Exclusive: Eye for an Eye VR Behind-the-Scenes Video and Interview
April Marie
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Tonight marks the start of the infamous San Diego Comic-Con in California. With it comes a flurry of activity and exclusive content. Never to be left by the wayside, we here at Dread Central have some special stuff to share with you as well.
Filmatics, in conjunction with Wevr, is soon to release a virtual reality film called Eye for an Eye: A Séance in Virtual Reality. Thanks to Elia Petridis, the founder/CEO of Filmatics and director of Eye for an Eye, we have an exclusive behind-the-scenes video to share with you!
A release date for Eye for an Eye will be forthcoming sometime after SDCC so stay tuned.
Elia will be participating in a panel at SDCC (di-VR-sity: Opportunities in VR/AR and Immersive Storytelling) on Friday the 22nd at 11 a.m. along with many other forward thinkers in the VR community.
We got the chance to ask Elia a few questions about VR film and Eye for an Eye even before the convention.
Dread Central: What led you to pursue VR film rather than traditional?
Elia Petridis: We still pursue traditional film. Filmatics is a transmedia company, and Eye for an Eye has a companion short film featuring the same characters and world. At heart, I’m a 
modernist filmmaker so form and content are in constant romance for me. The more pressing initiative was to cultivate a story that was well suited to this form of media rather than abandon one for the other. I’m a storyteller, full stop. I don’t discriminate where to tell them, just audition what platform best suits them/fulfills them properly.
DC: What are your thoughts on horror as a prevalent genre in VR film?
EP: The genre has always sat in the stirrups of its sound design. Sound is so crucial to guiding the eye through narrative in an immersive space that, yes, the genre seems like a match made in heaven as it grants you a wide breadth which which to play with sound logic. Echoes, creaks, whispers, tremors, and more can all be used to guide the eye through narrative turns. Also we’re granted a beautiful mercy when it comes to color correction, darkness, prop, light, and editorial malfunctions that allow us to turn plot while setting tone. Horror may be as it has always been, the stomping ground that births great filmmakers, a place where they can cut their teeth because they granted the freedom of genre to make big mistakes and get away with them.
DC: Do you plan to continue working in the horror genre for future VR films?
EP: Not any more so than when Danny Boyle made 28 Days Later… or Spielberg did when he produced Poltergeist. A good story is a good story. All my heroes pop into genres, redefine them a little or shake them around or contribute, and then leave. Although, I will say that I have a soft spot for ghost stories, and our next work is certainly a thriller at the very least if not full-on horror, but again, the story just speaks to me.
DC: Was Eye for an Eye created specifically to highlight VR film, or was it a story you wanted to tell either way?
EP: Eye for an Eye is often brought up as a piece that was dead bent on backseating the VR itself; we were always adamant that the story should live on its own laurels and wanted to set forth a piece where people were hooked to the characters, world, and plot that was simply made cooler because it was perfect for VR. And the loose threads of Eye for an Eye: Henrietta, the transmedia companion piece short film, had been bouncing in my head for a while.
DC: What was the most difficult part of creating Eye for an Eye in respects to VR storytelling?
EP: Getting the actors in the zone to perform theater. Rehearsals, blocking, and problem solving. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse… that was an amazing insight gained with VR, because it is theater for the most part, and then figuring out the post. Ghosts bouncing around in 360. Most curious and challenging was figuring out how to inactively guide the user through the plot turns.
DC: What was the inspiration for the story in Eye for an Eye?
EP: The prompt given by Wevr, among a few, was that a horror piece would be nice. So I went back and thought, “Well. What’s the horror of VR? Seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. Literally ‘borrowing’ another pair of eyes.” And then the simple story of Marcus, the eyeless ghost who couldn’t see his way over to the other side to rest in peace, who needed to find a pair that might fit and take him across, was born. And to me, like good ghost stories, that’s an awfully wicked piece of unfinished business.
Synopsis:
In Eye for an Eye viewers are placed alongside a motley crew of teenagers who must find their missing friend Calvin by going to the last place they saw him, the hellish and haunted house of a psychic medium, Henrietta Sparks. By entrusting the enemy by use of a séance, the group must tread cautiously, for Henrietta is rumored to conjure the eyeless ghost of Marcus, a teenage boy who disappeared decades ago but remains in search of another pair of eyes.
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