Oculus Launch Pad — Week 11 — The Film & The Sound
Writing and Recording
I’ve never considered myself a writer but I am proud that I’ve written this script — from these tiny films within the game to the overall UX. It’s new territory for me and I’m stretching a new creative muscle. My incredible collaborator Alyssa Landry is a writer I admire and she’s been so positive about my writing. She has been amazing to rewrite, add, invent and make everything I have written better. For the first time I feel a little like a writer.
We recorded with talent in a proper recording studio (so fancy) and it’s thrilling to hear this dialogue spoken out loud. The voices in my dreams are coming alive! Each performer brought such nuance. I pulled them all in different directions. None of them have done VR so it will be thrilling to bring them back to see (and hear) what they have been a part of.
After the recording session I spent a lot of time in the editing room, re-syncing all of the video that we had already edited which had the corrupted digital glitch. It’s very strange that the Action Director software added this glitch and I’ll have to delve further to see what happened, after we deliver. I also pulled in the new imagery that we restitched manually.
Then I worked with one of my favorite editors Olga Lvoff who wants to learn editing for VR and 360 video. We took all of the voices from the recording session and cut them creatively. The 360 videos still need VFX, fine stitching and color correction (which need a budget) but for a rough cut it’s a good start.
New Skill acquired this week: A friend over at East Coast Digital taught me how to mask out a monopod. It’s a decent 20 step process and I’ve managed to do about 4 clips. The most challenging was masking the umbrella out of the sky from the rainy production day. Lots more to go but these finer details may have to wait.
Sound design is critical for VR. Sometimes when I begin to concentrate on the sound of the story in VR, it almost feels more important than what I am seeing in front of me. The role of sound design in a VR experience feels very special and unique. We want to spatialize the sound so we are planning to work with the Two Big Ears / Facebook Spatial Workstation. A fantastic designer (Diego Jiminez) who has worked on some of my VR projects (Boxed Out, Cardboard City) has volunteered some of his time to design this thoughtfully in a way that supports the story.
Mechanics, models, layout coming together. This final week we will merge everything!
