Notes: An interesting experiment in VR

Serenity 2022-03-27 09:01:09

One off-topic sentence at the beginning
, the main reason is that the author did not have a good exposure to the full-subjective perspective film before this work: so there is enough content, it may still be too outdated.
It is estimated that I really need to make up...

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This is the year I have Highest score ever given.
10 points.
In my opinion, it may not be perfect elsewhere, but this is supposed to be the funniest, if not the greatest experimental film of the year - even if it seems like it's just an action movie that most people think it is, a hilarious Boundless B-level commercial film, but I am still more willing to recognize that it is a sufficiently convincing experiment for the use of VR in film narrative in the "pre-VR period".
In fact, if only many elements are considered: action, cyborg transformation, super power, wife pursuit, revenge, clones, the Soviet Red Army, etc., then this film is indeed as mentioned above, just a B-movie, it is An action movie with a decidedly Cult style. In fact, even if we ignore the so-called experimental nature and only focus on the viewing quality of this work, this may also be an excellent adrenaline-inducing hi-fi film. This work gives the audience enough game experience: gunfights, car chases, sniping, parkour, action fighting, using drugs to get Buffs... And in the first-person photography mode, the speed and power of all movements are in the same A more realistic and intense form is established, and even limited by the limitations of human three-dimensional perception and cochlear balance, it will even give a strong enough sense of dizziness: this is not hallucination and nausea, but real stimulation.
This kind of stimulation is actually more dependent on the story of the movie and the feelings guided by the movie: a fairly pure story of revenge and wife-seeking, from the beginning to the end, except for the development of the protagonist's survival, the other content is all related to the Boss and his eagle dogs. confrontation. Even the so-called reversal is actually not unexpected. The protagonist's reaction did not fall into the quagmire of sentimentality and feminism, but gave cold-blooded and angry revenge in the form of the main tone of the whole film: Yes, in the end The ending is cool enough, this is not the complexity and intertwining of emotions that can be tolerated in a drama, this is pure cool...
It's just that when you suddenly realize that the whole film is shot from a first-person perspective, when our adrenaline is soaring and dopamine is exploding, we immediately and accurately understand that this work is actually to a large extent. , has parted ways with a fair amount of traditional cinema.
(Note: normal players don’t need to read this article, the content below may be too obscure, and it’s true that I’m hilarious)

One of the first questions we can discuss as the protagonist and subject of the audience
is: Who is the star of this work? ? By the way, who is the protagonist of this film?
Of course, for the above two questions, the answer to the former is difficult to find, but the latter can be judged as the camera and the content of the picture that define and symbolize its vision. This super agent is thinking about finding his wife and revenge: it’s just that he Who should be the actor? photographer? director? Or the parkour athlete wearing a Go Pro?
Or, is it you, it's me, the audience for this movie?
I am inclined to the last answer - yes, even if we are still guided by the lens, the camera, and the director during the viewing process, we have not participated in the performance of the film: in fact, we can clearly know that when When the camera is used to completely define the vision of a certain character, then the image it projects to us, when it is perceived and accepted by our brain, is not just an audio-visual language, it also symbolizes the protagonist in the film. , directly become our subject - this has surpassed some of the "it-me" characteristics contained in the image in the film, it does not need more identification and confusion, it itself is an "alienation", it is the "self" ".
And if we start the discussion again, we can also understand that the so-called "audience is the actor" is not right after all, after all, we haven't been able to stay on the set and actually perform anything. All we can know is that the protagonist in the film directly symbolizes the viewer - or to some extent, we have participated in this film to the maximum extent, we are no longer bystanders, we are not A voyeur, not a god, only at this moment, everything we know, everything we perceive, nothing more or less, just in line with the protagonist: we are a character, we are the protagonist.
This kind of participation, if you need to find another parallel technical means to contrast and explain: I believe it should be VR technology. In the past few years, although there has been little wind, a considerable number of filmmakers have actually begun to try to use VR in film technology: From a broader perspective, the director of this film may not have a conscious He tried, but his intuition had already captured some of the characteristics of VR technology.
When using VR, that is, the audience has truly entered the world in the image: this is no longer the traditional theory, the so-called screen is "picture frame", "window", "mirror", these appearances are like the audience's perception of the world inside the screen , which is limited by the analysis of cognitive psychology to intervene - this is the fourth wall for which the fourth wall is really broken. Even this has gone far beyond the 3D film technology. The audience is always limited to the black box of the cinema, and it cannot fully reproduce the reproduction of the positional relationship between the camera and the shooting content. It is only the limitation of pure visual 3D.
This is the most realistic technology, no less than its "virtual reality" name.
In this case, we are no longer bystanders, no matter which shot I am the protagonist. Hardcore Henry does a good enough job that its first-person perspective is lacking. Although to a certain extent, all our actions are guided, our actions are not achieved by our free will, and everything is the "performance" of the photographer in the real film: but a strong enough sense of substitution Existence, will be recognized by us in this "perception-motion" situation, and even further achieve the confusion between me and the protagonist in an unconscious situation - in fact, the only thing that we can't agree with, maybe only the ones with enough rational content to participate. Feedback: Language - just as this work says and does, the protagonist needs to be defined as unable to speak, otherwise we will inevitably perceive that the subject we "possessed" has another consciousness, which will eventually produce a strong enough sense of rejection , and even the rupture of the sense of substitution, only as far as the level of "Black Witch" and "Cloverfield Files".
Of course, in this first person, the content that our vision can accept is largely limited. Compared with ordinary movies, the space can still be constructed by the "three-mirror method". In VR, we can only have one perspective to understand the space. Even in the high-intensity fighting scene at the end of the whole film, we clearly know that this is a battle on the rooftop, but in fact our spatial perception of the rooftop is extremely vague, and it is difficult for us to effectively judge any building on the rooftop. position, we can say that everything we have is guided only by the movement of the protagonist but cannot hold its own: this may instill in us enough excitement, but with a certain degree of confusion, excess, and more Or less dizziness and nausea, of course, this may also be inevitable, and it is part of the viewing experience.
However, there is another way, that is, to release the restrictions on character vision, that is, just like ordinary VR experience products, that is, to allow the visual changes caused by the rotation of the head, and even move in the VR world in a real sense, Get a real "sense of space": just in this case, our attention is about to lack the guidance of the movie, and it is difficult to focus on the story and characters of the movie. Although this may be in line with the "long shot theory", the audience perceives what they want to perceive, and the rich enough content is directly presented in the footage of the film: but it is easier for us to believe that this is not a film, but just Another VR experience device.
To some extent, movies still need montage.
(There should have been a paragraph here, but I memorized the words for a while, ate a few mouthfuls of watermelon, and then forgot all about it...)

2 Long shots and montages in the first-person form The
first time I came into contact with this work, I really watched UFC A live broadcast of the game, but with a trailer for "Hardcore Henry" as an in-stream commercial. Although I am deterred by the creativity of this work, I disdain it to a large extent, because I have a considerable degree of doubts about this work, and even think that many contents are difficult to achieve effectively: in the whole film, only the first-person perspective is used. In the case of shooting, how to effectively complete the montage, how to complete a editing, how to make a span of time and space to a certain extent, so that the content of the film is more concentrated on the story level, and the language of the lens can be effectively used Achieve some guidance for attention, movement, depth, etc.
Because this technique is undoubtedly too real, it directly symbolizes our subjective perspective: our conscious development is guided by time, and it is mostly coherent, so when we watch first-person movies, Any editing may imply a rupture of the protagonist's consciousness: when the story develops, maybe a syncope, a sleep, or other means can, but is it possible more often?
Movies give the answer. Except for the coma and sleep of the protagonist caused by the development of the story, as well as the power failure of the protagonist as a cyborg, the rupture of consciousness makes the perception of the protagonist, that is, the time and space represented by the movie, have a sufficient degree of jump - from the beginning of the whole film. In the picture, the heroine's movement has an obvious sense of time and space jumping, and there is a clear scene switch in which she flees after being shot and directly crosses the lawn into the park for a short time, and then she wants to grab the heart after grabbing the clothes of the roadside hooligan. Finally, from the scientist's residence all the way to the time and space of the Big Boss company, this series of montage techniques are used very naturally, and we do not have the so-called psychological discomfort, as if everything is normal.
These experimental proofs, or it can be argued that, to a considerable extent, the first-person montage technique is far less restrictive than we imagined and theorized.
In fact, even when we are in the first person, we perceive content as a bystander, and our attention is still focused on the story, on the time and space in the single paragraph that the film presents. Some of our underlying obsessions when watching movies are not the pursuit of complete "reality" or the so-called "first-person", but the pursuit of stories, characters, values, etc. that are sufficient to complement "reality". A complete set of perceptions: this is the film, and just as some of Einham's theories hold that film is not a derivative of reality, and that film cannot fully imitate reality's properties that make it "movie": after all, the use of montage may also be possible .
But it must be noted that, in such works from the first-person perspective, the establishment of montage is only in the switching between paragraphs, or when the story conflict is not prominent, in order to speed up the plot structure to take action - from some kind of To a certain extent, for this type of work, it seems that we always have only one camera, and all our lens language, content within the lens, and even the method of lens composition to form conflict, lack more diverse means: montage It should still be limited. This is largely not the guidance on the authenticity of the film in the long-shot theory, nor is it a certain requirement of the theory for the interpretation of the authenticity of the first person incidental to the film, but if not limited. A montage, where everything in a first-person movie or will fall apart, is presented in a sufficiently bizarre form.

