Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue will have virtual reality feature – CNBC

“For editorial content, the market is being tested by traditional media like The New York Times, CNN and USA TODAY, as well as cutting edge creators like Nonny de la Peña’s Emblematic Group,” he says. “From a scale perspective, the much larger installed base of competing media, which is mobile, web, TV, print, should outweigh AR/VR editorial for a while yet. But the growth rates for AR/VR editorial content could be significantly higher than their traditional counterparts.”

Gannett, which owns USA TODAY and a network of nearly 100 publications across the country, has brought readers to the streets of Havana and inside a Blue Angels jet via VR. “We started 18 months ago with an award-winning (Des Moines Register) series called Harvest of Change, which took viewers inside the life of a family farm in Iowa,” says USA TODAY editor in chief David Callaway.

The New York Times also has been a VR video leader, producing immersive reports about Europe’s refugees and Paris after the terrorist attacks. Last year, the company distributed a million cardboard smartphone goggles to print subscribers. “This year, we’re putting more money into a program of films of our own, and are curating VR content in partnership with (film fest organizers) Sundance,” says New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy.

The United Nations has even taken advantage of VR’s ability to generate empathy. Its 2015 short film Clouds Over Sidra, about a young Syrian refugee’s life in a camp, has won a number of awards and put a spotlight on the transportive nature of VR content.

Standing in obvious contrast to Sidra is Sports Illustrated’s comparatively voyeuristic effort, which is bound to rile its persistent critics even further.

“Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue should be renamed the Sexploitation Issue,” Dawn Hawkins, executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement last week just before the issue’s cover model was revealed. “This magazine has a long history of sexually objectifying women for sport, and any store that displays SI’s February issue is sending the message that it agrees women’s bodies are for public consumption.”

SI’s Hercik says simply that the VR project was “just meant to address the question I always get, which is, ‘What’s it like to be on a swimsuit shoot?'”

Wevr co-founder Anthony Batt says his mission was to be as unobtrusive as possible during the SI shoot. Using a variety of cameras, the Wevr crew sought to capture scenes from multiple perspectives. In some, the viewer take the point of view of the photographer. In others, you’re a fly on the wall able to see the entire crew from the vantage point of the model.

“Instead of looking at a page, you’re actually standing in the page,” Batt says. “VR is transformational for the (magazine) medium.”