Scholarly record

THE SECOND-PERSON NARRATION AS A NATURAL HABITAT OF 360? STEREOSCOPIC SPHERICAL CINEMA

A. Ceplitis

Abstract

What used to be a rare and eccentric narrative technique in the Golden Age of Hollywood, where a protagonist would address the viewer or implicit audience directly, is now deployed more frequently in Cinematic VR. This paper aims to investigate whether such an inherent capacity of ‘you' to target a narratee, as it accommodates a variety of you's and a variety of I's, and the combination of both to blur the boundary between the discourse of virtual reality and the story, makes the second-person narration a natural habitat of 360? stereoscopic spherical film (360SVR). By setting Gérard Genette’s and Seymour Chatman’s narrative theories as well as Marie-Laure Ryan’s concepts of immersion against the data gathered via the Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) methodology, the study builds a focalization segment of Narrative Taxonomy in 360SVR. The first stage included narratological content analysis of classical Hollywood films and latest developments in Cinematic VR, while the second stage, in the form of a focus group with 15 participants, semi-structured interviews, and field experiments, where the author’s own VR prototypes were used, compares and contrasts the expected research outcomes. The findings suggest a completely unique narrative framework, geared specifically for 360? 3D cinema, where audiovisual cognitive time (AVCT), as opposed to Chatman’s screen time (ST), and negative locus and reverse internal locus (RIL) supersede Gérard Genette’s focalization. The study also outlines mechanisms by which a viewer, placed in 360? virtual space, where he or she is an undeniable actant, is addressed through the second-person perspective that singles out RIL as the most immersive narrative device of 360SVR.

Publication details

Back to publication list