A lot of attention has been given to spherical video, but spatial audio also plays a prominent role in immersive storytelling. "There are a lot of people making and consuming virtual reality who are wondering why some videos are better than others, and it's because the sound that's used in them is immersive as well as the visuals – it makes a massive difference," said Catherine Robinson, sound supervisor at BBC Research and Development.
"With VR, you have these amazing 360-degree videos and they look real, but if you are not convinced by the sound, it just draws you out of the immersion."
So what exactly is spatial audio? Robinson, who produced the audio for the latest Planet Earth II YouTube 360 videos, explained that 'spatially orientated' audio is similar to what we experience with surround sound, but it's designed for headphones.
The sounds are anchored to the sphere surrounding the viewer, so if they were to turn their head, the source of the sound would stay in the same place, but the audience would hear the sounds slightly differently, giving a more immersive experience.
"It's all to do with the way we perceive sound," Robinson explains, noting that our unique head, body and shoulder shape affects they way we hear, with sounds bouncing off us and scattering around our body, helping us to monitor the direction and distance of the noises around us.
Spatial audio is therefore a powerful tool that publishers can use to control user attention, she noted, by placing specific noise in the direction they want audiences to look or focus their attention on.
"If the story is only being directed by the visuals, you might miss exactly what you're supposed to be seeing in order to drive the narrative forward," Robinson said.
"Sound can give you lots of information about what you're not looking at – if the viewer is cued by a sound that happens behind them, they will likely follow that sound as we would naturally in the real world."
Just as 2D audio can be edited and manipulated on production software, spatial audio can also be adjusted to help guide the user – even to the extent of controlling the direction, height and distance from the listener.
However, Darren Emerson, co-founder of VR production company East City Films, suggested that this techniques might be best used for cinematic, feature pieces rather than news reports, warning that although spatial audio is a great way to immerse viewers in content, journalists must be wary to not mislead viewers.
When you have the technical skills, your stories should be driven by the way you write and the way the narratives are developed, rather than people using spatial audio at the endCatherine Robinson, BBC
"A lot of spatial audio is edited in post production. Unless journalists record the sounds live, I think it can become ethically murky. Sound is so powerful in VR," he said.
"360-degree video is just as easy to manipulate as traditional media – you can alter it as much as you can a 16x9 frame, by painting out objects, depositing things in there or adding audio from a different direction.
"If the project is post-heavy, where you are putting many sounds into the environment afterwards, is it a true representation of what was there in the fist place?"
Both Robinson and Emerson noted that those looking to start using spatial audio in their storytelling should spend time before the shoot to establish how a scene can be broken down, and work out where the sounds should be coming from in order to produce realistic, immersive experiences that the audience can connect with.
"When you have the technical skills, your stories should be driven by the way you write and the way the narratives are developed, rather than people using spatial audio at the end," said Robinson.
"We don't know where virtual reality is going to go, but we can just experiment and learn how to craft beautiful stories in it.
"I can imagine immersion to step forward of what we are smelling and feeling in the future as well, it's not just going to be about sound and visual, but all the senses."
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