Remastering Freefall
In 2015…
I often employ Virtual Reality to construct scenarios I’m interested in, but unable to experience in real life. It’s like an extension of my imagination – once built, I can then share it with others and have them experience these scenes and worlds with me.
Around a year ago I made this thing called Freefall. Inspired by the opening sequence of the movie Gravity, it was a short VR film having you tumble out of control in Earth’s orbit. I was curious about two things:
- What would it look and feel like?
- Exactly how fast can I spin the camera (and therefore – the audience) to make them feel disoriented, but not have them get completely sick?
Over the course of one weekend I whipped up a simple 3D scene using beautiful high resolution textures captured by NASA, rendered it in octane using relatively low settings in 2K at 30fps. Finally I retimed it to 60 to eliminate the strobing that resulted from the original framerate.
I watched it a few times, got my answers, and then decided to edit together a simple audio track to share it online. While I replaced the original with the new version here, on the site, you can still see the 2015 version in this, unlisted YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb1bcavwna0
Post Prismatic Stress Disorder
Prior to Freefall, I have spent many weeks working on a piece called Prismatic. I was quite proud of the end result, due in equal part to both the art and technical direction – having built my own virtual camera rig and stitcher for the project. Unfortunately, Prismatic launched to a rather… mild reception.
I did not expect Freefall to do any better, especially considering the little effort put to its production. I really had no idea.
Within a week, got ten times as many views on each individual platform it got published, as Prismatic did on all platforms combined. It got picked up by distributors and started generating articles, project offers and general buzz.
It was all great, though deep inside I was being eaten by the impostor syndrome, feeling the film did not really deserve any of the attention it got.
Read the entire article on QubaVR.com