Joshua Houston 

The reason I’m particularly interested in the Mechanics of Immersion is that I’d like to know what changes a boring student film into an interesting and immersive short film. I would like to learn what it is that editors, actors, and directors think and practice to make their films successful compared to amateurs. I would like to learn how to convey emotion with the use of cinematography, and audio effectively and without using the cliché techniques.

Personally, I’ve listened to music that has really had me drawn in to experience the piece rather than listen to it, predominantly by artists like Pink Floyd and Simon and Garfunkel, but also subgenres like Lofi and Binaural Beats. I understand that the artists create the experience often with ambience, contrasting volumes, speed, and frequencies, but I would like to be able to practice this myself, learning the order that these techniques should go in. I would like to learn to be more critical of movies and music that attempts to create this experience, and decide whether the experience is created following a formula, or a more original approach. Aside from audio, I’ve enjoyed movies such as Mad Max, and the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, which uses cinematography, music and sound to create very immersive experiences. I’d like to become familiar and more observant with the techniques they use and the planning that goes into them. I understand that video is a more complicated medium, but I would like to leave the class knowing that I could create a piece of video that would keep the viewer entertained rather than thinking it was just another generic student film.

Lastly, aside from the observable techniques, I’d like to learn about why the brain perceives certain subject matter as immersive, what makes those things so enveloping, and how that influences what people create in order to stimulate it.

In short, I would like to leave The Mechanics of Immersion Studio with

• A reasonable understanding of an audio making application
• Having produced work that I can consider to be immersive and captivating, both audio and visual
• Have a more critical awareness of how directors, musicians, editors and actors create a captivating experience
• Understand why and how the brain responds to an immersive experience.

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.