. It is suggested that both filmmaking and VR will continue to offer unique and powerful tools for documentary storytelling in heritage interpretation, and that understanding the strengths of each will be important if we are to develop a well-considered visual toolkit that goes beyond the technological hype. As such, we test new norms of immersion and interaction afforded by recent developments in head-mounted display technology that might appear to be - and have certainly been promised to be - a paradigm shifting development in new media.