:00:00. > :00:00.style killings. Fans continue to lawn -- mourn the loss of prints as
:00:00. > :00:09.authorities say there is no reason to believe his death was suicide.
:00:10. > :00:44.And there have been plenty of them rolled out this week for the
:00:45. > :00:47.It is the brainchild of screen legend Robert
:00:48. > :00:49.De Niro, who set it up to
:00:50. > :00:53.revitalise the area following the devastating events of 9/11.
:00:54. > :00:55.And while it may not have the glamour of
:00:56. > :00:57.Cannes or the indie cred of Sundance,
:00:58. > :00:58.Tribeca has led the way in
:00:59. > :01:03.the use of new technology to tell stories.
:01:04. > :01:06.In 2011, the festival included the video game LA Noir,
:01:07. > :01:13.and last year included a section dedicated to virtual reality.
:01:14. > :01:15.Unsurprisingly, the VR section is even bigger this year, and at the
:01:16. > :01:19.heart of it all, the world premiere of a British short made by BBC R
:01:20. > :01:28.It was heaven for our eight-year-old selves.
:01:29. > :01:32.Playing like a child's fairy tale, the intention is to immerse
:01:33. > :01:38.Instead of lifelike visuals, the team behind it are using audio
:01:39. > :01:49.Specifically, sound that sounds like it comes
:01:50. > :01:50.from all around you, just
:01:51. > :01:58.The next few minutes are best listened to through
:01:59. > :02:04.headphones, so go and get them now, and get ready to put them on.
:02:05. > :02:07.If you saw Click's 360 show recently, you
:02:08. > :02:10.may have noticed that while you can look in any direction, the audio
:02:11. > :02:20.The sounds, my voice, for example, didn't come from the
:02:21. > :02:24.And that's because it's incredibly hard to make
:02:25. > :02:34...hear something going on over there.
:02:35. > :02:36.And that's what the BBC R Department have
:02:37. > :02:52.They are still over there when I turn round.
:02:53. > :02:55.Right, now is the time to plug in those headphones, because a couple
:02:56. > :02:59.of weeks before Tribeca, I got to see The Turning Forest as the team
:03:00. > :03:01.That's interesting, because there is a
:03:02. > :03:03.sound that is coming from over there that
:03:04. > :03:05.makes me want to look in that
:03:06. > :03:10.Which answers one of the questions about virtual reality -
:03:11. > :03:13.how do you get the audience to look in the right direction at the right
:03:14. > :03:17.Of course, you draw their attention to a sound, that's
:03:18. > :03:28.This was created to demonstrate the sound first.
:03:29. > :03:34.Yes, and to see how far 360 sound can go.
:03:35. > :03:36.We wanted to explore what we can do
:03:37. > :03:38.with natural recording and really push the microphone techniques we
:03:39. > :03:43.were using as well to try and get a compelling sense of the forest.
:03:44. > :03:46.After making the multidirectional recording of a real forest, Chris
:03:47. > :03:51.Pike and his team began to add moving 3-D elements over the top.
:03:52. > :03:56.So, every sound on the left-hand side has its own symbol in this,
:03:57. > :04:00.which is a top down view of the scene.
:04:01. > :04:03.And we are watching where those sounds are coming from in 3-D
:04:04. > :04:08.The Turning Forest was originally made
:04:09. > :04:11.for a static listener, and making sounds come from different
:04:12. > :04:15.directions in different speakers is nothing new.
:04:16. > :04:18.But for VR the sounds need to come from just two
:04:19. > :04:22.And the sounds need to stay fixed in space
:04:23. > :04:34.And to check everything is in the right place,
:04:35. > :04:37.the sound mixer has to wear these attractive motion-tracked Princess
:04:38. > :04:49.That is actually really disorientating, you're right.
:04:50. > :04:51.When you've got your eyes closed as well, I
:04:52. > :04:57.That could make one feel quite queasy.
:04:58. > :05:05.You'd be throwing up all over the place.
:05:06. > :05:12.direction the sound needs to come from, doesn't mean that they can
:05:13. > :05:17.For that, the R team needed to adapt a
:05:18. > :05:21.technique that's been around for more than a century.
