A second life: Welcome to the metaverse, the next frontier in filmmaking
Entertainment giants investing in their own metaverses
Film and television have been depicting the metaverse for decades now. But the use of metaverse technologies in actual filmmaking is becoming increasingly common. Several major entertainment companies have revealed plans to develop some version of a metaverse.
Disney announced in November that it would start developing its own metaverse, which it said would blend entertainment and storytelling elements with new technologies.
Netflix has also made public its intentions to move into the virtual reality space. metaverse prototypes from the gaming industry pose a risk to traditional and streaming entertainment: in a 2019 quarterly letter to investors, Netflix wrote, "we compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO."
Epic, the gaming company behind Fortnite, announced a $1 billion US round of funding to support their vision for a metaverse.
Participants in the OYA Scale Up Initiative work on an immersive media project. The program is a partnership between OYA Black Arts and CFC Media Lab and is funded by the Federal Development Agency of Southern Ontario. (David Peddie/OYA Black Arts Coalition)
According to one virtual reality filmmaker, users will soon be able to inhabit the worlds of their favourite films — think boarding the Millennium Falcon with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo, or journeying through Middle-earth with Frodo Baggins.
With money being poured into the industry, the pressure to turn out a viable product leaves little room for filmmakers and creators to experiment.
"We don't know a lot about how to tell great stories with these capabilities," said Richard Lachman, an associate professor at at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) who researches the relationship between humans and technology.
"We know a lot about how to build puzzles. We know a lot about how to build exhilaration and excitement and emotion, but not necessarily great storytelling.
"That's a challenge, and one of the risks with this challenge is there's so much money being put into it now … that money doesn't necessarily lead to us figuring out the art."
The Toronto-based Oya Black Arts Coalition (a not-for-profit arm of Oya Media Group, a production company) has launched an initiative to teach young Black producers and filmmakers how to create compelling stories using metaverse technologies.
"We give them the overview of what immersive media is and how that can be applied to filmmaking, to create content for what … hopefully will soon be the metaverse," said Ngardy Conteh George, a producer and co-founder of Oya Media Group.
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Filmmaker Ngardy Conteh George on the metaverse and inclusivity
Co-founder of Oya Media Group, Ngardy Conteh George, explains how the metaverse could be a "new kind of world," where anyone could participate in positions of power and decision-making.
The projects use AR (in which digital components are transposed over our real-life environment) and VR (which usually requires a headset to simulate a digital environment different from the one we see).
Metaverse platforms give grassroots creators from all backgrounds a powerful opportunity to "compete on near equal terms with the big companies and also [with] people who have more privilege to move through the traditional economy," said Au.
But with great power comes great responsibility: all of the social and financial consequences that we deal with in the real-world can be duplicated in the metaverse. You can lose all of your money in a scam, for example, or fall in love with someone — only to have your heart broken by their real-life counterpart. You can also be the target of racism or bigotry.
"When we're thinking about the metaverse and the creation of these new worlds: who is creating them? And then whose viewpoint and whose gaze will be reflected in the end result?" Ngardy said.
"I think it's really important that it's inclusive and non-exclusive, and there is access for everyone to participate in positions of power, in positions of authority and decision-making, so that we're not replicating this world that we currently live in."
