The best place to create VR movies could be inside VR. That's what Oculus Story Studio, its moviemaking division, has done with its latest film Dear Angelica which it's previewing at Sundance Film Festival.
Oculus' third film follows Lost and Henry in bringing both a new story and new techniques to the VR filmmaking community. It lets viewers live inside a painting and the charming illustrations that you can see in the video below were actually created in VR using the Oculus Rift with Oculus Touch controllers as next-gen paintbrushes.
Read this: How Sundance's VR works bring our bodies into the picture
Dear Angelica tells the story of a teenage girl, Jessica, looking back and exploring memories of her actress mother before she died. The idea was to make these scenes magical, poetic and dreamlike and the stories unfold in different ways depending on how you approach them.
Story Studio's new production tool is called Quill and, like its sculpting tool Medium, allowed art director Wesley Allsbrook to draw in 3D while wearing an Oculus Rift and the handheld Oculus Touch accessories, moving around her creations to view them from different angles. The film's illustrators were able to paint entire scenes in VR and Quill will be made available to other VR production studios.
Dear Angelica is coming to the Oculus Rift later in 2016. Oculus itself is promoting the work of VRSE, Felix and Paul and Penrose Studios all who are showing work at this year's New Frontier exhibit at Sundance.
Oculus also announced its new Story Studio University project which is a series of VR filmmaking workshops at the University of Southern California and New York University. It kicks off on 13 February and includes masterclasses later in the year in April. Registrations will open soon and Oculus is also promising video tutorials and technical assets from its gang of early VR studios.
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