In Imagining Tomorrow's Entertainment, Professor Eric R. Williams will take you on a tour to explore the realm of Extended Reality, where your mission will be to see what is possible and probable in the future of entertainment. In this new world, your playground is global and you can interact and play in real time with anyone on the planet. A new era of media is here. This is your chance to experience it for yourself.
Imagining Tomorrow’s Entertainment
Take a mind trip into the world of Extended Reality and experience for yourself the newest technological developments in storytelling, entertainment, and even sports.
Overview
About
Eric R. Williams is a Professor of New Media Storytelling and Emerging Technologies at Ohio University, where he oversees the cinematic virtual reality arm of the Game Research and Immersive Design (GRID) Lab. He has written for American Movie Classics, Universal Studios, and Fox Interactive and has received the Best New Screenplay award from the Writers Guild of America, East. He has also written five books and three podcast series on storytelling in film, television, and new media.
Trailer
01: Down the Rabbit Hole of Immersive Storytelling
In entertainment, we have rapidly been moving away from the framed flatness of classical realism in the form of books, paintings, TV, and film. Take your first step into Extended Reality, or XR, the future of storytelling, and learn how this evolving medium will help humans know themselves better.
24 min
02: The Billion-Dollar Esports Industry
Gone are the days of only playing sports within your immediate circle—now, your playground is the world itself. Find out how esports has evolved over the last decade and see how humans can now play games in real time with anyone on the planet in a growing multi-billion-dollar industry.
22 min
03: When the Audience Becomes the Director
What if you could choose where the story or character in your favorite show is headed with one click? Find out how the Choose Your Own Adventure game books of childhood have grown up to become an interactive media where you get agency to decide how the story unfolds.
28 min
04: Cinematic Virtual Reality: Through the Looking Glass
How do you make interactive entertainment come to life? By using 360-degree cameras and ambisonic microphones to feed your senses, of course. Find out how virtual reality creators are using digital devices and new technology to move stories from screen to sphere, also called cinematic virtual reality or Cine-VR.
27 min
05: Video Games, VR, and the Space-Time Continuum
Explore the paradoxical concept of digital physicality in the context of video games where we can exist in two places, simultaneously. This is what the power of virtual reality is: the ability to transport yourself to another world while you’re also in this one.
24 min
06: Metatools to Build Our Metaverse
The concept of a metaverse is on the rise. But what really is it? Join our expert as he explains this new, universal digital world and helps you understand how you can combine it with motion capture technology to connect humans on the planet in an immersive environment.
24 min
07: Bridging the Physical-Digital Divide with Augmented Reality
Is there a way to see the world come alive around you? In fact, this is the essence of AR, or Augmented Reality. Explore how AR is transforming theater and toy design and learn the four ways to create a bridge between our physical and digital worlds.
23 min
08: Our Digital Doors of Perception
Take a trip—a mind trip that is. You will enter the realm of “cyber-delics,” which mesh computing technology and psychedelics and blur the boundaries between yourself and the world as you open digital doors of perception and enter with your mind, body, and spirit.
22 min
09: Rebooting Athletics and Leveling Up
Do you remember the holodeck from the television series Star Trek, where you could transport yourself to a different location and time and even change your physicality? That time is now here. Find out how mixed reality is the future of shared experiences, creating real memories for the people playing video games.
24 min
10: Blending Realities in Curiouser New Ways
Wrap up your wild journey of this video series with a combination of many of the technologies already discussed: Augmented Virtuality. Listen to what Ethan Shaftel, the Orson Welles of the 21st century, has to say about immersive media and finding the cinematic emotional experience at the end of it.
30 min
