Rooms (2017)

Description

“ROOMS” is the first Cinematic VR film (CineVR) produced by the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF (Germany). It was funded by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg’s DIGI.TALe programme that commissions innovative and experimental narrative content.

Directed by Christian Zipfel, this award winning 360 documentary invites audiences into five, private, strictly regulated, yet culturally significant rooms, exploring explores the dramaturgy of these spaces and their inhabitants. The audio plays a critical role by representing narrative, action and location with novel spatial cues (distance, direction and acoustic), extending beyond the audience’s gaze and enhancing their sense of presence in those spaces.

I was invited to contribute by the production team as a part of YXO Studios, I consulted on the emerging delivery standards for Higher Order Ambisonic (HOA) spatial audio in CineVR and addressed concerns from preproduction to distribution, and co-created the best practices of the crew in audio recording and post-production.

The project developed novel and practical working methods for audio recordists and sound designers working with HOA in feature length, non-fiction CineVR formats. New practical knowledge was developed for: processing and treating raw A-format synchronous production audio and decoding of directional virtual microphones from its B-format ambisonic transform; strategies for encoding and up mixing both production and post-synchronised ambisonic and conventional audio sources into the HOA domain; mix considerations for the effects of convolution with different Head Related Impulse Responses used in current binaural exhibition platforms; and versioning and localisation methods for international distribution. This project alongside Wild Cairngorms 360 and Anatomy of the Orchestera informed a conference publication with the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE): “Audio Reproduction for VR Cinema – position paper” (IEEE FAVR, Osaka - Japan, 2019).

The film premiered in August 2018 at the 75th Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica la Biennale di Venezia - Venice VR Competition. It won the “Prix Immersion” at the 47th Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema in October 2018, and the Winner “Digital Rising Stars Award” at PRIX EUROPA. In February 2019 it was released online by the trans-European broadcaster ZDF Kulture.

Teaser Trailer

This teaser trailer for flatscreen viewing is provided by the director Christian Zipfel and contains excerpts from the film with binaural audio.
2018 Teaser „ROOMS“ von Christian Zipfel, © Filmuni Babelsberg from Christian Zipfel on Vimeo.

ZDF Kulture VR Player

This version of Rooms is available for streaming free via ZDF Kulture in it's original German language. It uses the krpano VR webviewer and doesn't support ambisonic or spatial audio formats at the time of publication. It therefore features a head-locked binaural soundtrack. This highlights a problem still found in 360 video distribution where by appropriate ambisonic playback is only afforded by a handful of platforms, largely dominated by tech giants like Google and Meta.