In May 2016, the Sundance Institute announced the selection of six virtual reality projects for its New Frontier Story Lab — the program dedicated to storytellers working at the intersection of film, art and emerging technology.
The 2016 lab class worked with mentors from both the film industry and the VR technology world on questions nobody had fully answered yet: how do you direct attention in a 360-degree scene, what does editing mean when the viewer controls the camera, and how does presence change emotional storytelling?
New Frontier became one of the most influential incubators of immersive storytelling, and the techniques developed there — spatial staging, gaze-based pacing, embodied perspective — shaped how all VR content is made today, from documentary and art pieces to the commercial immersive video we review on this site.
Condensed from our original coverage.