:05:22. > :05:23.It's called binaural sound, and it is
:05:24. > :05:28.Trust me, if you haven't put your headphones on yet, now is
:05:29. > :05:35.Now you are listening in binaural sound, which is all about
:05:36. > :05:39.making you feel like you're really there.
:05:40. > :05:41.And it's so much more than
:05:42. > :05:44.just putting certain sounds into one ear and certain sounds into another.
:05:45. > :05:46.Right now, it should really feel like I'm walking closer
:05:47. > :05:48.to you around the left side of your
:05:49. > :05:53.It gets better, because I can walk behind you and it really sounds
:05:54. > :06:00.(Whispers) ..is when I come right up next to you and
:06:01. > :06:51.Now you are sufficiently creeped out, you may be wondering how you
:06:52. > :06:54.The secret is in the sound recordist himself,
:06:55. > :06:58.Ed has two microphones hidden inside his very
:06:59. > :07:00.human-looking ears on the sides of his very
:07:01. > :07:03.human-looking ahead, and
:07:04. > :07:07.that means that he captures sound in exactly the same way that your head
:07:08. > :07:13.If something happens off to one side, the sound will be quieter
:07:14. > :07:16.in the opposite ear, and it will get there slightly later.
:07:17. > :07:18.It will also have been blocked by your skull,
:07:19. > :07:21.bounced around the room, and ricocheted around the cartilage on
:07:22. > :07:27.Because he looks like a head, he hears like a head.
:07:28. > :07:36.But so far, binaural sound has only really worked if your head
:07:37. > :07:45.In VR, however, you get to turn your head in all directions.
:07:46. > :07:48.And that's what Chris and the team have sussed.
:07:49. > :07:52.In their many-speakered sound room, they slowly rotated Ed while playing
:07:53. > :07:55.sounds coming from different directions and then researched how
:07:56. > :08:06.Now they could combine that intimate experience of binaural sound with
:08:07. > :08:08.the free head movement of VR to create something Chris calls
:08:09. > :08:15.One of the team's main missions is to devise a
:08:16. > :08:19.standard way of storing all the 3-D audio information so that it can
:08:20. > :08:22.sound best on whatever sound system it's played on.
:08:23. > :08:25.You can adapt to the system a person is listening on, so
:08:26. > :08:31.if they are using headphones with a racker in a VR system, they can
:08:32. > :08:35.if they are using headphones with a tracker in a VR system, they can
:08:36. > :08:39.If they have a 3-D system in a big home theatre, you can give them
:08:40. > :08:42.a surround sound with height experience, but we also need to be
:08:43. > :08:45.able to replay on a stereo and surround.
:08:46. > :08:47.This includes a standard for dynamic binaural sound in web
:08:48. > :08:51.browsers to better serve the growing library of 360 video we can now
:08:52. > :08:54.stream on our computers, phones and headsets.
:08:55. > :08:57.In fact, just this week, YouTube launched support for live
:08:58. > :09:05.streaming VR and support for basic dynamic binaural sound.
:09:06. > :09:10.But The Turning Forest wasn't the only
:09:11. > :09:16.project experimenting with binaural sound and VR at Tribeca.
:09:17. > :09:19.headset hair and take a look around at some
:09:20. > :09:20.of the virtual reality on
:09:21. > :09:24.Virtual reality may have come a long way in the last two years,
:09:25. > :09:27.but for many, it's still seen as a bit of a gimmick.
:09:28. > :09:30.But with content growing and the hope that both
:09:31. > :09:33.prices and headset size will reduce, film-makers here are trying
:09:34. > :09:38.to use the medium to tell stories in new ways.
:09:39. > :09:43.One of the things that's really interesting about VR is the
:09:44. > :09:48.It's so different to traditional film,
:09:49. > :09:51.and I can't help thinking that is going to have
:09:52. > :09:55.One of the hits of the festival was Allumette, a 20
:09:56. > :09:58.minute experience based on Hans Christian Andersen's the Little
:09:59. > :10:03.Its makers, Penrose Studios, have already been hailed as
:10:04. > :10:07.the Pixar of VR for their focus on story and the ability to make you
:10:08. > :10:12.Perhaps the most interesting example of
:10:13. > :10:15.virtual reality here has been its use in highlighting various social
:10:16. > :10:25.Notes On Blindness is designed to give you a
:10:26. > :10:29.sense of what it might be like to be blind.
