A new form of music video on Vision Pro: The Weeknd's Open Hearts
When you open Apple TV on Vision Pro, in addition to ordinary video content, there is a group of content categorized as Apple Immersive.
I assume there are no Vision Pro users who have never watched Apple Immersive, but I imagine quite a few people watched everything once and then stopped. In the meantime, Apple Immersive videos have been increasing little by little.
Even people who have already experienced the Apple Immersive videos may not have seen "Submerged," which was released in October.
This short film will surely be positioned as a historic work when people look back on Apple Immersive Video in the future. Personally, though, I felt that my own body and the movement of the screen did not match very well. I can accept scene changes, but movement by slider felt unavoidably strange, and even though I rarely get 3D sickness, I felt a little unwell. Still, in terms of presence, the resolution was far higher than previous 3D videos, and it made me expect future development in this field of film.
Then came The Weeknd's Apple Immersive Video.
In terms of music videos, I think this MV by The Weeknd will become a monumental work. Surely there were many artists who wanted to be the first to release an MV on Vision Pro. If David Bowie were alive, he probably would have made one.
I want people to watch the flow of the video without prior information, so I will not describe it. But this movie also uses plenty of slider-based direction. Maybe viewers need to become more accustomed to it, but it is fairly tough. I want to keep watching future works and ask again whether slow, constant, automatic movement simply does not suit me.
Incidentally, for music-related content, one of the earliest pieces was Alicia Keys' studio live performance. That one was shot with a fixed camera, so even when the camera changed, it was very easy to watch.
This MV is quite novel as an experience. As someone who has watched MTV for a long time, my relationship with MVs has always been more like watching them in the background than immersing myself in them. But when it is presented as Immersive Video, it no longer feels like that detached background-viewing relationship. The events inside the MV feel more connected to me than expected.
For example, this piece has many medical scenes, but when watching an ordinary MV I would not feel this much anxiety or this kind of relationship to myself. That is exactly why, even though it is only a few minutes long, I feel tired after watching it. I could watch MTV for half a day without getting tired, but if something like an Immersive Video version of MTV starts in the future, watching it for half a day would surely leave me exhausted.
There is probably a grammar of comfort and discomfort for Apple Immersive Video. I do not plan to create video content, but I want to apply this feeling to UI design.