GEIMU - a live-action VR180 film

GEIMU seeks to provide its audience with the chance to be immersed in a live-action version of a fictional video game world set in medieval Japan. The game world itself including game icon design and game rules was designed from scratch. Particular care was taken to balance pacing, action and transitions to maximize immersion and create a thrilling and seamless narrative experience as the story progresses across multiple locations.

In order to make the game world feel truly expansive, it was important to have a diverse range of movement and action in the film. There is jumping high in the air, a ride on a galloping horse, sword fighting and more. These were all designed to avoid causing motion sickness in the viewer.

The film opens in the POV of the AI device that Emi is hacking. Afterwards, from the AI device's perspective we see Emi and Hiroshi in their full body VR suits. We occasionally cut back to them briefly throughout the film. Once Emi pulls her HMD visor over her eyes, we enter Emi's POV and see and experience everything that she does in virtual reality.

While there is no interactivity, the audio is first order ambisonics + headlock stereo, which means that while the game's score is stereo, all the sound effects and speech in the game have directionality that will reflect any changes in the position of the viewer's headset.

Additionally, as a filmmaker with a Japanese background, it was important to me to achieve faithful depictions of this world and its characters so that it would pass muster with a Japanese audience, while entertaining a global one. The medieval characters, language and mythical creatures all adhere to traditional Japanese period piece conventions.

VR is truly an exciting medium and I look forward to continuing to explore and innovate narrative storytelling in this format.