:10:30. > :10:34.This is a story about a man who lost his sight.
:10:35. > :10:37.It says he began keeping a diary on audio cassette,
:10:38. > :10:41.Like The Turning Forest, it also uses
:10:42. > :10:45.binaural sound to situate you in the VR world,
:10:46. > :10:47.a process that the creative team found uniquely
:10:48. > :10:53.How to represent with visuals a blind perception of the
:10:54. > :11:00.So we used a sort of metaphorical element in 3-D
:11:01. > :11:02.real-time, and we used also a lot of binaural
:11:03. > :11:05.recording and synthesis to
:11:06. > :11:17.It is amazing - the audio really gets
:11:18. > :11:24.It's quite unique that we now have games and
:11:25. > :11:26.experiences that are allowing you to feel
:11:27. > :11:27.other people, to feel the
:11:28. > :11:31.thoughts and experiences of people like that.
:11:32. > :11:34.That's one of the things that VR will be used for in the
:11:35. > :11:39.Several of the exhibitions here do just that.
:11:40. > :11:44.a nine minute piece from the Guardian showcasing the
:11:45. > :11:47.psychological effects of solitary confinement
:11:48. > :11:48.on prison inmates in the
:11:49. > :12:04.There is a very small table and seat area, just
:12:05. > :12:07.a tiny sliver of light coming through.
:12:08. > :12:10.While I found it deliberately claustrophobic, the
:12:11. > :12:14.film proved painfully real for one former inmate.
:12:15. > :12:17.As a person who spent a total of three years in solitary
:12:18. > :12:21.confinement, I can tell you that the experience is very real.
:12:22. > :12:24.It actually made me remember some of the things
:12:25. > :12:28.that I went through when I was in solitary myself.
:12:29. > :12:30.Feelings of anger, frustration, hopelessness in a lot
:12:31. > :12:36.of ways, endless, internal sadness of just being in a space where you
:12:37. > :12:41.have no one to talk to, nobody to come in contact with.
:12:42. > :12:43.It kind of really brought me back there
:12:44. > :12:48.But not everyone here wants to put you in the shoes
:12:49. > :12:52.The Ark is a VR film about the world's most endangered
:12:53. > :13:03.Its makers aim to give you an almost God's-eye view of the species.
:13:04. > :13:06.We focused on the idea that you are a
:13:07. > :13:08.floating brain or a spirit that's doing a thing
:13:09. > :13:27.We put you in two places simultaneously.
:13:28. > :13:29.You look to the front of experience, you are in
:13:30. > :13:31.Kenya, to the back you are in San Diego,
:13:32. > :13:34.which are the two places where the genetic rescue effort is
:13:35. > :13:38.What is clear from these and other films shown at Tribeca is
:13:39. > :13:40.that VR is still very much in its infancy.
:13:41. > :13:43.Cinema has had over 100 years to get where it is now, and
:13:44. > :13:45.there is a sense that VR film-makers are only
:13:46. > :13:46.beginning to work out and
:13:47. > :13:49.develop the grammar for the way they tell their stories.
:13:50. > :13:53.Who knows, in a hundred years our cinemas experience
:13:54. > :14:05.may be a bit more like this than what we're used to.
:14:06. > :14:09.The supersecret and relatively mysterious company Magic Leap
:14:10. > :14:16.Demos show how to check e-mail and undertake a school project
:14:17. > :14:23.The company say it was shot directly through its system with no use
:14:24. > :14:28.But what they haven't told people is how it works and when we might
:14:29. > :14:31.And if those flying jellyfish don't worry you,
:14:32. > :14:36.Police have opened up an investigation
:14:37. > :14:39.after a plane travelling from Geneva to Heathrow was believed to have
:14:40. > :14:42.been hit by a drone some 1700 feet above west London.
