[TechNewb]

"Cinema doesn't have sound. Sound doesn't belong in cinema. True directors can tell stories without sound."

Cinema has always embraced technological innovations. There is nothing that says cinema has to be a shared experience. Semantics.

[AimHere]

But the difference is not just semantic.

VR experiences will necessarily lose a lot of cinematography (particularly that regarding shot composition and framing) because the viewer is in control over the camera, and they almost completely lose the ability to do editing too (because cutting between scenes will make the viewer nauseous). Modern films might seem superficially similar to non-interactive VR experiences because they are both throwing images at screens, but there is a huge world of cinematic techniques that everyone has grown up with (and most people won't notice), that will be severely constrained in VR, and it'll be a jarring experience (at least for the people making this stuff, if not the consumers) for a lot of them to be gone.

Perlin is likely right that what's likely to happen is that the scenes in non-interactive VR will seem more like theatre than cinema. Sure, the people putting this stuff together will probably come out of VFX houses but people won't be relying on cinematographers, editors and film directors in the same way. I suspect that it'll take a while for both the artistic problems of living with the new constraints, and the technological problems (such as taking live-action 360 footage with parallax) to be ironed out satisfactorily.

Interactive VR still looks much like video games, though, and while there will be some measure of constraints with the new medium, other constraints will be lifted (FPSes and flight simulators, for instance, won't need clumsy workarounds to simulate head movement), so the games industry will probably hit the ground running.

[TechNewb]

Agree with everything you're saying here. But the argument reminds me of a similar one, where the established industry leaders try and define what skills and processes go into cinema. Such as no sound vs sound, or film vs digital. The fact that it's story telling on a screen is what in my mind defines cinema.

There is cinematography in current virtual storytelling, such as firewatch, life is strange, and grand theft auto. While none of those are VR, they could be adopted to that medium as well. Cinematography is much more than camera angle, and lens choice, imo, especially in the digitally generated world. There are other techniques to lead the viewers attention, not so different than techniques used on a well made imax.

Also of interesting note, 360 moving image recording is not new, and has been around since the 1950s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle-Vision_360°