This piece was conceived by Aurelia to explore how far we could push the 3D audio and VR mediums. The idea was to place beatboxer Reeps One in multiple virtual environments which would influence the nature of his performance, as well as the sonic and visual worlds.
| CLIENT: | Aurelia X The Mill |
| TAGS: | 3D Audio, Composition, Sound Design |
| CATEGORY: | Featured, Mixed Reality |
| DATE: | [post_published] |
We built the experience ground up, recording the music at our LA studio and then constructing 360 worlds around it, with the visual component being handled by The Mill. It was important to work this way, so we could have control of the experience at every stage. After 3 days filming in 11 locations in Southern California, we went into post production, which was a meticulous process of marrying thousands of spatial audio events with 360 video.
Credits
Artist: Reeps One, Original Music Composed & Produced by Reeps One & John Hendicott
Directed by: Gawain Liddiard & John Hendicott
Produced by: The Mill & Aurelia Soundworks
VFX Supervisor: Gawain Liddiard
Producer: Ginny Galloway
Sound Design & Spatial Audio Mix: John Hendicott
Spatial Audio Technologist: Chris Timpson
Director of Photography: Edward T. Button
VFX Producer: Daniel Midgley
Technical Innovations Manager: Tawfeeq Martin
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SOUND DESIGNER’S SCOOP
“The approach to composing this piece of music was unlike anything [we] had tried before, since every sound that was being made would need to be seen and ‘performed’ in 360. Not only that, but we were limited to only using certain effects that could be reproduced or indeed generated by the physical environment. These included:
Reverb & Echo: Generated by the size of the physical environment
Delay & Harmony: Generated by multiplying the number of visible Reeps’s
Panning: By moving around the camera (or stop motion movement)
By using just these ‘effects’, we needed to think creatively about how they were incorporated. For example, by making a simple percussive sound in a huge reverberating room (a warehouse), you could create 2–5 seconds of atmospheric texture. You can hear this technique used in the final piece, at 00:45 seconds.” (John Hendicott writing for Medium).
CHRIS TIMPSON, SOUND DESIGNER & INSTALLATION ARTIST
