The Variety of Immersion Technologies
Through Wednesday’s section, we have had a preliminary understanding of how immersive devices was being invented, and a series of immersive devices that could be found in our daily life.
VR / AR
Dolby Atmos
3D IMAX
D-box / 4DX
As far as I know, The VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) should be counted as two of the technologies that Australian being familiar with, the 360 VR video which we could watch it on YouTube by getting our own CardBoard, and the world-famous, Augmented Reality app/game, Pokemon Go that developed by Niantic and first being tested in Australia, as well as RMIT also has a course that related to them. However, it’s noteworthy that, in the tiny place I live, Hong Kong, the cinematic immersive technologies is far more mature than Australia, that could easily be found in cinema multiplexes.
Number of Featured Cinemas in HK
Atmos sound system: 11
IMAX cinemas: 6
D-box cinemas: 7
4DX cinemas: 4 (including Disneyland)
Where I had (luckily) almost tried all of them before. To me, 4D cinemas would be definitely said as the most immersive one, that we could ‘feel’ the scents, the weather (sometimes) that those movie characters had, and also ‘moving’ with the creative camera movements of the film, which had effectively increased our sense of presence while watching them, by physically stimulating our different senses. Next, the IMAX 3D, that watching our favourite films through an enormous screen, accompanied by the Atmos sound system, that the level of immersion was highly depends on where you sit, I could still remember how uncomfortable and dizziness it was 5 years ago, while sitting in the first few rows of an IMAX theatre, but paying the same price as the rest audiences were.
List of 4DX effects cr. cj4dx.com
PB4: My thought
Similar to the audiovisual response one, I am still aiming to ‘compose’ a visually and aurally cool video that could first impress the spectators, then immerse them by applying various creative techniques (reverse~), so this time, my main strategy would be trying my best to compose different forms and genres of film into a single video, which this kind of approach could be found in certain YouTube videos (e.g. review video with a story opening), sounds pretty complicated right? Basically, my idea is to smoothly switch between different video forms and moods around the same topic, that to ‘fool’ viewer’s consciousness in some way, for instance,
cinematic opening ⇒ music video ⇒ documentary film ⇒ narrative film ⇒ thriller film ⇒ cinematic ending
I hope this project could be done in a group of 2 or above, that both vision and audio are equally important while achieving the above idea, although I had both a sound design and video editing background, I still have a lot to learn such as making them into one, advanced filming skills and having a smooth transition between different sound and video forms.