back to square one

Much of my weekend has been spent mulling over my ever changing honours project. I’ve been thinking about virtual reality (VR) and if it would be worthwhile researching how stage acting techniques and theatre production values are relevant in VR and stereo 3d (S3D). My main worry with this idea is that if I look too much a stage acting and stage production, rather than cinema and television production, I'm looking too much into an industry that I don’t have much interest in joining. I can certainly see the merit in the research and how it might be used by the industry. Recording or recreating stage plays in S3D or VR and distributing them in cinema’s across the county would be a great way to bring a different type of experience to the cinema. I can also see how I would be able to write my dissertation on this subject but I can’t help feeling that if I were to undertake this project I would end up being pulled in a direction that I’m reluctant to go in, simply because I don’t know much about theatre production. In many ways this project would three times more work than any of the other ideas I’ve had so far because it would have research three fields. Firstly I would have to learn about traditional stage techniques, secondly I’d have to research virtual reality and S3D within that context, and finally I’ve have to experiment how the first two areas could combine. I know that 4^th year should, and will, be a lot of work but that seems a little over the top!

One thing I would like to try is to gather people’s thoughts on why they go to see S3D in the cinema at all. This might prove to be a pointless survey with no discernable outcome, but I am still interested to see why people go and I think that there is a possibility that a quick study might reveal something that could really refine the ideas that I’m wrestling with at the moment. I was asking a friend how I might be able to do this online and he said it would be easy to set up a small poll so watch this space.