To create the most haunted with less. Using my passion and expertise in making live-action narrative films, I treated this project as an experiment to reinterpret storytelling techniques in cinema to virtual reality. I minimized the field of view to a single door frame to maximize audio and visual suspense. I encourage the audience to experience it in a VR headset since there is no better way to experience the immersive tension and fear built into the project than a VR headset.
Window As A Stage
Alfred Hitchcock uses one apartment window to tell a compelling feature-length murder story in Rear Window (1954). Inspired by that, I design the door frame as "the stage" of this VR experience. In VR, our perception of distance is enlarged, hence making it easy to tell whether something is closer to or far away. That is why a zombie walking toward you is way scarier in VR than in the film.
"Infinite" Level Design
"Infinite" space can effectively build suspense because it creates blind spots. The key to creating "infinite" space is to block the user from seeing the end of the hallway. I design two "infinite" hallways in the level design, one closer, the other farther away from the viewer.
Power-down Moment
The power-down moment is the icing on the cake, unexpected, thus making the experience more horrifying. Since the user's perception is in line with the field of view the headset provides, when lights are shut, the user can not see anything, immersed by darkness. The timeline is made of multiple character animations, 2D and 3D audios, and objects activation tracks. The greens tracks are used to create the three power down moments.
