Memory Cinema

Exploring a new type of cinematic, musical storytelling that either reduces or augments the means of cinematography. Within the immersive environment of virtual reality, photography becomes scenography, actors become 3D geometries, spoken word becomes melodies, and the story forms itself with the user's subconscious in the driver's seat. The methodology stays transparent, so the user can explore and enjoy the roughness and aesthetics of digital noise as it tries to interpret our physical world.

A short movie in the style of an immersive musical. Wearing a custom headset, users move through a VR experience derived from personal memories, recreated as 3D-reconstructed, photogrammetry-based environments and reprocessed. Actors were filmed with volumetric cinematography. The storytelling evolves procedurally, tracking the user's eye blinks to jump from one memory to the next; sound is processed binaurally, matched to each environment's own acoustic character.

The custom headset uses a tiny projector to cast the content in front of the user, enlarged through a magnifying lens, with a PSMove tracking head movement in space and a small camera watching the user's eye to detect blinking and advance the story.