With ‘The Martian,’ Virtual Reality Has Liftoff From Fox Innovation Lab

Anatomy of a Scene | ‘The Martian’

Ridley Scott narrates a sequence from “The Martian” featuring Matt Damon.

By MEKADO MURPHY on October 1, 2015.

Photo by Twentieth Century Fox.
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LOS ANGELES — The hands may be the scariest part.
They are very much your own. You can feel them, wrap them around the joystick, make them move.
But they seem to be locked in the gloves of a pressure suit, struggling to control a bucking Martian rover, just inches in front of your darting eyes.
Such is the future of the movies, starting early next year.
In a major step toward the integration of blockbuster films with virtual reality techniques, 20th Century Fox and its internal Fox Innovation Lab are preparing for the commercial release of a so-called VR experience, using special headsets from Oculus and other devices. In the first half of 2016, it will take viewers deep inside the imperiled life of Mark Watney, an astronaut marooned on a dead red planet in “The Martian.”
Although thrilling, the experience can be unsettling for some.
“You feel anxiety and success, a series of emotions,” the filmmaker Robert Stromberg said in warning shortly before cuing up a preview of the adventure. In its final form, it is expected to last from 15 to 25 minutes, but its length will actually be elastic, as different viewers linger to look for details hidden among the interactive folds of the experience.
In a virtual reality tie-in to “The Martian,” participants will experience the world of the film’s protagonist, a stranded astronaut, firsthand.


Fox Innovation Lab/20th Century Fox 
While Ridley Scott was directing “The Martian,” a three-dimensional hit that has taken in over $384 million worldwide since Fox released it on Oct. 2, Mr. Stromberg spent months directing a separate, virtual reality program for the film; it will become the first among dozens such products planned by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. An accomplished filmmaker in his own right, Mr. Stromberg directed “Maleficent” for Disney and has won Oscars for his art direction for “Alice in Wonderland” and “Avatar.”
Past films like “Alien,” “Life of Pi,” “Gone Girl” and “Black Swan” are on the Fox list for virtual reality treatment. But whether Alejandro González Iñárritu’s coming “The Revenant,” with Leonardo DiCaprio in a frontier struggle for survival, will receive such treatment is not yet settled, executives said.
“We look at the whole slate, we have ideas,” said David Greenbaum, a creative executive with the innovation lab. He joined Mr. Stromberg and others in previewing the “Martian” virtual reality experience at the lab’s basement quarters — informally, “the bunker” — on the Fox lot here last week.
After a virtual reality demonstration project with Reese Witherspoon and the film “Wild” last year, “The Martian” was chosen for the commercial debut of Fox’s rapidly expanding virtual reality program.
According to Ted Schilowitz, the official Fox futurist — whose job is to spot trends and help develop the programs and technology needed to meet them — the decision had much to do with the personal nature of the story, which presented many opportunities to create interactive adventures (and mishaps) from the point of view of the stranded astronaut, played by Matt Damon in the film.
Sometimes the experience is overwhelmingly beautiful. In the first part of a teaser trailer set for release next month (which can be viewed with a headset and Samsung smartphone), the viewer flies low over Mars, with a 360-degree view of mountains and canyons that will soon become an inhospitable home.
At other points in the extended experience, which will require more elaborate devices to gain access, the visit becomes threatening. Those red rocks come up faster than anticipated, and on Mars, what looks like a far horizon is often the edge of an invisible precipice. (Those of weak constitution may find themselves feeling queasy.)
Mike Dunn, president of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, said he had been eager to test the market with a product that is not yet priced but that will be kept cheap enough to attract a wide audience. Fox, he said, has been waiting for an alignment of supporting hardware that will include the PlayStation VR, the HTC Vive headset and the Oculus Rift apparatus. Consumers will buy the experience through their devices.
“We have a razor blade, but we don’t have a handle yet,” Mr. Dunn said.
Fox is not alone in the virtual reality chase. Paramount Pictures, for instance, on Thursday announced a plan to deploy demonstration versions of a new virtual reality game, tied to the “Paranormal Activity” horror series, in theaters screening “Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension.”
yX Media - Monetize your website traffic with us Mr. Stromberg, who operates the Virtual Reality Company with his partner Guy Primus and others, recently predicted something that seemed quite possible after surviving those first minutes of flight over Mars.
“What you’ll start to see are movies that are done in VR,” he said.

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