Some of the VR films currently available are ‘ABE VR’ and ‘HELP’
I was looking up and VR related material and came across the content. As I am personally inclined to work in film scoring in the future, VR film is also a direction I may come across, as the name implies the use of panoramic filming to expand the space of the picture, the distinction between in-picture and out-picture space no longer comes from the director’s restriction of the viewer’s field of vision, but from the viewer’s own choice. Sound and picture must be perfectly matched in terms of spatial relationship, accurate positioning and a sense of space, including the positioning and presentation of sound horizontally, vertically and vertically. I believe that sound production needs to take into account every source of sound in the panoramic image, so that there is no longer a distinction between in- and out-of-frame, and that the sound from every direction may become the focus of the audience’s attention. It was a very interesting project, and it made me think about how the soundtrack can act as a propeller of the overall atmosphere when people are watching the film from a third perspective. However, when the viewer is in the first view of the film the soundtrack should be diminished (ambient sound over background sound) to give the viewer a greater sense of immersion.
But in any case, the VR mode of film viewing heightens the audience’s sensitivity to sound and places greater demands on sound production. Sound detail needs to be further enhanced, detailed sound effects are useful to enhance realism and immersion, and the accurate positioning of object-based sound keeps the audience from getting lost in the process of finding the sound source. Sound is one of the most important organs of perception, and if the sound and soundtrack are well crafted they can be immersive. The important technique is to give the sound a sense of space and accuracy to the scene the audience is in.
The use of head tracking allows the sound to interact with the viewer’s perspective, making the audience believe that the sound exists independently of the space they are seeing. This is the same sense of spatiality that I mentioned in my previous blog, where the spatiality of VR sound is based on a three-dimensional space, and the person in the sound field needs to feel the reflections from all directions, both horizontally and vertically, to get the illusion of being there. There is also the enhancement of detailed sounds and ambient sounds, and the exaggeration of small sounds to make them more impactful.
All in all, I have a lot to learn. I’ll also be working on more software in this area, including Head-Tracking and the like. This collaborative project has really given me a lot of food for thought about my future plans.