Apple AR: A New Way of Capturing Stories Is Previewed by Peter Jackson

With augmented reality comes an infinite realm of possibilities for storytelling. We have seen it through wineries telling their history with interactive AR experiences and through authors that use augmented reality to bring portions of their books to life. However, filmmaker Peter Jackson might take the cake on creating an incredible new way of storytelling.

Excited by the opportunities that augmented reality could present, Jackson founded "Wingnut AR," an AR studio where Jackson and his team have been using Apple's ARKit to play around with new modes of storytelling for the past year. They have been specifically playing around with learning to navigate the differences in storytelling using AR — what's fun, what's entertaining, and what just doesn't work. They previewed this work at WWDC when Apple announced their ARKit, but the full demo has now been released.

They have created an incredible ARKit Demo, only a minute and thirty seconds long, that tells a short story. Jackson's company had actual actors act out the scenes taking place on their tiny table and then captured it using motion capture.

According to a Wingnut spokesperson, who spoke to BBC Click:

Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh, they'd seen some AR demos of some new hardware and were really excited about the creative possibilities. They're amazing storytellers and they wanted to take their experience and use their skills and take them into this new medium.

While Jackson has not said how he plans on further developing ARKit demos like this one, we can be sure that whatever he does with it will likely be excellent. Who knows? Maybe we'll even be to watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy play out on our table.

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Cover image via Wingnut AR