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CONCEPTUALIZATION,
STORYTELLING & CHARACTER DESIGN

After the initial background research, Parabox has been divided into four phrases.

Phase 1: CRAFTING IDEA

During the first phase, our founding members have been working on the crafting of an idea to combines the spatial sound technology with the multi-guided theatre, show experience and research for a back-up details. To begin with, Parabox hopes to create a show set up aims to utilize the spatial sound and the head tracking technology. These technologies were researched in order to test their possibility in applying them with the multi guided theatre at the same time designing the user (audience) experience during the show. We found that ฺbeing blindfolded while listening to the show would increase audience’s immersive experience through listening than having their eyes opened. Furthermore, utilizing the spatial sound with the head tracking would create a more realistic experience as the audience in listening that they woul have never tried before. However, using the head tracking technology proof to be too difficult. Firstly, the camera would need to be set up in front of each audience to detect their head movement which might not be comfortable and, since the audience would be blindfolded, it would be difficult to track. Secondly, another possibility would be using the headphone that already have a built in head tracking technology but it would be too expensive. Thus, the head tracking technology was not used. Having said that, a solid storytelling with effective placing of foleys and from voice characters should be sufficient in providing an immersive experience. The first phrase ends with the preparation of the pitch deck and all the details to find the potential partner and the potential team members as well.

Phase 2: THE STORY & CHARACTER DESIGN

During our second phase, the project’s story and character design are the main focus. Since one of our founding member has been moved to another project in addition to the new student, Parabox has recruited and is joined by 3 new members. A story genre was the first thing we discussed. After he research on the sound experience and the story plot in each movie genre, a Science Fiction genre is chosen as our main theme for the story. We found out that most of the sound that we have heard in the Science Fiction or Sci-Fi is something we have been heard since young age but there is only a few people who have a chance to experience the real sound. Therefore, this provides us with an opportunity to explore and create the sound experience. Additionally, we also found out the story arc of this movie genre mostly use is the Hero Story Arc and the circle of Hero Journey. We, then, continue researching the Hero Story Arc deeply into how does it work and how it affects the audience when watching or listening to this kind of story, then we start working on the research about the plant and possibilities in the real space. After all the information is acquired, the storyline is being planned through the Story Arc Diagram and timeline process. The diagram includes all the details and what will happen along the story. As proposed in the introduction that the experience is to be from the first-person point of view, the timeline is created to make one story line where each character’s storyline would experience different events but happening at the same story. We use the character blinded in each situation to make the different experiences and different story but still in the same story plot. Moving on to the characters design and development, we aimed to create 5 different experiences. In order to make it effective, we decided to create 6 characters in this story. Thus, we begin with the designing of how they look like and what their role is and the personality in each character. Then we start creating the background of each character as well as the story arc of each character. After all designing, researching and setting up the story plots, we started writing the story scene by scene, timeline by timeline and after all the story done, we hired the story writer to help writing the script/dialogue of the story as we will need to use to recording the character voice in the next step. Working with the script writer, we need to explain theme, concept, character, mood and tone as well as the expectation of this story and experience. Along with the process of creating the story, we work parallel to each other to create and testing the spatial sound of how it works. We start compose some demo that based on the same theme as the story, to explore and research on the spatial sound. The result of the first demo is quite not impress as it could be, we cannot hear the 360 sound clearly and the software to work on the spatial sound is not fully support yet. Thus, we found out the first big problem of how we can playback the sound with the spatial technology. As we work closely with the spatial sound, our member has been attending the workshop and also research and testing again and again, the software to work with the spatial sound is update day by day, and at the end we can use it and create the sound experience as we expected.

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