ABC’s The Off Season 360 Experience by Light Sail VR Traps Viewers Into Cryptic Loop

As an effort to heighten today’s launch of ABC’s new original digital series “The Off Season,” by Retrofit Films, Hollywood-based VR production company Light Sail VR created a 360-degree video promo for the digital series that aims to elicit the same fears and frustrations in the viewer as experienced by the series’ trapped characters. The promo was launched and being featured on the 360 video distribution platform Littlstar.

You can view the 360 experience on Littlstar HERE.

The experience captures the show’s eerie aesthetic by immersing viewers in the eternally wretched Ship Helms Motel alongside the show’s characters Jack (Rob Belushi) and Laurie (Erica Rhodes), where frightening and claustrophobic events occur in cyclical tandem.

Light Sail VR’s creative team leveraged their expertise in virtual reality and 360 filmmaking to shoot of the promo in tandem with the production of the show. Being restricted to only filming one actor at a time during series production, Light Sail VR went through extensive pre-production to meticulously calculate the positions and timing of movements of each character, so that other actors added to the shot would integrate seamlessly and not jeopardize the loop effect. In order for viewers to perceive the full cryptic effect, Light Sail VR’s team also used strategic spatial audio techniques and ominous visual cues to elicit emotional responses and prompt necessary physical movements, immersing and steering the viewer through the storyline.

“The Off Season” can be viewed on ABC.com and the ABC app.