The BBC explores VR as next space for delivering on its public service
As brands rush headlong into VR, the BBC is taking a more measured approach, looking at how VR might bring new dimensions to its mandate to deliver a public service.
The idea is to ready the organisation should VR becomes mainstream, inform how the technology should work and identify what it should achieve in order to benefit the public. It's that mandate as a public service broadcaster that makes for a unique challenge for the BBC when it invests in the medium.
The Royal Charter’s most recent whitepaper for the BBC implemented some strict rules on how the BBC must be distinctive, doing so on a tighter budget. It means the media outfit faces many barriers in the VR space in order to deliver on its remit and must fashion the medium into one that can inform, educate and entertain.
Andy Conroy, controller of BBC Research and Development (R&D), said: “Our aim for exploring VR now is to get a better understanding of this emerging medium, help inform any future strategy, and look at the role we should play at this early stage in order to provide the value for audiences in the future.”
The question is how does the BBC do that in a way that is relevant for the next decade; what is the right way of delivering VR that is accessible to a majority of the UK population. This is where entry-level technology like 360 video comes in, which can be accessed by anyone with a smartphone. The BBC is set to release a full 360 experience of Trooping the Colour to celebrate the Queen’s birthday, and last year released a Strictly Come Dancing 360 video to allow fans to witness the show in a new medium.
It is also looking at how VR and 360 video can enable audiences to better understand important current affairs, news, science and history topics. For news, VR can provide audiences with greater understanding of a story by putting them in the centre of the action as seen when in the BBC's 360 video of the Paris attacks last year.
For its ‘We Wait’ project, the BBC is using VR to let audiences experience the perilous journey refugees take when fleeing their home country, something that it would not be possible to do through traditional reporting. The experience is based on accounts gathered by BBC News from migrants and brought to life in collaboration with Aardman Digital using animation techniques.
It can also inform and educate audiences. This can be seen in the BBC’s Attenborough 360 project, which maps out dinosaurs in real-life scale as well as details a 3D VR tour of Rome’s recreated historical sites.
Looking further ahead, the BBC is exploring more immersive ‘true VR’ content to push technical and editorial boundaries for future audiences. Its project ‘Home – A VR Spacewalk’ has audiences stepping into the suit of an astronaut on a spacewalk. It uses some of the most advanced visual effects currently available in VR, accompanied with spatial audio to explore its potential for factual and science content. Editorially, the aim was to combine narrative storytelling and a sense of drama.
As part of its open and collaborative approach, the BBC is working with partners across the industry to tackle the technical and editorial challenges of VR. It will share its research and learnings with commercial partners and make projects available for all to see on BBC Taster, a portal for the public to test its latest projects before they are widely released.
Production company Plug-in are one of these partners, creating an animated sitcom for the BBC delivered in virtual reality for Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear. The VR series ‘Angie’s Party’ is aimed at 16-24 year olds, and will be launching on the BBC Taster site today (9 June). It lets the audience choose to follow the storyline they find most compelling by switching between characters at key points in the narrative. The end product is effectively a hybrid between an animation and a game.
Juliet Tzabar, the managing director of Plug-in, which oversaw the project, said: “As more and more VR devices emerge onto the consumer market, the audience will be looking for the best content experiences available to them - the BBC should absolutely be delivering those experiences.”
While it is working with partners to create VR, the BBC is not looking at commercial opportunities, since it is still in the learn-by-doing phase. Conroy added: “We are literally trying to get our head around this stuff.”
While the BBC has only recently released its VR projects, many brands are well-accomplished in the medium. The BBC is held back by reduced funding, and having to prove the worth of VR, before it can make any headway. When asked if the BBC is late to VR game, Conroy was unsure.
“We are trying to find that spot between choosing the right thing to explore and research in just enough time so that when it becomes mainstream we are ready, and not doing it so late that we have missed the opportunity to influence and direct before it goes live. This [VR] is still some years off being mainstream," he said.
Outside of VR, the defining idea at the bottom of R&D is object-based broadcasting. In the BBC’s own definition, object-based broadcasting allows the content of a programme to change according to the requirements of each individual audience member.
It takes common assets (text, pictures, sound and video), breaks all these up into separate parts, then reassembles the audio objects in accordance with the metadata, which describes when and where these sounds should occur. It results in highly personalised content for audiences.
It means a radio can know whether you are in the room or not and will pause and restart content in line to each user’s needs. The storytelling potential in this space is huge according to Conroy and that is what the BBC is betting on. In fact, he said over half of the BBC’s R&D department are working on that particular problem, which is complex in form, and will “take many years to deploy".