VR Arcade at Raindance – sponsored by Lexus

Virtual Reality or VR (not video recording!) is a growing genre in the world of film.  I was fortunate enough to attend an inaugural  session on Sunday 2 October the closing day of the Raindance 24th film festival at The Hospital Club Covent Garden. There were 14 films playing.  This event was very avant garde and I was told there are currently no venues to partake in VR viewing and it is a special Raindance event sponsored by Lexus cars.  There was a Lexus car available to sit in, photograph and view.

A headset which fits onto the top half of your face with a viewing screen is provided and a separate headphone set is then put on top of the headset.  There are control buttons to scroll around the films and alter the sound and focussing.

Amongst the films I saw was The Rose and I (USA Penrose Studios). It is an animated cartoon about love, life and loneliness and is comic and playful.  With the VR headset on, the viewer, if he or she moves their head to left or right will see a virtually 360 scape of the film, and this is one of its wonders.  I also saw a VR dining film set at a table which matched the one in the VR film starring Jane Gauntlett In My Shoes. This was a somewhat interactive story about the lead character having been traumatised which Jane says is actually true, so that the actual wearer of the headset is in her shoes and observing the other characters in the restaurant backdrop where it unfolds.

Other films were, Voice of a Rebel, Home: An Immersive Spacewalk Experience, The Turning Forest, Invisible, Across the Line, 6xp – a VR experience of solitary confinement, Notes on Blindness, Into Darkenss, Inside the Box of Kurios, RecoVR:Mosul, Witness 360:7/7.  Elliot Grove of Raindance, is the Founder.