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" What would it be like to write the first novel? Capture the first photograph? Create the first motion picture? Director Danfung Dennis can empathize with the crushing weight of these questions. Dennis is a pupil of traditional filmmaking, a medium restricted to a flat two-dimensional state and guided by a century of established rules and examples. But with the help of the Oculus Rift, a device that&amp;#039;s been labeled a game-changer even before its commercial release, Dennis is close to finishing the first 360-degree 3D film and, in turn, creating a new medium.  On Wednesday, Dennis, along with his visual technology startup Condition One, gave viewers the first glimpse into what this new type of film could be by releasing a trailer for Zero Point. When completed, the short film will detail the militaristic, scientific, and commercial origins of virtual reality. It&amp;#039;s a film about VR made for VR. &amp;quot;Zero Point is a cross between The Matrix and a documentary about VR,&amp;quot; Dennis tells PM. &amp;quot;Just seeing where it&amp;#039;s coming from, why it&amp;#039;s happening now, and where it&amp;#039;s going.&amp;quot; Zero Point also has an interactive trailer. Although not in full 360 degrees like the film, it still delivers an idea of what a movie built for VR could be like.      To create a 360-degree film, an array of high-definition digital cinema cameras are needed to capture all the action. The video data is stitched together and fed through Condition One&amp;#039;s custom video engine. Finally, applying head tracking through the Oculus Rift creates a completely new cinematic experience.  With this immersive philosophy of filmmaking, Dennis says that the relationship between the audience and the film changes. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re essentially delivering a huge amount of raw data to the user, and they&amp;#039;re selecting the story that they want to experience,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Everyone will have a slightly different variation of what they saw and what they heard.&amp;quot; In Zero Point, Dennis broaches the topic of virtuality through two distinct lenses\u2014utopian and dystopian\u2014by exploring all the positive advances VR could engender or the lives it could destroy. As explored in innumerable works of science fiction, Dennis and his film&amp;#039;s subjects also ponder: What could happen if VR became so convincing that we never wanted to leave? War Torn War is rarely described as a generative act, but in reality, conflict is punctuated with endings and beginnings, and it&amp;#039;s ultimately where Dennis&amp;#039; idea for immersive filmmaking began. In July 2009, Dennis began gathering footage for what would become his critically acclaimed film Hell and Back Again, a documentary that detailed the physical and mental stresses of war.  Dennis was embedded with Echo Company in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. During that summer, he captured a 4000-marine offensive\u2014the largest offensive Marine airlift since the Vietnam War\u2014called Operation Strike of the Sword. The film followed the life of one sergeant&amp;#039;s deployment, injury, and readjustment after discharge. Dennis&amp;#039; efforts earned him praise at the Sundance Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for best documentary, but despite the accolades, he wasn&amp;#039;t satisfied. &amp;quot;While the film was quite successful, it still wasn&amp;#039;t able to convey the experiences of the battlefield and the psychological battle of coming home,&amp;quot; Dennis says. &amp;quot;The photographs and the film I made just felt like a glimpse through a window. I wanted to pull people through the window and let the witness it first hand.&amp;quot; Once stateside, Dennis began Condition One and developed his first product for iOS, a video player that functioned like an interactive window into a larger world. Simply move the iPhone or iPad in any direction, and discover more content. The augmented lens also created a 180-degree field of view, placing the audience front and center.  However, that technology was just a stepping stone. In mid-2012, Palmer Luckey&amp;#039;s Oculus Rift changed everything. &amp;quot;I knew once I tried it, this was going to be the future of entertainment and communication,&amp;quot; Dennis says. &amp;quot;We completely moved 100 percent of our development to focus on the Oculus Rift. A lot of our technology ported over very smoothly so a lot of the R&amp;amp;amp;D that we&amp;#039;d done applied directly to VR.&amp;quot; Now with technology catching up with his ambition, Dennis was able to begin working on Zero Point Thinking in 360 &amp;quot;All the rules of traditional filmmaking are gone,&amp;quot; Dennis says on the topic of 360-degree filming. &amp;quot;Right away, it&amp;#039;s obvious there&amp;#039;s no frame anymore. The cinematographer is always trying to find that frame to capture the story. That&amp;#039;s gone. Now the user is displayed in a 360-degree environment and they&amp;#039;re deciding which way their attention will be focused.&amp;quot; But shooting 360-degrees comes with other technical difficulties as things change at a fundamental level, such as film production. A three-person camera crew is able to huddle below the camera, the only area in the system&amp;#039;s blind spot, but that means no lights or sound crews huddled out of frame. Also, the 360-degree system is moveable (an important ingredient for convincing VR, according to Dennis), but its shear weight is still an issue. That&amp;#039;s one of the primary reasons for Zero Point\u2014to serve as beta test to see how this new medium could even work. This spring Dennis wants to get Zero Point into the hands and onto the heads of Oculus Rift developers to showcase the potential of the technology. Condition One is also planning a more focused release alongside the Rift&amp;#039;s expected commercial release in the latter half of 2014. Though the VR headset is a technology currently invested in the video game industry, Dennis (as well as Luckey) sees potential in not just entertainment, but medicine, military, and may even fundamentally change the way we communicate with technology. &amp;quot;[The term] Zero Point is when you have the lowest possible energy in a quantum system\u2014the ground state,&amp;quot; Dennis says. &amp;quot;This is a completely new market and new technology about to emerge. It&amp;#039;s the very beginning of a new era.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a10083/merging-realities-a-look-at-zero-point-the-first-3d-360-degree-film-16508861/>