VR series and movies have already spanned a wide range of topics, but an upcoming show will be addressing a group not yet represented in the medium.
According to Forbes, American film and television director, Rose Troche, has announced a new eight part VR comedy series named LGBTQIA. The show will feature an ensemble cast and follows members of such a group (standing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual communities) that attend meetings at a high school that also acts as a community centre. Each episode will last between eight to ten minutes and there are hopes to make it an ongoing production.
Troche is currently busy casting the series, and hopes to get filming underway in late August. The first two episodes are aiming to premiere at the New Frontier program for next year’s Sundance Film Festival. That festival has had a strong showing on the VR front over the past two years, and was even the venue in which Oculus VR unveiled its own film team, Oculus Story Studio.
In the past Troche has worked with Specular Theory’s Morris May to create two VR experiences as part of a series named Perspective (pictured above). Both tackled tough situations, with the first one depicting a party in which someone falls victim to date rape, while the other shows an encounter between two Brooklyn cops and two black men accused of theft. Both of these projects used switching perspectives to communicate their message; could we see this new work do the same?
Though we really don’t know much about LGBTQIA just yet, it’s exciting to see a group that hasn’t yet really been represented within the creative side of the medium get a spotlight. VR is obviously still a young platform and has the chance to start off on the right track when it comes to diversification rather than trying to fix an issue that many other media face right now. Hopefully shows such as this will help it get ahead of the game.
