Submerged, Apple's first scripted film created for its Vision Pro mixed reality headset, takes the most isolating of viewing experiences – strapping an enclosed screen to your face – and conjures up something sweatily communal and heart-thumpingly alive.
The VR short, written and directed by Edward Berger, Oscar-winning director of All Quiet on the Western Front, employs Apple's new Immersive Video format, which combines ultra-high-resolution 3D footage with an expansive 180-degree field of view. The effect is somewhere between watching a movie and being a non-speaking extra in one.
In its quieter and up-close moments, the 17-minute World War II submarine thriller delivers the physical punch of theatre. As tensions rise and the inevitable confusion of fire, metal and gushing water arrives, it rushes past the visual dynamism of cinema and arrives somewhere completely new. You spend a lot of your viewing time thinking about the huge experiential gap between ‘immersive video’ and conventional cinema (let alone from-the-couch TV) and the possibilities the technology offers filmmakers.
In truth, its less Submerged’s thrills and spills that impress, than its materiality, the convincing metal of it. The video was shot on a purpose-built, 23-tonne submarine set, with all lighting and sound equipment hidden in plain sight. And Berger lingers on the details, letting the uncanniness sink in.
The effect is of course claustrophobic, but Berger seems to be playing with different ideas about the virtual worlds Vision Pro magics into being. He creates enclosed space and tunnel vision, big, open, immersive landscapes (or waterscapes), as well as Through the Looking Glass weirdness, getting at that trippiness in the way he plays with scale and point of view.
Berger and his crew used Apple's specially developed stereoscopic camera system, which captures both 8K 3D video and multidirectional spatial audio and Berger wore the Vision Pro headset during filming to understand exactly how scenes would play out for viewers. "You learn very quickly," he has said. "Your brain rewires to the tools, to the visuals, to the techniques."
The little less than 20 minutes of Submerged feels like enough in this virtual environment. The experience is entirely novel and intense, and you are reminded that the first cinema audiences ran terrified from an oncoming on-screen train.
As modern audiences seems less and less entranced by the communal cinema experience, it seems to point towards a new alone-but-together experience where you are cast rather than crowd, on-stage rather than ogling from the circle. And Immersive Video’s unique selling point is oddly not sensory overload or pyrotechnics but an almost physical intimacy.
Submerged is just the first wave of a deluge of new Immersive Video content being released by Apple. Next up is a collaboration with The Weeknd, as well as a new concert series, including a set from British singer songwriter Raye and her 20-piece band. Adventure meanwhile will follow extreme athletes, including freediver Ant Williams, being extreme.
Submerged is available on Apple TV for the Apple Vision Pro, Apple.com
