Another good sign that theater in the round may be rapidly coming into reality dropped in my inbox this morning.
Canadian and Hollywood 3D video producer and advanced equipment technician Roham Rahmanian, who runs a full production services company called “The Astronaut’s Guild” (TAG) in Los Angeles, said Tuesday that he and his TAG partners have begun test trials on 180- and 360-degree camera systems to capture first-person virtual reality experiences.
According to a statement from the partners, tests and previews will be available online in October 2014 on their website.
The Astronaut’s Guild has been serving filmmakers from pre to post-production on 3D projects to commercial, film and television companies.
The company takes charge of all the 3D-related responsibilities, for directors and producers.
According to the statement: “the rush is on for content providers for the new technologies, and CGI content has already made a splash in gaming and for early-adopters and developers. However, the live-action content is much more technically challenging to create.”
The partners said their experiences with 3D gave them the insight to develop 180 and 360-degree camera systems for shooting first person, live-action virtual reality experiences.
“The virtual-reality revolution is upon us, and The Astronauts Guild wants to be on the forefront of creating quality, live-action content for entertainment, and possibly more importantly, for medical applications. When 3D became the rave a few years ago, it took off with a Wild West, every man for himself explosion. No standardization and no quality control. This created a lot of content that was just plain bad, Because of this trend, many consumers had bad experiences,” said Rahmanian.
“I hope, the early content creators for Oculus Rift and Sony Morpheus, including The Astronauts Guild, can come to a consensus early on, about quality control and mathematically calculated standards for content, it is of the utmost importance that the consumer feels comfortable trying out virtual reality, and is excited to make it a part of their daily entertainment experience,” added Rahmanian.
Rahmanian was one of the stereoscopic producers on the “The Girl from Nagasaki” which was presented in the New Frontier Category at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
