The Future of the Entertainment Industry
How AR, VR, and Streaming are Making our Viewing Experience Exceptional… From our Living Rooms.
It is Sunday night in 2007, and I only have five minutes to get my snack in order. I want pizza bagels and a glass of soda, so I have just enough time. The reason for my rush is that my favorite Disney Channel Show has a commercial break, and I need to make it back just in time so I do not miss anything important in the 30-minute episode.
It is Sunday night in 2021, and it is so late that it qualifies as Monday morning. I am walking to the kitchen, computer in hand, to make a snack. I make the snack as I watch Bridgerton. I started watching Bridgerton that morning, but I know that I will finish the season before I go to sleep that night.
My love of content did not change between the ages of 8 and 22, but the way I consume that content has shifted monumentally. Gone are the days of DVD players and VCR, and in its place is streaming, AR, and VR.
So what are these new technologies within the entertainment industry? Augmented reality adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera of the smartphone. It is responsible for many of the cool Snapchat lenses and apps like Pokemon Go. Virtual Reality is a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world and usually requires goggles of some sort. These technologies are used to elevate the content we have today, and many major players in the industry are leveraging them in cool ways.
Tech designer Abhishek Singh simulated a scene from the horror movie The Ring using AR. The demon climbs out of the TV, and as a viewer, it looks like 3D on steroids. He only did this for that one scene of the film, but imagine all the possibilities the horror genre has. AR and VR can completely elevate the category and make scary movies absolutely frightening.
UNLTD, a notorious virtual reality production studio, launched the show, Trinity. The show is about the future where humanity has long become extinct. The series was shot in interactive volumetric style and will be shown in 360-degree virtual reality. The series will consist of fifteen-minute episodes that can be viewed on any virtual reality headset. This show is taking immersive to the next level. While only 26 million headsets are owned globally, VR is gaining traction. It may not be the way most people consume content today, but maybe everyone will be in VR headsets in a few years from now. Maybe instead of just watching our favorite shows, we could be in them too.
A startup making moves in the VR space is Magic Leap. Magic Leap makes wearable spatial computers that bring the physical and digital worlds together as one. They recently partnered with Lucas Films to make the Star Wars franchise even more exciting. They are releasing teaser interactive AR experiences in snippets, featuring popular characters C3PO and R2DR in the user's living room. This is the AR that is expected to be more prominent in the future. Interactive and up close viewer experiences of every movie genre in every person's living room.
Another show that is leveraging VR is Peaky Blinders. Peaky Blinders is a wildly popular Netflix show and has a huge fan base. The show is now receiving a VR game extension called A King’s Ransom where players can interact with the Peaky Blinders world from their home. By drawing from a series as wildly popular as Peaky Blinders, developers are able to utilize VR in a way to expand an audience’s experience with an existing popular show, and in turn, extending the life of the show beyond its original run.
In so many ways AR and VR bring the same thing to the forefront that streaming did. All these technologies are about bringing things that used to be fit for museums and movie theaters only to our living rooms. The truth is, nothing has changed the entertainment industry the way streaming has. 57% of Americans have at least one household subscription. AMC, CINEPLEX, AND CINEWORLD are likely to either go out of business or partner with major entertainment studios or get bought out by those major studios. This could result in “studio-centric” theaters, so imagine a Disney theater that only shows Disney films. Another change as a result of streaming is Cable, and at this year’s EMMYS, not a single network show brought home an award.
Because of streaming, the things that used to be special belong in our living rooms. The content has not changed, but the way we consume that content has. Instead of writing an episode with a cliffhanger, in the end, screenwriters understand that we no longer take a week to digest their episodes; we take seconds. Even though we are seeing so many new changes to the industry, I believe the heart and soul have always been the content.
