Faultline has been a vocal critic of Apple’s toothless video strategy over the years, with the company unnecessarily ceding ground to rivals instead of using its superior cash position to spark trends and set precedents. But now, with Apple’s first immersive original hot off the cutting room floor, the iPhone slinger has produced a piece of content which will change the future of filmmaking forever.
Under the banner of Apple Immersive Video, the company has released its debut original scripted title for the Apple Vision Pro headset—called ‘Submerged’—a 16-minute short film set on a submarine and filmed using a proprietary 180-degree Apple 8K camera.
Before we face a flurry of complaints from the VR camp—no, Apple is not the first company to release content made exclusively for viewing on mixed reality headsets. However, Apple is the first company to produce a professional immersive movie tethered to a single piece of self-made hardware, captured using its own spatial patented camera technology.
Ultimately, Apple has forged its very own immersive ecosystem, and is the first of the new-age studios to produce original content explicitly to drive hardware sales.
The closest example we have of the joint studio-distribution-hardware play comes from Amazon. While content churned out by Amazon Studios is broadly available on Amazon Prime Video on any device capable of streaming video, certain experiences are optimized for Amazon’s own devices, such as Alexa voice commands integrated with Fire TV for controlling Prime Video content.
Amazon also offers certain promotions or early releases on its own hardware.
Apple’s exclusivity is therefore more reminiscent of the once fiercely competitive games console market. Sony’s PlayStation Productions is still to this day dedicated to creating content based on its gaming franchises, such as the ‘Uncharted’ movie or the upcoming ‘The Last of Us’ TV series.
While this content is not exclusively viewable on PlayStation consoles, PlayStation games that tie into these franchises create a proprietary ecosystem, linking the original content back to Sony’s hardware. Additionally, some Sony Pictures films and shows come bundled as exclusive promotions with Sony’s PlayStation Store or PlayStation Plus subscription services.
Nintendo is another example. While Nintendo does not strictly produce films or TV shows in the traditional sense, it has created exclusive content experiences that can only be accessed via its hardware.
For example, exclusive game-related content (like special documentaries or behind-the-scenes footage) is often bundled within the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service, only accessible on Nintendo consoles.
Circling back to Apple, clearly the company’s strategic priorities to boost uptake of its $3500 Vision Pro headset have shifted from bulking out the Vison Pro App Store, to creating original immersive titles as a sales driver.
Not only is Apple’s immersive technology disrupting cinema, but its 8K 3D camera rig (pictured) has also been spotted filming footage from Major League Soccer (MLS) in the US.
In a sense, the viewer becomes the camera operator. If you see a character appear through a doorway in your peripheral vision, your head will naturally turn out of curiosity, before returning to the sweet spot in the center of the room. Apple’s ‘Submerged’ movie has been created with this in mind, as an experiment before the eventual expansion of Apple Immersive Video to feature-length films.
With a 180-degree camera rig, the challenges are numerous.
Lighting is one issue. The spatial field of vision means that lighting must be incorporated into the set itself, because professional lighting rigs cannot be used anywhere in the immediate vicinity of the shot (not helped in this case by the close quarters of the makeshift submarine set).
Then there are camera format challenges, with 180-degree vision forcing the production team into rethinking how to move a camera in a confined space, without using traditional tracking or dolly shots (like a 3-axis gimbal, vest stabilizer, or drones), or anything that can be seen by the camera.
The ‘Submerged’ team created bespoke camera mounts and extendable crane arms to overcome these issues, with moving mechanisms which had to be hidden inside the set.
Choosing a submarine set as the debut testbed for an Apple Immersive Video original title was probably a very conscious decision.
Producers intended for the audience to feel the claustrophobia of a submarine, and to bring actors’ fear into viewers’ heads.
Mention of claustrophobia alone will be enough to deter a section of viewers, but the technology could prove just as effective at the megalaphobic and thalassophobic ends of the spectrum, immersing viewers in vast open world settings with 180-degree computer graphics.
However, Apple’s immersive innovation comes despite one of the most demanded features still missing from the Vision Pro, which is support for a native YouTube app. Vision Pro users are still restricted to viewing YouTube content within Apple’s Safari browser, which suffers from limited features like a lack of optimization for eye-tracking.
Google even recently demanded that Apple remove a third-party app from the Vision Pro App Store, called Juno, which was providing a basic web view of YouTube optimized for the Vision Pro interface to create a more integrated user experience. It is the popularity of apps like Juno that have forced Google to confirm that it is developing a native YouTube app for the Vision Pro, though the release date is still unknown.