The three-game movie
is actually about this work, we can easily realize that it is too similar to the game: this is not just a sense of FPS game experience for the audience, not just a Cult work that accumulates many game elements, and When its "first-person" has a strong sense of reality and a sense of substitution, when the audience is drawn into the movie and participates in this role, the only step behind him and the game is the operation.
It can even be said that we are actually looking at a game anchor playing a VR game from a very realistic perspective - of course, as a movie, it does have a stronger sense of substitution and more exciting: but the problem is still that, even if He can have enough movie additions, but is it something that comes with it? Even though I'm discussing the use of VR technology in movies throughout, I still have to express my doubts: Can VR technology really get enough use in movies? Or, it is more suitable for the use of games after all, and even VR can only be presented in the form of games? Or in an almost game form.
How long has VR been talked about for gaming? This may not be tested, many online game novels, science fiction, many animations, such as the popular masterpiece "Sword Art Online" and so on. As a game, VR allows and requires us to make movement, but the film is different. After all, this does not leave a space enough for people to actually initiate exploration with free will: in the film, our so-called exploration is just Under the guidance of the film, some cognitive activities are initiated on the world view, values, characters, etc.
In the current era, from my personal point of view, the use of VR technology in movies may only be able to explore the characteristics of "VR game movies". Focusing on the broader gameplay of "Hardcore Henry", there are too many things that we are familiar with, the effective interaction of scene content, the effective switching of scenes under vigorous exercise, and even the guiding behavior of NPCs, etc. .
The guidance of the NPC is actually quite interesting. In the section of fighting the enemy outside the scientist's secret room, the scientist is always calling the protagonist to launch an attack, set up organs, etc. - this kind of guidance is actually necessary, and the character's behavior actually represents the Our behavior, when all our perceptual content is limited to the subjective level of a single role, with only two perception forms of sight and hearing, our behavior, or the behavioral tendency of "role" will inevitably be limited. This is not only presented in this movie, but also in the game such content can be explained as such.
In fact, the development of first-person games has actually provided a sufficient number of modes for VR first-person movies as a reference: even time and space jumps, which involve the basic mechanics of movies. Considering that in the "Call of Duty" series of games, there are many players who switch between different characters in the game, and even make a certain character jump in time and space to a certain extent, to a certain extent to achieve the effect of parallel montage: Of course, this still fails to jump out of the circle mentioned above, that is, montages often need to be used between paragraphs, and montages within paragraphs are still limited by the temporal coherence of the perception retained by the first-person lens.

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Extended Reading
  • Muriel 2022-03-24 09:02:07

    A little dizzy when parkour, others are great

  • Arielle 2022-04-22 07:01:32

    Hold! Stunned to death!

Hardcore Henry quotes

  • Akan: Each year one hundred thousand baseball bats are sold in Russia, and at most 50 baseballs. Gives an idea for great Russian pastime.

  • Henry's Father: You... little... pussy.