Lots of interesting contrasts in this video between film and VR:
- “In VR, if a story is told well, it actually is all about you.”
- “If someone falls on their face right next you, it’s not funny.” (As opposed to pratfalls in film.)
- “In cinema you have something like the fourth wall…between the [film] world and the audience. In VR there is no such thing as a fourth wall.”
- “In a movie if you have an intimate scene, you would normally use a close-up shot… [But in VR] that is not what a close-up is. A close up [in film] is using a really long lens and being far away with the camera. But [in VR] because you are sitting really close to someone who is about to cry, that is not comfortable. But if the character sits back there in the corner and is about to cry, you actually have a lot of empathy for him.”
William Comfort Anderson 
In VR, if a story is told well, it is actually all about you. That sums it up. And it makes it a whole new art form.
Such a weird way of thinking, to my mind. To really involve a viewer you have to give them some degree of decision-making power, but go down that road and very quickly you turn into a game. (Not that games can’t be art, but everyone is talking about VR as the next stage of filmmaking.)