Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/863793
10 2 0 1 7 E D U C AT I O N & R E C R U I T M E N T S P E C I A L irtual reality is a relatively new medium. We have been seeing VR projects of late across various genres, mostly games, adventures, and experiences. But when students from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) decided to explore VR as means of storytelling, they wanted to go beyond the traditional and opt for a different tone – that of a musical. "The narrative storytelling part of VR is rarely addressed, so we decided to tackle it head-on," says Joshua Howard (BFA, film and television, 2017), VR filmmaker and producer/ screenwriter for the project. And thus, SCAD's virtual-reality musical, "Say It With Music," was born. In order to completely engage viewers, the team needed to develop a story so delightful the audience would forget about the VR headsets utilized to experience the project. To this end, the VR musical follows the love story be- tween a waiter and waitress at a fine-dining establishment through their own unique passion for the music in their own heads. In the narrative, this music happened to be from re- nowned composer Irving Berlin and his 1921 hit of the same name, "Say It With Music." SCAD obtained the rights to the song and made a mod- ern version out of the everyday ambiance you would hear inside an expensive restaurant... the clanging of glasses and the tapping of knives and forks. "We utilized these sound cues to drive the narrative and allowed the audi- ence to experience a 360-degree perspective capturing multiple plot lines in an immersive motion-picture experi- ence," explains Howard. VR is hardly new to SCAD. The university's "SCAD VR" application gave perspective students across the US a chance to experience one of the school's four locations virtually through the use of Google Cardboard. "Say It With Music," however, is the first VR project devel- oped entirely by SCAD. "SCAD is a progressive, forward-thinking universi- ty and a pioneer in the field of VR. [For this project} it brought together a diverse group of students from various Note-worthy VR V SCAD students, faculty, and alumni create a virtual-reality musical BY KAREN MOLTENBREY