DDB Paris Capture
11.06.03 – The French pop sensation, Jenifer, has been kidnapped in the middle of her concert! It is up to you to rescue her from an excessively keen fan – but you can only do so using your hearing.
We teamed up with DDB Paris to create Capture, an intense auditory experience in which your reflexes, directional perception and melody recognition will be put to the test. The campaign intends to draw attention to young people, the importance of hearing and looking after their ears.
A rarity in today’s overly visual world, this experience is entirely based on sound.
What at first sight seems to be a concert video living on Youtube, soon becomes an interactive ’3D sound’ experience. You must use your hearing to succed!
At different points during the experience users are asked to interact and take quick decisions based on what they hear to find and rescue Jenifer without being caught by her kidnapper.
In order to create the illusion of sounds being placed in 3D space around the user’s head, we used two different solutions. Some of our sounds were recorded by our friends at Red Pipe using a binaural recording technique, involving a special microphone arrangement inside a dummy head. In addition, we built a bespoke 3D sound engine that processes HRTF data (head-related transfer function) in real-time . This data, made available by MIT, simulates the response that characterises how an ear receives a sound from a point in space. Applying this transformation in real-time allows us to use 3D sounds based on the user’s interaction and movement.
To cope with the heavy amount of data that needs to be processed to create this effect, we combined C++ with Adobe Flash via Adobe Alchemy to improve performance and guarantee a real-time dynamic response. When users interact, what they hear in their headphones will be perceived as if coming form precise points in space.