Happy Halloween! I'm incredibly proud to release our newest 360º video: "Love is All Around: A 360º Horror Story".
What is your worst fear? Ours is rejection. Watch five people look for love everywhere that it is not, staged in the round like a play. It's best viewed in VR -- to watch on the Gear VR, download it.
Please share if you enjoy.
It's also one of the first videos out there with spatial audio, meaning you can turn your head and hear it -- check out Tyler's how-to published on Nofilmschool.
A month ago, YouTube asked our production team to come up with a concept for a short 360º horror story based on our greatest fear. What can be scarier than rejection? Lisa McFadin wrote an outline and I conceived of a story set not as a film but as a play. Because VR is so live and experiential and we had access to a set with a light board, it made sense to stage actors in the same space and pretend they are in different ones, which works great in VR.
We got a green light from YouTube less than a week before the last available slot they had. I didn't know if we could make it, but we pulled together a production with the help of Damon Jamal (who also ran camera), Nir Netzer, and Dondria Nicole. I flew down to LA. We did a rehearsal. We were filming.
In our 6-hour block, we set up the space and shot seven takes of the 3.5-minute scene. Thanks to Michael Hammond, Charissa Saverio, Wally Hooks, Rhym Guissé, and Ben Morrison for jumping on at the last minute, knowing your lines, and performing beautifully. Thanks to Rob Wadleigh, Jose Campos, and Eszter Tóth for your positivity and making everything run so smoothly.
We got the astounding 8k 360º stitches back from Google Jump a day later. Tyler Straub, an incredibly talented sound designer, was excited to try his hand at creating a spatial audio soundscape, which has just recently become supported. It's amazing -- you can turn your head left and right and hear where things are.
So take a look and let us know what you think. I know it was an awesome learning experience for me. The theater production mostly works great, but I wish I'd turned down the lights fully on the initial part of the set to cue viewers earlier that they should be looking elsewhere. In the future (I will definitely direct another VR production in this style again) I also want to create more distinct soundscapes for each part of the stage.
Thanks for watching!