Perfect Black

Genre VR experience & documentary

Perfect Black is an immersive film experience in which you experience the story of extraordinary protagonists. They are not only pioneers with their own strong views and masters in their field, they are also the confirmation of the diversity and greatness of the place we call Earth.

The Perfect Black is also a VR video project – combined with elements of augmented reality and binaural sound recording and playback – that allows us to delve deeper into the worlds of our protagonists and make them tangible and experienceable.

Image from Perfect Black experience showing the wild sea

The Protagonists

Dr. Antje Boetius is one of Germany’s most renowned deep-sea researchers, especially in the fields of deep-sea ecology and technology. She has spent several months on board research vessels of over 40 expeditions. She teaches at the University of Bremen and has headed the “Science in Dialog” steering committee since 2015.

»The Perfect Black is the moment when I leave the light-flooded surface of the oceans and go down with my submarine until total darkness sets in. Then I know I’ve arrived, that’s a feeling of home.«

Dr. Eike Günther, is a specialist in astrophysics with a focus on “Earth-like planets.”theyis primarily concerned with the search for new planets in other solar systems.theyis currently conducting research at the Landessternwarte Thüringen / Tautenburg as well as in Spain and Peru.

»The Perfect Black is a place without any form of waves, quanta or electromagnetic radiation. This place does not exist in our universe. Since the big bang there is a hardly measurable but omnipresent radiation in the universe: the echo of the big bang. The perfect black cannot exist in our universe.«

Katja Krüger is a professional musician, composer and music educator. Her life with music is built on the rarest form of synesthesia there is: hearing colors. In synesthetes, certain perceptual mechanisms are linked in the brain. People can smell colors, assign certain colors to every word or – rarely – hear colors. Katja Krüger’s life is all about her ability. She was diagnosed with this perceptual ability at the age of 17, but just a few years later she no longer feels “different.”

»The Perfect Black is a sound that I only hear when I see the color black. As a result of my synesthesia, when I look at Black, I get a deep, buzzing sound that overlays everything. With the right instrument, I can make the sound audible.«

Image from Perfect Black showing the inner of a ferry cockpit

A VR experience with binaural 3D sound

We want to translate “The Perfect Black” into a 360° VR experience with binaural 3D sound. The user wears video goggles and headphones of their own choice. With these tools, they can look around freely in a revolving 360° sphere.

Sounds can be precisely localized in space and move with the user’s view and in the right perspective. This new way of telling content has an enormously immersive effect on the user. They are not just a silent observer in the narrated world, but feel part of the world and can make interactive decisions.

The worlds of the protagonists are the core of our project. We want to enter the universe and the deep sea and we want to hear and see synesthesia.
“The Perfect Black” is meant to be a very sensual and aesthetic experience, at the end of which there can only be one question: What is your perfect black?

For this purpose, we divide the content of the linear film into three episodes connected by transitions. The length of each episode should not exceed three to four minutes to ensure an ideal stay in virtual reality.

Image from Perfect Black showing the face of Dr. Eike Günther in black and white

Project Details

Director
Tom Fröhlich

Author
Tom Fröhlich

Production Company
Neue Celluloid Fabrik

Producer
Jürgen Kleinig

Genre
Feature Length Documentary
VR experience series

Status
in development

Language
German / English

Funders
Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung