In the world of movies and storytelling, knowing how to write and structure a film script is the key to creating one of the most engaging experiences that viewers will ever enjoy. As such, it is important to be aware of the new mediums and trends that place within the industry to create something truly spectacular.
Let’s take a look at some of these trends so that we can help you write a better movie script meant for the virtual world. Dive in and let yourself be immersed.
1. Imagining and Experiencing the World
A Metaverse platform allows you to dive into another world – quite literally. The thing is that you’re now viewing the world in full 360 degrees, not just a preset camera angle that the director has chosen.
So, how do you approach this? Well, you need to give the viewer enough time to absorb the environment and get an understanding of where they’re standing. However, just because the viewer has 360 degrees of freedom doesn’t mean that you should take up the entire “screen.”
Instead, focus on events the way that they would naturally happen in the real world, and make sure to attract the viewer’s attention to another place with the help of audio queues, much like a modern theater play would.
2. Agency and Interaction
Movies are generally a passive form of entertainment, in the sense that the most input a user has is to pause, fast-forward, or rewind. However, with the metaverse, things can change drastically.
For example, you can allow the viewer to pick up the phone if it’s ringing.
Make the viewer part of the story, make them feel as if they are truly experiencing the movie, not just watching it. Think of your VR movie as you would think of an immersive theater experience. Moreover, you can make the script to be focused on a group of people who are both viewers and actors at the same time. Basically, you can try to gamify your movie to make it as immersive as possible.
3. Field of View and Point of View
As mentioned earlier, the range of vision can go upwards to 360 degrees. However, depending on the type of experience you’re making, you’re going to want to fix the field of view to a certain point where the viewer will be able to see everything that’s important without them wanting to move their head too much.
As for the point of view, you can opt for a traditional first-person view if you want to make the viewer feel as if they are part of the play, or you can opt for a third-person view if you want to give the viewer a more traditional cinematic experience. These creative choices can be switched from one to the other on a scene-by-scene basis to spice things up a notch.
Other Things to Take Note Of
It is important to consider the fact that even though you’re writing a movie, the metaverse is a very life-like and gamified medium. You should take notes from video games of the past that tried to simulate the same experience.
Noteworthy titles to learn from include World of Warcraft, Second Life, The Sims, and Animal Crossing just to name a few. The conclusion is that you should gamify, gamify, and gamify as much as possible to make it feel like something new, not just film a movie with a VR camera and be done with it.
The Bottom Line
Making a script for the metaverse instead of a classic movie format is intriguing, to say the least. You will get to experiment with all sorts of new techniques that are meant to involve the viewer in the experience as much as possible.
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