The potential of immersive content was a key theme at CES this week, and demonstrating his interest in it, director M. Night Shyamalan took to the stage at Canon’s press conference on Wednesday to introduce several unique experiences he has created in collaboration with technology developers. Their goal is to get CES attendees inside his upcoming Universal thriller, Knock at the Cabin, at the opening of the CES showrooms on Thursday.
These experiences are enabled by Canon’s signature technology, including its Free Viewpoint video system, MReal mixed reality headset, Kokomo VR software and remote collaboration tool AMLOS.
Using a series of Canon Cinema EOS-based 4K cameras and lenses, the Free Viewpoint system captures volumetric camera data to create point cloud-based 3D models that can be used to reproduce a variety of View. This was used to create a way for CES attendees to see the action scenes in Knock at the Cabin from the perspective of four different characters. The experience was supervised by Shyamalan and filmed at Canon’s volumetric video studio in Japan.
“Storytelling, for me, is all about putting yourself in the shoes of the characters. So being able to mix your view of what’s going on with my view of what’s going on The juxtaposition of perspectives on things is the beautiful part of [what technology can do],” the director told The Hollywood Reporter . “[Through] four different views of the same scene in the film … you experience four different emotions of the same event, which I think is cool and interesting. The sum of the four emotions gives you a sense of what happened. A deeper feeling.”
The Free Viewpoint system is designed for use in locations from the studio to the stadium, and has already been installed at two NBA arenas, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Rockets Mortgage arena and the Brooklyn Nets’ Barclays Center. Canon suggests that the video can be broadcast live or compiled into replay segments. Experience, using Canon’s MReal lightweight mixed reality headset, allows viewers to watch break-in scenes from movies as if they were the characters. Users can interact with virtual furniture and other objects to protect themselves, Canon said.
Enables effective 3D video calling when combined with a compatible VR headset and smartphone Canon’s Kokomo VR software is used to put CES attendees in VR Headphones and chat with characters from Knock at the Cabin, opens February 3.
Finally, with AMLOS, CES attendees can join Knock Cabin from Philadelphia to ” Investigate the aftermath of events in the film”. Canon reports that it worked with Shyamalan to develop cues throughout the space. AMLOS was also used as a collaborative tool for crafting these experiences.
Canon America President and CEO Kazuto Ogawa said he hopes to collaborate with more filmmakers on such experiences. “The ultimate role of Canon is to bring people closer by exposing endless opportunities for creators,” he said.
