Contributions:
Music - adaptive soundtrack
Sound Design - user interface, ambience, vehicles
Voice Over - dialogue editing and processing
Lab Grown Music was contracted by Opposable VR to create the sound design and music for an AT&T promotional VR experience. The experience contains interactive and cinematic sequences, and required flexible 3D sound design alongside non-linear music.
The VR experience begins in an operations room, where the user interacts with a futuristic user interface. This is followed by an exciting helicopter and car journey over and through a neon-lit city, connected by the Internet of Things.
Audio Collage || AT&T: VR Experience
Sound Design
UI & Ambience
The VR experience's operations room is a large space and required a 3D ambience thick with the sounds of computations and machine hum. The user interface that the player interacts with contains text and screen animations, both of which required futuristic UI sound effects.
Voice Over
Voice over processing was also important. The player needed to feel as though they were talking to a female operative through a radio system, so special filtering and notification sounds were applied to her dialogue.
Screenshot from the virtual AT&T operations room, with music and sound design by Lab Grown Music.
Screenshot from the helicopter flight through AT&T's Innovation City VR experience.
Music and sound design by Lab Grown Music
Concept Vehicles
Out in Innovation City, both the helicopter and car ride needed to be flexible in length, achieved by creating looping sound effects, transitions and subtle crossfades. To enhance the experience of flying close to buildings in the helicopter, I created a looping reverb sound effect that could be attached to key skyscrapers near the aircraft's flight path. Once a high doppler setting was applied, this then simulated the sound of the helicopter passing by large objects.
The concept electric car also required some innovative sound design. Its deep engine hum needed to sound powerful but more quiet than a combustion engine might. To achieve this, I used granular synthesis to create an engine drone that could increase in pitch and volume with the speed of the car. I also applied sound effects to the wheels of the vehicle to simulate tyre friction on the road, and used the same technique to create passby sound effects as for the helicopter.
Music
Not only did the music need to be adaptive so that it could seamlessly develop along with the interactive narrative, it needed to convey the futurism of the experience and create a tense mood to accompany the player's mission, whilst remaining non-intrusive.
I achieved this by using an understated, contemporary sound palette to create the music, using drones, soft pulses and minimal glitchy percussion. There are 3 distinct sections to the music, with looping phrases and stings to transition smoothly from one section to the next. One of the sections was broken down into layers so that when the user selected the correct option, the music would build correspondingly. In the final section, I incorporated the melodic ident that AT&T currently used in its advertising to ensure the experience retained the sonic identity of the company.
