Sure, you could watch a run-of-the-mill Hollywood blockbuster on your virtual reality headset using one of the numerous cinema apps that make it feel like you're sitting in front of a giant screen. But indie filmmakers have something more unique to offer: a technique that makes VR itself part of the film's narrative.
One of the first films is called Dear Angelica, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday and is also available for Oculus Rift owners to download from the Oculus app store. Dear Angelica is the first animated experience created entirely in VR, according to Oculus, whose in-house Story Studio produced the film.
It tells the story of Angelica and her daughter using Quill, a VR animation tool developed for motion picture and still artists that replaces a colored pencil with the Oculus Touch controllers. Quill is mind-bogglingly complex the first time you use it if you're not artistically inclined, but during a demonstration at the Oculus developers conference last October, Dear Angelica's creative team said that art director Wesley Allsbrook—who animated the entire movie himself—quickly got the hang of it.
"The tool doesn't have opinions," producer Edward Saatchi said. "It should be all about the character."
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The two main characters use the voice talents of Mae Whitman and Geena Davis, but you often feel like every part of each scene is a character, because they're all composed of flowing lines that you can walk around and examine from every angle while the film is playing. You could probably watch the movie dozens of times and still find vantage points that you hadn't noticed before.
As for the narrative itself, it's pretty bleak. As Oculus puts it, there's lots of grief, loss, love, and poignant recollections. Still, for indie fans or admirers of the two main voice actors, who have appeared in Arrested Development and Thelma and Louise, it's worth a watch.
The film is free to download, although you'll need a Rift headset to watch it—the smartphone-powered Gear VR isn't powerful enough. If you'd like to try your hand at VR animation, the Quill tool is also free.