The Festivalito XR opens cinema to the new creative possibilities offered by virtual reality

“Virtual reality applied to cinema allows the viewer to put themselves in the shoes of the characters,” explains Edgar Santana, who teaches a training workshop within the framework of the Festivalito.

The fourteenth edition of Festivalito which is being celebrated these days in La Palma (Canary Islands) is dedicating special attention to the virtual reality, a world in continuous development that already has very advanced applications in fields as different as medicine or the video game sector, and that opens new creative possibilities to the seventh art.

“Virtual reality applied to cinema allows the viewer to put themselves in the shoes of the characters, in some way the barrier between the screen and the stalls is broken,” says the Gran Canarian graphic designer. Edgar Santana, which in recent years has specialized in the use of this technology as a new form of communication and which teaches a workshop on new audiovisual narratives throughout this week within the framework of the Festivalito.

Santana maintains that the degree of immersion that virtual reality can produce in the viewer opens new paths to cinematographic art. “Virtual reality is not so far from traditional cinema, nor does it replace it, but it will help produce greater emotional involvement in whoever watches a film, as already happens in the world of video games, where the technology is already highly developed both in terms of content creation and its immersive capacity,” he explains.

About twenty filmmakers have signed up for the workshop Festivalito XR, which is taught at the House of Culture in Llanos de Aridane until this Tuesday and in the La Recova room in Santa Cruz de La Palma between Wednesday and Friday. The activity covers the entire process of creating virtual content, its filming in 360 video and its programming in WebVR for virtual reality and extended reality and has found “a very good response from the participants,” according to Santana.

The dynamics of the workshop are structured into three modules, the first of which addresses the methodology and practice of recording and uploading 360 videos, the use of Facebook Oculus Go virtual reality glasses, and programming for WebVR.

In the other two modules, a small 360 video piece will be made, which can be viewed using VR devices and published on YouTube and Facebook. For its development, students will learn the necessary recording techniques and the new narrative resources necessary to create 360 videos, both in the filming part and in the subsequent editing.

At the same time, the Espacio Festivalito This space offers until Tuesday, at 6:00 p.m., content made with this technology that can be viewed through virtual reality glasses.