GEAR
HEAD-TO-HEADVRMIC TEST
Røde, Sennheiser and Zoomhave all introduced dedicated VRmics that promise to deliver a three-dimensional result... ALL ROUND SOUND SOUND AROUND
WORDS TERRY HOPE
T he world of VR is here, and there can be few of us these days who haven’t donned a headset and experienced a virtual world, even if it’s only for a fewminutes or so at a trade show. Over the next few years this market is only going to grow, driven in part by the gaming industry, which can sense how lucrative this opportunity is going to be as experiences become ever more realistic. But filmmakers are also poised tomove in, and already many are looking closely at the commercial opportunities this sector will present.
tool that can be used to direct your viewer towards the action you want them to look at. And just as in real life, if someone talks fromone direction and you turn to look , it’s where the next part of the story might be found. So, audio is a compelling part of the jigsaw: it’s really difficult not to acknowledge someone talking directly to you, even if you know for sure that it’s a recording. Suspend disbelief during your VR experience and you become fully immersed in the story, perhaps investing evenmore than if you were viewing a conventional movie.
It’s not just visuals that have to improve before VR truly goes mainstream: audio is also a crucial part of the mix if the end result is going to be believable, and this is a key issue that’s focused the mind of key players in the sector. The issue is that sound coming from one direction is not howwe hear things in real life – our ears can sense where noise is coming from. To complement VR visuals, you need audio to tally with the images you’re seeing. For filmmakers, sound is more than just an extra level of authenticity – it’s a crucial
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PRO MOVIEMAKER SPRING 2019
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