5 days Ago
1 2 3 Chennai: Virtual reality can coexist with cinema, music composer A R Rahman has said. Accepting IIT Madras's XTIC innovation award for 2024 for his VR film ‘Le Musk' on Sunday, he said, "Cinema has a certain community feel. VR is a personal experience.
" Future movie content will come in game engines and each movie will tell stories from different perspectives, said the composer who bagged the award for directing the VR thriller which integrates sensory elements such as scent, motion, and music. Rahman said: "We wanted to give an experience beyond ears and eyes. So, we decided to add smell.
An Algerian perfumer who came to Paris gave the special smell." The 37-minute film follows Juliet Merdinian, an orphaned musician, as she seeks to uncover the identity of individuals who changed her life, guided solely by the memory of their scents. During a conversation with Steven LaValle and Anna Lavalle, co-inventors of VR company Oculus, Rahman said each shot took three months and some were re-rendered.
The movie itself took six years. "When we completed, it was over 90 minutes. We cut it to 37 minutes as it would be difficult to sit with VR sets for that long.
Now, people say it feels like a really short film," he said, adding that the next level would be interactive films. "I think we should find how to make money out of this. It could offer pilgrimage experiences, marriages, and much more," Rahman said.
M Manivannan, head of The eXperiential Technology Innovation Centre (XTIC), and others spoke Rahman also gave away awards to the best startups..
