Could Smart Glasses Impact The Film Industry?

Oladapo Bamidele (November, 21, 2023) —

The film industry is famous for adapting to and thriving on new technology. In truth, filmmaking is basically founded on technology, there is no filmmaking without it. So, smart glasses may be the next tool in the hands of the filmmaker. If the advent of CGI almost killed traditional animation (Disney’s last hand-drawn hoorah was their 2011 Winnie The Pooh), it has made the filmmaking of animated movies quicker, and capable of stunning effects.

Whilst nobody is going to argue that the Meg series (Jason Statham) is going to rival Jaws (Richard Dreyfuss). The stunning shark scenes in the Meg dwarfed Spielberg’s rubberized Bruce (although Bruce lives on in animated form as the vegetarian Great White in Finding Nemo). By the same token, one can set oneself apart by not using new tech. Studio Ghibli stayed exclusively cel-shaded until 2020’s Earwig And The Witch – and they were rewarded with the lukewarm critical and audience response for their first foray into CGI.

If independent creators can only daydream of Disney’s budgets, then they have been quick to jump on consumer-grade tech. Nigeria’s Ikorodu Bois skipped Nollywood and got an invite straight to Hollywood by remaking scenes and trailers on their cellphones. Likewise, Clerks by Kevin Smith and El Mariachi by Robert Rodriguez launched multi-million dollar careers for these filmmakers with the 16mm cameras that would cost around $1,000 now. Smart glasses could be the next high-street product to make their way into high-level filmmaking.

What are smart glasses?

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Cast our minds back to 2013 and the advent of Google Glass. The product that was supposed to revolutionize how we saw the world was perhaps a little ahead of its time, and the prototypes were discontinued in early 2015. Now, though, it could be that smart glasses’ time has come. From sales of 410,000 units in 2021, it’s predicted that 2023 will see over 2,000,000 pairs sold. At their most basic, they’ll let you play music from a phone, and answer calls through them. At the highest end, they can resemble VR headsets and provide a plethora of features. In between, perhaps, lies the potential for filmmakers.

Filmmaking

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We’re still a little way off a heads-up display that can analyze everything we look at through glasses a la Robocop. It’s debatable if that would help or hinder a moviemaker’s vision. However, among the selection of Ray-Ban glasses are the Meta smart glasses. While they may look like classic Wayfarers, dual 12MP cameras on the front of the frames will shoot hi-res stills or up to 60 seconds of video. Five mics capture the sound around your view. While it’s eminently possible to shoot tests (and even whole shorts) using a phone, smart glasses now offer the ability to give a true first-person perspective, letting the audience see exactly what the director or actor is seeing through their eyes.

One of our recent favorites is Laura Waters Hinson’s Street Reporter, where Sheila White, 59, dreams of becoming a photojournalist and overcoming her experience of homelessness. She uses a traditional camera to capture her shots. In the future, more people will be able to easily follow in her footsteps and report on the real world. Smart glasses will allow everyone to be a street reporter with the click of an ‘on’ button.

Film watching

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While we wait for moviemakers to take advantage of smart glasses, their utility on the other side of the screen is already being enjoyed. Augmented reality (AR) glasses like the NReal Air AR can take what’s showing on a Macbook or (selected, at this point) Android and ‘beam’ it onto a virtual 200-inch screen in front of the viewer’s eyes. From a consumer level, that means downloading a movie to watch on a flight can compete with an evening at the cinema. For filmmakers, the concern about having to shoot to accommodate a small screen size could become a thing of the past, and indie movies can be shown in ‘theaters’ all over the world on a self-distribution model.

A lot has changed since 2013. Google Glass was greeted with as much fear as it was hope. The UK made it illegal to drive in them before the technology even hit British shores. The stop-motion films made on that tech, like Seeds now look charming and even a little quaint. It’s now almost impossible to walk past a tourist attraction or major city landmark without someone filming themselves for Instagram or TikTok. But if we look outward rather than at ourselves, smart glasses have the potential to facilitate far more fulfilling films.

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