Hallelujah Press Sheet Embargo: April 21, 2017 at 9 a.m. ET/6 a.m. PT (Please contact efitzgerald@lytro.com and press@with.in with any questions.) Overview: Hallelujah is A Within Original made in partnership with Lytro. It is created by Zach Richter, Bobby Halvorson and Eames Kolar. Hallelujah is a first-of-its-kind virtual reality music experience that reimagines Leonard Cohen s most iconic song. The experience is centered around a unique 5-part a cappella arrangement, which is composed and performed in-the-round (around the viewer) by Bobby Halvorson, an LA-based musician with a distinct focus on vocal arrangements and harmony. Each part of the performance is captured with Lytro Immerge, the world s first professional Light Field solution for cinematic virtual reality. Lytro Immerge enables live action VR content to behave as it does in the real world for an uncompromised sense of presence and truly immersive experience. This is the world s first Lytro VR experience to be made available to the public. The Experience: The viewer is encircled by five instances of Bobby, where he performs each part of the Hallelujah arrangement himself in a different vocal range. The 360-degree, binaural audio is highly spatialized and positionally aware, so as you move around the space getting closer and further away from each instance of Bobby, you hear the song in different ways. At the climax of the experience, after the song has finished, the lights in the virtual space quickly fade to black and the performance stops. The viewer is held in a dark void. After a few seconds, the lights come roaring back up and the viewer is facing Bobby and a 16-person choir in a magnificent, grand cathedral as powerful sound resonates through the space for the final chorus. Trailer : https://vr.lytro.com/#bts Creator Quote: Hallelujah is such a powerful song; coupled with the immersive technology from Lytro, we believe that people will feel connected to the experience in such an emotional way, said Zach Richter. Stripping the components of the piece to the essentials and using this technology creates an incredible sense of presence. It becomes real. Something impossible, like having five different versions of Bobby performing all around you and singing to you, feels normal. With virtual reality we can think about music in an entirely new way. Lytro Immerge: Hallelujah was created using the Lytro Immerge Light Field camera, processing pipeline and playback technology. The end-to-end solution: Represents first live action capture system that enables Six Degrees of Freedom Provides the highest quality and highest resolution greater than 6K per eye Allows for true presence: everything in the headset reacts as it should in the real world Seamlessly blends the physical and digital worlds
Partners: Hallelujah was created by: Zachary Richter Bobby Halvorson Eames Kolar Key collaborators: Chrissy Szczupak, Lytro Orin Green, Lytro Jess Engel, Within Chris Milk, Within Aaron Koblin, Within Sound by EccoVR: Joel Douek Benedict Green Special thanks: International Orange Chorale of SF Sennheiser Boilerplates: About Within Within is the premier destination for innovative, entertaining, and informative story-based virtual reality. They bring together the best immersive experiences from the world's finest VR creators from gripping tales set in worlds of pure imagination to documentaries taking you further inside the news than ever before. Within supports all major headsets, including Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, Sony Playstation VR, and Google Daydream. To get started experiencing Within s ever-growing roster of content, just download the app for iphone or Android. Within was founded by award-winning filmmaker Chris Milk and renowned technologist Aaron Koblin with the goal of exploring and expanding the potential of immersive storytelling. We collaborate with companies including Lytro, Apple, The New York Times, NBC, Vice Media, and the United Nations, as well as artists including U2 and OneRepublic to bring to life and distribute premium immersive stories in a variety of genres. (Social: @within) About Lytro Lytro is building the world s most powerful Light Field imaging platform enabling artists, scientists and innovators to pursue their goals with unprecedented levels of freedom and flexibility. With the announcement of Lytro Immerge, the world's first Light Field solution for Virtual Reality (VR), in late 2015 and followed by the 2016 launch of Lytro Cinema, the world's first Light Field capture system for cinematic content, Lytro is firmly at the forefront of the generational shift from legacy 2D imaging to 3D volumetric Light Field video. Learn more: Lytro.com. (Social: @lytro) About Zach Richter Zach Richter is an award-winning director, creative director and graphic designer. His work combines interactive media, technology, and storytelling. In 2015, Richter directed the NYTimes first virtual reality film, Walking New York and more recently was a director/creative director on the Within VR series The Possible, created with David Gelb. Richter's work has been shown at Sundance, Tribeca and SXSW film festivals, and has been honored with the highest awards in creativity and technology at Cannes Lions, The Webby Awards, and Clio Awards. Richter is the Creative Director of Within, a virtual reality company founded by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin.
Visuals: Lytro Immerge Bobby Halvorson performing
Looking at the Volumetric Capture on set Zach Richter directing on set (with Lytro team) Zach Richter, Bobby Halvorson, the choir and Lytro in the cathedral
The Choir
Lytro BTS (creating the final experience) Chrissy Szczupak, Creative Producer at Lytro
Tim Milliron, VP of Engineering at Lytro