Google Doodle: The tribute to Georges Melies is the first ever Virtual Reality interactive doodle
Today's Google Doodle celebrates French illusionist and film director Georges Melies, who led many technical developments in the earliest days of cinema and popularized the concept of narrative films. A prolific innovator, Georges Melies made popular many techniques that became the cornerstone of filmmaking, such as time-lapse photography, multiple exposures and substitution splices. The Doodle comes on the 106th anniversary of the release date of what is considered to be one of his greatest masterpieces "A la conquete du Pole" (The Conquest of the Pole). And in an apt tribute to a master innovator, today's Doodle is the first ever Virtual Reality interactive Doodle.
The Google Doodle is in the form of a 360 degree Virtual Reality (VR) video, called "Back To The Moon". The story is that of a French illusionist who tries to charm a woman, who starts out as the Queen of Hearts from a playing card, fights off a villain who tries to take her away from him, and then flies to the moon with her. The clip has various elements of fantasy and science and pays tribute to different techniques that Georges Melies is known for.
The clip also depicts a story, as Georges Melies was known as an expert storyteller and paid great importance to narrative. While the first part of the doodle shows the protagonist trying to charm his "Queen of Hearts", soon a supposedly evil man in green shows up and takes the girl away. The protagonist and the man in green duel with their weapons and perform magic on each other in an attempt to win, when the heroine intervenes to trap the villain. The hero then takes her to a rocket which was present in the initial set and flies away to the moon where, as the cliche goes, they are shown to live happily ever after.