Window Into a World
A Room’s Echoing Memories
Synopsis
The audience takes on the role of a child and a teenager by immersing themselves into two rooms. With a crafted narrative, the audience experiences memories of the character. It showcases the contrast between the peaceful life of a child and afterwards the depressing life as a teenager. The drastic contrast between the character’s childhood and puberty makes for a moving experience.
Narrative Process
For this project, the biggest challenges were coming up with a narrative. From the get-go, we brainstormed various ideas we could possibly embark on.
Our top three ideas were:
After having brainstormed and gathered feedback on these ideas, we decided to work out the third idea. The core feedback we got was that there was still a narrative missing, so this is what we worked on next.
There were a couple ideas of narratives we could implement. What was important to us was a contrast between (two) worlds in the narrative that we could work with. A couple examples of these narratives were:
We found the third narrative to be the most interesting, so we started to expand on it. We researched for inspiration, looking at references like Toy Story and a game called Unpacking. Which naturally inspired us to embark on possible narrative roads. Our main priority was to work on the contrast between these worlds. How will we showcase this and what will our general themes be? We landed on the emotional difference between a child and a teenager, which will be showcased in their respective bedrooms.
From there on we created a narrative with two different physical scenes. We decided how the two bedrooms would look, but also what objects there would be in the room (Figure 1). But then a question remained: how will we showcase the narrative? The solution we thought of was the use of spotlights: this showcases different objects which correlate to memories. We decided the audio design complimented by the visuals could tell the narrative well.
To broaden the narrative even more, we decided to work on the personality of the child. We crafted an origin story of the character. We did this by ‘interviewing’ him. This helped us build onto a stronger personality. For example: it gave us the underlying reason for the peaceful to depressing life he leads, but also his hobbies. This gave us ideas of elements we could visually put into the room to give it personality, rather than it being a ‘stereotypical’ boy’s room. It also helped us realize different objects we could implement in both rooms so that there is still a correlation between them as the scene switches. With this information we chose which parts of the narrative could be combined with which objects to have a spotlight on.
Visual Process
The visuals of the installation were crafted using Blender, employing a systematic approach to create a cohesive and immersive environment. Starting with a reference image of the room layout and the placement of important objects (Figure 2), we laid the foundation for the subsequent visual narrative.
The room structure, including walls, doors, and windows, took shape with a detailed wallpaper design (Figure 3), setting the stage for the unfolding story.
As the room structure solidified, the addition of furniture elements (Figure 4) imbued the space with tangible form, contributing to the overall atmosphere. To enhance the visual storytelling, strategic placement of objects within the room was undertaken. Creating a duplicate room structure allowed us to introduce contrast between the rooms, aligning with the narrative nuances we aimed to represent (Figure 5).
With the two scenes established, the animation phase began. The spotlight dynamically directed attention to specific objects, synchronizing with the audio context associated with each focal point. Camera movements were carefully choreographed, and frames for each camera were fine-tuned to showcase the spotlight effectively during the render process. Rendering was conducted meticulously, with each wall and floor being rendered separately (Figure 6), aligning with the room's physical proportions for accurate projection and using a 35 mm camera with no distortion.
The planned precision of the project was affirmed through initial tests (Figure 7), confirming the accuracy and perfection of the planned proportions and angles. Subsequently, all scenes were rendered and seamlessly integrated in After Effects. The compilation of renders facilitated the creation of a simulated room preview (Figure 8), for synchronization and providing a comprehensive overview before the final projection. This process ensured a visually stunning and narratively compelling installation that aligned seamlessly with our creative vision.
Audio Process
The main roles of the audio were to give the audience more context behind the narrative, to create emotion and to make the installation more engaging. In these following paragraphs there will be a couple important highlights in the creation of the audio.
One of the challenges was to convey a sense of emotion through the audio. After feedback from the first couple versions, it was clear that the element that was holding the emotion back were the human voices. This was caused by the conversations being incomprehensible and the voices having lack of character. Therefore, we gave each character their own voice, which made the characters easier recognizable by the audience, which effectively raised the narrative of the story as well, since they could identify who in the storyline is currently being spotlighted.
Another important aspect of the audio was to create a sense of environment which helps the audience feel more immersed within the space. This was created using ambient noise. In the first version the environmental noises of inside and outside the room were quiet during transitions from spotlights. It was noted that the sudden disappearance of these sounds made the audience nearly slip away from immersion, this made us realize the importance these sounds hold in the audio. Therefore, we kept the environmental sounds throughout the installation where it was needed.
After having tested the audio for the first time, we felt there was a sense of direction missing in the audio. Therefore, we added binaural panning. Whenever a spotlight lights up, the audio sounds like it originates from the current spotlight shown, which in turn increased the effectiveness of the spotlights as well.
There was also experimenting with the sounds that would be heard during the scene with the portal. The purpose of the sound of the portal was to invoke a call to action of the audience. This was created by a harsh switch to a loop of a trance-like, idle-state synth which compliments the sci-fi nature of the portal.
Reflection | Feedback
We showcased this project onto the mini expo, this resulted in us collecting a lot of feedback. While the audience was experiencing the installation, we also did a fly on the wall to analyze their body language and actions.
Reoccurring feedback we got was about the spotlights. The positive outcome was that these really helped create the narrative, however the downside was: they weren’t obvious enough, especially in the first room. In the future we could improve this by using an audio cue while a new spotlight emerges, or by changing the room color to be slightly more yellowish so that the spotlights stand out more.
Furthermore, for some the portal worked and for others it felt a bit out of place. Few people understood the visual inside of the portal, was the other room. In the future we could fix this by using a clearer image of one wall in the room instead of using a top view. However, during the fly on the wall, but also in said feedback, it was clear that the footsteps served their purpose since it created a sense of interaction. Many thought they changed the scene themselves, because they followed the footsteps and stood in the portal.
Most importantly, the narrative was clear and understandable. We even heard from some the drastic contrast between the rooms felt intense and emotional because they were so immersed. The different characters in the story were clear too, even though we only used audio for it. The main reason for this were the different voices that were given to the characters, but also the spotlight choices and objects in the room.