Night Fall
On 4 November 2016, Night Fall received the most votes from the public, thus winning the Public Choice Award, the biggest prize of the evening at the first edition of the Bright VR Awards: the awards for the best Dutch VR productions.
Just recently Nightfall was among the prize winners at the prestigious American Cinequest Film & VR Festival. Night Fall won in the category ‘Best Live Experience’.
The international press were very enthusiastic about Night Fall.
‘A delightful ballet show unfolds around you (...) Passion, beauty, technology and theatre, seamlessly blends together in this tantalising tale Nightfall.’ - virtualcorrespondent.com
‘The world’s first VR ballet experience is absolutely stunning (...) It’s an exciting new take on an art form that has been around for ages, breaking into an audience that might not normally visit a ballet show.’ - thenextweb.com
‘Ballet has officially entered the 21st century. (...) The effect is goose bump-worthy.’ - pointemagazine.com
‘This Virtual Reality Ballet will blow your mind. (…)As you explore the fantastical piece, you feel completely transported.’- dancespirit.com
The film has over 300.000 views on the Dutch National Ballet YouTube channel.
Spatial audio plays an important role in this novel VR rendering of ballet. By creating 3D sound design, we guide and direct viewers in a gentle, natural manner; it's as integral to the narrative as the visuals themselves. To enhance the illusion of literally standing in the middle of a performance, we mapped and rebuilt an entire audio landscape. The focus is purely on the soloists, who play the most important parts in the story.
The first part of the choreography begins with the antagonist. With the sound design we enhanced the 'evil' character of the antagonist. We wanted this part to be really immersive so the viewer could fell the danger heading upon himself.
After this introduction the two lovers try to come together but the antagonist tries to prevent them from coming together by interfering with his energy. We enhanced this by adding sound design on the energies which is seen through the visual effects.
The piece reaches a climax and the music takes over, we chose to let the music take over completely so the viewer feels he isn't in the real immersive world anymore.
Finally the antagonist sends one of the lovers back to sleep state again and the prima donna freezes in position. From here the dark ambience starts again.
The Dutch National Ballet has been the leading dance company of The Netherlands for over 50 years. The company develops, produces and performs ballet on an international top level. While the Dutch National Ballet attracts many visitors the vast majority of the visitors consists out of the same homogeneous group. They where looking for ways to attract a broader audience to the institution. The goal was to reach a group that was not yet familiar with ballet, including a younger audience.
The main challenge was the fact that the production was recorded without any audio. We had to design every foley element in the project. The artistic challenge was to make sure that we could guide the viewer with spatial audio so they could follow the choreography better. There are a lot of dancers and the viewer can after all decide for himself where to focus in the VR world. It was our task to guide the viewer with spatial sound. Also we where brieft to emphasis the story behind the choreography and add more drama and context. The client asked us if we could find a balance between the composed music, which is an element that makes the experience less immersive in term of 'being there' in the VR world, and on the other hand the spatial sound design which strives the opposite.
