The Life of Boba

As the title of the video “The Life of Boba” shows, my 360-degree video is about how Boba’s short life of accompanying the main character during the city walk of Shanghai. I think this idea is interesting to be shown in a 360-degree video because we watch videos of city walk (roaming around the city on foot) very often but we seldom have the chance to view it from different angles. Since everyone has different preferences, shooting a 360-degree video on the street allows everyone to focus on different things, ranging from shops, cars to people’s actions. 

I also learned my lesson from my last 360 video so that I chose Boba as my main thread to run through the whole video: One thing is that Boba’s position is a bit lower than the height of human’s eyes, so the video’s perspective is different  from normal videos. Another point is that the main character’s attitude towards this Boba has a very big shift. At first he was very impressed by the Boba’s flavor and he liked it very much. Then he took the Boba to travel in Shanghai and to walk through many streets. At last, the Boba was abandoned by the ruthless main character. This somehow reflectes the fickleness of human relationships: sometimes people are cherished and sometimes are abandoned or left behind. I also put the audio files into two groups(left track and right track) based on the main character’s position towards the street. If the main character is on the right side of the street, most sounds should come from the left channel, and vice versa.

Since I made this video individually, all the work, including shooting and editing are done by me. One of the biggest challenges I faced was where to put the camera while shooting. Then I found a material from my delivery package. Fortunately, this holder has proper width to hold the Boba and the camera at the same time. It was also easy for me to hold it in this way.

 

Here is a photo of my Premiere Pro editing page.

Sound of Silence

When albums with different genres are stacked on the table, it seems that this moment is silent. However, the music in the CDs represents each artist’s effort and spirit, and the voices and stories are embedded in the CDs. Music is like a magical language that people from all over the world can feel its emotions, no matter what their races, ages, cultural backgrounds are. Whether the music is dynamic, graceful or heartfelt, this hidden energy will set free when the CDs are played. The act of playing the music transforms the perceived silence into an immersive auditory experience, revealing that even in apparent stillness, there exists a vibrant and evocative world of sound waiting to be unleashed. 

VR Game Experience from XR Space

I went to the XR Space and tried several VR games and apps. The VR device I used was called PICO 4 and PICO belongs to a famous Chinese company called ByteDance. From my point of view, the most interesting game was Superhot, a first-person shooter game where time moves only when the player moves. Basically, I needed to move my controllers to use fists and other weapons to fight against robots rushing at me. When I didn’t move, the whole game just froze but as soon as I moved, the robots also moved and tried to shoot at me and I needed to escape the bullets. 

I have experienced multisensory interactions in this game. The first sense was sight because I needed to be careful with the opponents who came from different directions. Hence, I often looked both ways while moving in the game, but my movements also allowed the opponents to rush at me, which was the most exciting and innovative design of the game. The second sense was hearing. The sound effects were quite real and I could hear bullets going right through me. The hit sound effect when I killed a robot was also very thrilling. The third sense was touch since I needed to touch different buttons on the controllers to take action in the game. I remember that one button was designed for picking up and holding weapons and another button was designed to pull the trigger. I believe that these three senses all contribute to the fantastic game experience and make me immersed in the gameplay. It was great fun but I would suggest 30 minutes was a proper duration for playing this game since I felt a bit tired after playing for 45 minutes.

I won’t agree that the game content in Superhot is an artwork. In my opinion, the main difference between an artwork and a game is that an artwork often expresses some ideas, thought and it relates to a certain type of aesthetics but a game can be designed just for entertainment. This is also the case in Superhot since I didn’t see any core ideas or messages from the game designer but it did bring me lots of fun. If I need to change it to an artwork, I will improve its design into an image. The image demonstrates the scene that a black character is fighting against numerous enemies with red skin color. What I would like to stress is the huge difference in numbers between the two sides as well as the uncertainty about the red men. It may reflects some personal life struggles or social issues related to race and identity.

Immersion Experiences and Psychological Distance

In the reading material “Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion”, Oliver Grau argues that Immersion in virtual reality is different from immersion in imagination or literature. To be more specific, the main difference depends on the psychological distance between the observer and the image space, which relies on the medium that the space was created through. Now I would like to analyze how the psychological distance is similar to or different from in the experience of paintings, sculptures, plays, movies, television, games, or VR.

Speaking of similarities, I think paintings, sculptures, movies, and television are often set still or set in a fixed place so that the psychological distance is usually stable. However, for plays, games and VR, it offers more flexibility since the audience or player may need to move for better experiences. The second similarity is that paintings, televisions and most mobile/computer games are 2D while other forms could be 3D or more than 3D. This results in a huge difference in immersion because 3D offers a more immersive experience than 2D since its surroundings are more vivid. For diffences, I think psychological distance plays different roles in each form. For paintings and sculptures, the distance matters since it directly affects your view towards the object. Nevertheless, psychological distance might not be that important in plays and television since the contents are often the main focus. I find it hard to describe the usage of psychological distance in movies and games because it depends on the genres and themes and I think that if the  audience or player is fully immersed, the psychological distance is closer than the physical distance. For VR, the psychological distance is even closer, which helps player to have a better experience of immersion, including image and audio. In short, the usage of psychological distance and immersion experiences varies and it depends on the medium.