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[gimymblert]

I was contacted to present the technique of Photogrammetry with a short movie, however they don't have enough time, material and experience to make something "decent" or realistic.

My idea is to use the weakness and shortcoming as an aesthetics "feature". Using that in a typical story of escape from reality in a cyberspace. The deformed reality being used to denote the VR world. It has the benefit to scale with how well we do with the photogrammetric data and give a visual identity.

The story is basically a person who track down a friend and find he is lost in a VR world community where he strive while in the real world he only know misery and shame. He plunge into this world that is new to him to reunite with his friend and convince him to came back to reality. I found it is way more easier to make a case for the VR world than the real world (even though experience makes a case for the real world).


However I struggle to find a good twist to hook the viewer at the end.

What kind of idea I can use to make it more interesting but keep it short and cheap to create?

[valrus]

Maybe the lost friend has become bifurcated at some point, such that two aspects of him are leading separate virtual lives. Like his left and right hemispheric personalities, or his id and ego. In order to yank him out or the VR world intact, the main character has to trick both aspectual avatars into appearing in the same "place" at the same time.

[autumnspark]

I like what Valrus said. On a similar note, having the VR world be affected by the characters subconscious could be interesting as well, potentially leading him into a huge trap, or even killing his friend over some seemingly long forgotten grudge.

[gimymblert]

Yeah that's different from what I had in mind but closer to the goal of spectacle to demonstrate the technique, I'll give it a thought. In fact I'm too nerdy, I was thinking about more like a debate about whether reality was worth living in when there is VR but this is much better

I can also mix the two (trying desperately to have the cake and eat it too.

edit:
And I can also use the old coma trope and you are actually virtually injected in its psyche psychonaut style damn it's starting to unlock things !

[valrus]

Mixing those two would be pretty cool, actually.  Presumably everyone has two parts to them, the one that thinks "I've got a life and loves and responsibilities outside and need to be an adult" and the "I wanna stay and play forever!" part of them.

Funny visual idea: Capturing both an adult (A) and a small child (C), then rendering A minus C, like an adult with a small, moving, child-sized hole in the middle of them, and making it the story of a person in a virtual reality world whose inner child escaped and won't come home.

[autumnspark]

Man, chasing a rampant inner child in VR sounds horrifying. I'm imagining the child mind would toy with its other half, leaving messages of mangled bodies and concepts it had murdered and contorted into strange playthings. Right and wrong can be hard to figure out sometimes...

[gimymblert]

So i was thinking to put those idea in a simple structure, I choose to use something like:
this, but, and then, however turns out, finally ... a kind of 5 acts structure to set up the beat ... and trying to fill it ... it hit me! That eureka moment!

This: someone is looking for an old friend, find him stuck in a virtual world, her body in artificial coma. She plunge into her mind to bring her back

But: when she find her, she refuse to follow her as she demonstrate that's a way better life than the unfair real world. She have all the challenge and recognition she don't have. Even though she hasn't found a way to get to the last level, and that's her last challenge that she want to accomplish.


And then: The protagonist realize glitches that she decypher and realize the mind her friend is broken, incomplete and need to be fixed, the glitches prevent her to reach the last level of the world. The glitches happen fragment of a child girl appear, she thinks this represent the fear she holds and chase the little girl through a labyrinth of glitches as the little girl taunt her with strange riddle.

However it turns out: She was the other half, not the children, when she realize that, the glitches disappear and the last world's door open into a bright light.

Finally:  She wake up from her slumber, smiling, ready for her last challenge after the training she received in the virtual world, the real world.

[oahda]

Sounds good. Will we be able to watch it when it's finished?

[gimymblert]

Once I get in touch with them again, and if the finance happen... But I don't expect something "great" it's to try and demonstrate the technique ... at least I have a scenario that scale with budget and have some twist!

So I'll update once its done

[oahda]

I hope it works out. Even "just" a demonstration would be pretty interesting to see.