Nielsen and Feli invite the viewers to immersively join them on their midnight hike, where they venture and discover various objects and things along their path. The project is aimed to explore and shine a light to a new way of documentation, whilst
integrating storytelling, as well as being designed to provide a fully immersive experience, captured using both a 360 degree camera, and an ambisonic format for the audio. The video and audio journey takes place around the Beacon Hill in Hong Kong, a place where the city and jungle meet. It was an authentic and unstaged documentation of
another side of Hong Kong; A liminal space between the jungle and the city, as well as a liminal time between the active hours of Hong Kong. Moreover, our personal storytelling adds depth and a fictional component to the otherwise documentative style video. Some key moments of the video are the discovery of an abandoned car, a group of stray dogs, Hong Kong city lights, the full moon, stories centering around the full moon like werewolf or vampires, the discussion of the possibility of the creature’s reality counterpart with real life diseases, and the attempt to create both humor and mystery to end the video.
To reach the shooting location, Beacon Hill, we chose to take a bus as our means of transportation, late at night. It was a long walk to find the right hiking trail that could bring the right light level, safe pathway, and a view of the city in the distance. We chose to record at night and darkness because it was aimed to give a mysterious atmosphere and immersive experience. We chose to use only the source of light from our phone flashlights, that are focused only at the objects that we want to highlight, like Nielsen as the guide the viewers follow, the pathway, and other objects along the way. The darkness was also thought to draw the viewer’s focus more on the ambisonic audio, outside of those highlighted flashlight spots.
The tools we used to record the project were a Zoom H3-VR, Insta360 camera, and a tripod. The tripod is used to attach both the zoom and 360 camera, and was held and carried by Feli to follow Nielsen in the video. Since the filmed site is at the liminal
space or edge of urbanization the viewer can also experience both the urban and nature’s ambience combined. The use of 360 degree video and ambisonic sound the hiking project offers a new and adventurous approach on entertainment, combining mystery and documentation in the most immersive format possible.
In summary, Nielsen and Feli’s midnight hike immerses viewers, with the help of a 360 degree video format and ambisonic audio format, to an adventure of the night, filled with mysteries as they tell stories and discover things along their journey.
Personal notes from us:
It was quite scary, the darkness, the stories, it was both tiring and scary, but worth it. Our personal favorite was when we stumbled upon the abandoned car, it looked pretty messed up. It was also pretty funny how we suddenly started talking about the werewolf and their reality counterpart, after finding some groups of stray dogs in the distance, we were saved from the barbed fences between us and the dogs. It was quite a journey. To hold the tripod was also quite hard, trying to maintain the speed and balance so that the video was not shaky. It was overall a fun and interesting experience. Both of us had a blast making the project. We had an amazing time in class, as well as our progress in brainstorming and amazing execution of the project!