10 Quick Ways to Add VR to Your Special Skills
The BroadVersity team bring you 10 crucial VR skills to your resume today!
Last week we made the case for our Broadway-centric friends getting involved in the tech space. We want you to be a quadruple threat (will link here once it goes live) and broaden your theatrical horizons. With that in mind, we bring you 10 VR skills that you can add to your resume…right now! You can get started today working on this list and bulk up your virtual special skills in no time.
1. You Can Spell VR
Sounds simple, but we’re referring to the ability to differentiate between VR/AR/XR and beyond. It feels like new terminology (and technology, frankly) pops up daily—it’s important to be up on all that new fangled stuff! Learn the terms, know how to use these words so that when you’re discussing potential jobs, you’re clear on what is expected of you and you sound smart!
When putting these items on your resume bold the ones you know how to use.
2. Setting Up a Boundary
Just like personal boundaries exist in our world, when working in a VR headset you’re prompted to set up a boundary around you—your play/performance area, if you will. That said, the space you need may vary from project to project. Knowing what you need to do to get this done quickly, and correctly we might add, is clutch.
Because boundary set up also aids in safety (hello, we don’t need you tripping over your cat!) it’s a top-notch skill to start learning now.
3. Acting in Virtual Reality
You took the classes, you sang the songs—you know how to act IRL (that’s in real life for any older folk getting hip with the lingo), but what about virtually? Even zoom allows for facial expressions, but not here. Metaverse performances do not yet have the ability to read your face, and as such you have to find new ways to emote.
Practice with friends, find exciting ways to get your point across that might not necessarily work in TV/film or on the stage, but we’re building a new art form.
4. You Know Where the Mic Is
*Tap Tap* is this thing on?
Just because you pop a headset on doesn’t mean you know all the functions. Knowing where your microphone lives on a variety of headset styles allows you to perform without disrupting your sound.
There’s nothing worse than being mid-monologue when someone accidentally jostles the headset or covers the mic with their hand and then — POOF, they’re gone! At least audibly. And in these virtual reality performances that’s a big part of it for the moment. Technology advances daily, but we still need to hear you!
5. UNMUTE!
It should be obvious at this point, but you can’t go through a virtual meeting these days without someone accidentally muting themselves. Get it together, folks. You’ve got to be audible through your entire performance, audition, whatever you’re working on.
Create checks for yourself so you don’t slip up on this one.
6. You Understand Emotions & Emoticons
Virtual “emotion” signaling has changed drastically over the years. We went from :) and <3 to fancy emojis, memes and gifs, and now your avatar can emote by clapping, belly laughing, and more!
As the avatar’s puppeteer you have to be familiar with the variety of ways emotion comes out of these cartoon versions of us. Like an artist bringing a drawn character to life, you must be know when each version of these is appropriate.
7. Virtual Costume Changes
You know those famed Broadway dressers who can get a character from one scene to another in 30 seconds or less? Yeah! We want you to be that, but virtually. With the click of a button you should be able to unzip your Sunday clothes and pop into another outfit entirely.
8. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
We wish this one didn’t need to be said, but it does.
Respecting people’s PERSONAL space still holds weight in the virtual world. Companies and virtual world designers are taking this quite seriously. Just because you see a cute avatar running around a new world, doesn’t mean you can go get all up in their business.
9. Teleporting
Along the same lines as virtually changing your costumes, you should be able to jump between worlds with the flick of your finger.
The long and short of it can be explained perfectly by a few writers at Frontiers in VR who said, "Teleportation is a widely implemented virtual locomotion technique that allows users to navigate beyond the confines of available tracking space with a low possibility of inducing virtual reality (VR) sickness.” Their paper can be found here and the detail they’ve put into it blows the mind.
10. You’ve Overcome Motion Sickness
Motion sickness usually gets to most users when they’ve been in headset for extended periods of time, or when they’re in a world that acts very differently from ours (flying, extreme jumping, etc) or if it moves too quickly. That said, some people just…get motion sick. It happens. Some take medication to curb this, others practice in small increments. Whatever it takes for you personally, we’d love to hear any new suggestions!
To be fair, this one won’t be possible for everyone. You may be the type of person that just gets motion sick no matter what you do, but at least give it a go.
Rather see all this info in video form? No worries, we gotchu covered. Check out our YouTube! We’ll be going into much more detail on all these topics very soon, so stay tuned! As always, we’d love to connect with you on social. Find us at @BroadVersity.