We’d Like to Give You Some Presence: Cinematic VR Narration and the Sense of 'Being There'
Author: Simon Weaving, University of Newcastle, Australia
Benjamin Matthews, University of Newcastle, Australia
Zi Siang See, University of Tasmania, Australia
Abstract: Presence (the sense of "being there") is a much discussed and complex topic in the world of VR, AR and XR. In this highly creative approach, researchers investigated one of the fundamental aspects of presence - the positioning of the viewer in the story world - through the development of three short cinematic VR works (CVR) that engage the viewer in different ways (as invisible witness, acknowledged witness and embodied witness). The development process included story ideation, scriptwriting, and pre-visualisation, with the research identifying the implications of positioning the viewer in these different ways.