The project is an exploration of VR filmmaking, through a short narrative experience that would not just be congruent with the medium, but require it, to effectively tell its story.

Films in VR, on Google Spotlight Stories, and on Within were studied, to begin with. Some notable ones use spatial sound and 360 visuals to tell stories without disorienting the user, are:

Watching these gave us a sense of how a viewer’s attention is directed, beyond a frame. Experiencing good and bad examples of VR, and consciously thinking of the qualities or attempted techniques that make them so, was essential to begin the project. A couple of students' films also helped introduce to us, the distinct aspects of VR filmmaking.

A few story ideas that were conceptualized and researched initially, for the project. After many iterations, the final concept was fixed as "Fish in a Bowl".

- A fish does the same things over and over in his bowl. TV. Food. Toilet. Stare emptily out

the window.

- It could feel mundane, even a little frustrating, adding to the intended VR experience.

The visual exploration began with the idea of combining worlds for the story of Fish in a Bowl. It would have a couch, an old tv set, corals, rocks, a toilet, a mirror, some furniture, and other elements for the character to interact with. The initial layout for the bowl:

Later Understanding the 360 Images, for this we worked with 2D grids on photoshop and 3D environment on Blender, and created equirectangular images for our own viewing and understanding.

Equirectangular images are modeled and rendered on Blender.

To imagine how the character would create their home from the environment around them: Using rocks, plants, corals, shipwrecks, and scrap. The mood board also informed the visual style and colour choices we would subsequently make for the film.

To move from concept art to modelling, we began with a rudimentary 3D layout, in accordance with the rough 2D design of the environment.

​​​​​​​The 3D environment was blocked based on the concept art, to identify and refine the spatial and compositional relationships between the elements.

While being simple and practical to animate, the character was designed to appear (and move like they’re) numb and merely exist, in a loop, they are mostly unconscious of.

The timing of the character’s movement and interactions was refined in a 2D animatic, which was then adopted into an animatic on Blender.

The Camera positions in the animatic required a few iterations and renders to optimize.

VR images (over-under), with some sets replaced by final models.

The sets placed inside of a glass bowl.

Using the references collected and created in the concept art, each set was modelled in Blender — with primitive shapes initially, and gradually detailed. The models were then textured and coloured, to match the character and capture the imagined atmosphere of the narrative.

The character is currently being animated, with interactions with each set, in quickening loops. Alongside the animation is the process of sound design, for each of these interactions, and the ambient sounds of the bowl.

All the animation were rendered in Blender software, more than 2286 frames were rendered in a equirectangular image, which let us to take more time for the rendering. It almost took more than a week to render in 5 different systems. 

The final compositing and the sound editing was done in Adobe Premiere Pro.