:14:43. > :14:45.The incident was reported by the pilot
:14:46. > :14:51.It was also the week that Netflix opened the door to viewing content
:14:52. > :14:53.off-line and Microsoft announced its intention to stop making
:14:54. > :15:00.Over ten years since it originally went on sale.
:15:01. > :15:04.And if you have ever sat on a train and wished it would hurry
:15:05. > :15:09.The US Air Force has broken the world's speed record
:15:10. > :15:13.for fastest vehicle travelling by magnetic levitation.
:15:14. > :15:21.It reached a speed of 633 mph along the 2000 metre track,
:15:22. > :15:23.beating a previous record they set themselves only days earlier.
:15:24. > :15:29.Aside from the massive rockets, superconductive magnets are laid
:15:30. > :15:38.It was the morning of the 26th of April 1986 when an uncontrollable
:15:39. > :15:40.power surge in the Chernobyl reactor in northern Ukraine resulted
:15:41. > :15:53.in one of the worst nuclear disasters the world has ever seen.
:15:54. > :15:56.The Soviet Union said today that an accident has damaged an atomic
:15:57. > :16:01.Anger is growing in the west over the way the Russians are
:16:02. > :16:09.The accident sent a plume of radioactive followed
:16:10. > :16:11.The accident sent a plume of radioactive fall-out
:16:12. > :16:14.into the atmosphere, reaching as far away as the United
:16:15. > :16:16.Kingdom and seriously contaminating a huge area around the site.
:16:17. > :16:18.30 years later and very little has changed
:16:19. > :16:21.in the nearby town of Pripyat, which was evacuated just after the
:16:22. > :16:28.Although the radiation has dropped to safer levels in some areas
:16:29. > :16:30.around Chernobyl, it is still understandable
:16:31. > :16:38.Now, thanks to a new virtual reality experience, you can go
:16:39. > :16:45.The Chernobyl VR project is the first of its kind from Polish
:16:46. > :16:53.We wanted to make this tool to interact with it
:16:54. > :16:57.because there is a lot of movies regarding the Chernobyl and Pripyat
:16:58. > :17:04.disaster, so we wanted to create something that would be closer.
:17:05. > :17:07.You are entering the virtual world, you are free to walk to different
:17:08. > :17:10.places and your guide is telling you the story of the places
:17:11. > :17:18.To create the project, the team made multiple trips to Chernobyl
:17:19. > :17:25.The point was to capture thousands of photographs,
:17:26. > :17:28.models and 360 degrees videos in order to accurately capture what
:17:29. > :17:42.We have been recording 360 movies to make a more direct version
:17:43. > :17:44.of the narrative and also to give some noninteractive
:17:45. > :17:49.We have been using drones to film and we have been using special
:17:50. > :17:55.scanners and cameras for the 3-D data.
:17:56. > :18:00.It is incredible to see how much the area has decayed in just 30 years.
:18:01. > :18:03.That is why another point of the project was to try to
:18:04. > :18:10.These places, in the next years, will be fully collapsed.
:18:11. > :18:13.So this is the last moment where you can really explore Chernobyl
:18:14. > :18:27.The project is slated for release in the next few weeks
:18:28. > :18:29.and will be compatible with Samsung's Fear VR
:18:30. > :18:40.and will be compatible with Samsung's Gear VR
:18:41. > :18:46.There came a time a few years ago when it seems that every action
:18:47. > :18:49.sports enthusiasts under the sun felt the need to strap on
:18:50. > :18:51.a Go-Pro camera and film themselves as they hurtled downhill.
:18:52. > :18:53.The problem is that since the company went public nearly
:18:54. > :18:57.two years ago, all of Go-Pro seems to be headed in that direction.
:18:58. > :19:01.After all, how many action sports enthusiasts are there in the world?
:19:02. > :19:04.Richard Taylor has been to Go-Pro in San Francisco to find out how
:19:05. > :19:12.the company is planning to arrest its decline.
:19:13. > :19:15.Over the past year or so Go-Pro has been on a more turbulent ride
:19:16. > :19:20.It's garishly clad founder, Nick Woodman, has had to deal with
:19:21. > :19:24.plummeting share prices, fleeing executives and failing to
:19:25. > :19:28.hit home with new products which have given even ardent Go-Pro
:19:29. > :19:34.Critics say it is losing its edge in delivering eye-catching
:19:35. > :19:40.innovation, while rivals are fast making up ground with
:19:41. > :19:48.Another challenge it has faced is competition from these things.
:19:49. > :19:50.Smartphone cameras are arguably better, more versatile
:19:51. > :19:52.and appealing to a mainstream audience than a standalone Go-Pro.
:19:53. > :19:55.That is something the action-cam pioneer is keen to address.
:19:56. > :20:02.So, Go-Pro in hand, I can survey a new landscape with
:20:03. > :20:16.Accessories, some tie-ups with the big boys and
:20:17. > :20:19.Witness this integrated playpen housing to capture
:20:20. > :20:23.Other hardware allows creative remote control and access
:20:24. > :20:28.It is essentially a remote control in the palm of your hands.
:20:29. > :20:31.It will sync directly to your Go-Pro products and by doing that,
:20:32. > :20:37.you can use gestures to control functionality on your Go-Pro camera.
:20:38. > :20:41.I will tap my thumb to my finger and it will start by recording.
:20:42. > :20:44.Different touch points do different things.
:20:45. > :20:46.I will switch camera modes by touching this.
:20:47. > :20:51.Really, what we're trying to do is solve one of
:20:52. > :20:54.the biggest problems that you often hear when you are out on the side
:20:55. > :21:11.In terms of its developer programme, automated editing of multiple
:21:12. > :21:14.cameras through to overlaying info on top of your Go-Pro's intro are
:21:15. > :21:17.They're also pushing into new territory,
:21:18. > :21:19.this weekend they launched a virtual reality production
:21:20. > :21:21.platform with cameras, rig and software costing a cool $5,000.
:21:22. > :21:24.VR production is still niche, begging the question of
:21:25. > :21:31.whether Go-Pro can find other products to entice more audiences.
:21:32. > :21:36.The last product launch didn't really hit home with consumers.
:21:37. > :21:39.What can you say to us in terms of innovation for the Hero Five or the
:21:40. > :21:45.I can't talk you much specifically about those products,
:21:46. > :21:48.but I can say we learned a lot from the last product release.
:21:49. > :21:51.Perhaps the pricing was the thing that caught us
:21:52. > :21:53.a little off guard and we didn't double down with advertising.
:21:54. > :21:58.We know now we need more developers to help our ecosystem
:21:59. > :22:00.and we're very focused on that, but most importantly,
:22:01. > :22:06.we just need to make it that much easier to reach a broader audience.
:22:07. > :22:09.Go-Pro does sport a very large fan base, but it has become clear
:22:10. > :22:19.Maintaining that elevated status is quite another.
:22:20. > :22:22.And just before we do go, there is one more thing we want to
:22:23. > :22:27.It is a film put together by Canadian Guy Maddin,
:22:28. > :22:36.but it is not a film in the traditional sense of the word.
:22:37. > :22:45.These lost film adaptations were updated into a programme
:22:46. > :22:50.and the programme then fragments this ectoplasmic matter of unhappy,
:22:51. > :22:54.lost film spirits and the programme really recombines
:22:55. > :23:03.It will generate a new movie, a new 1-of-a-kind movie out
:23:04. > :23:09.With over 500 billion possible outcomes, the resulting film
:23:10. > :23:16.And when the film has played out, it is then destroyed with
:23:17. > :23:25.its name placed on the list of film obituaries alongside many classics
:23:26. > :23:36.And the one major advantage of creating a film with the help of a
:23:37. > :23:42.computer programme is that it does render you fairly critic-proof.
:23:43. > :23:45.There are all kinds of possibilities facing the viewer and
:23:46. > :23:49.you just have to trust luck and the inevitability of the fact that...
:23:50. > :24:01.I don't know, I don't even know if I trust anything anymore.
:24:02. > :24:05.On that triumphant note, we will leave you.
:24:06. > :24:08.We are on Twitter should you need us throughout the week.
:24:09. > :24:42.Just time to bring you up-to-date with how we see things panning out
:24:43. > :24:44.across the British Isles this weekend and in the next few days.
:24:45. > :24:46.Quite