The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub speaks with director Edward Berger about his collaboration with Apple on his short film
Submerged
.

Submerged
is the first-ever scripted film using the Apple Vision Pro cameras, telling a harrowing story of a WWII submarine under attack.
During this interview, Berger discusses working with the revolutionary cameras, using Spatial Audio and a 180-degree view for an immersive narrative, the challenges his crew overcame, and his hopes for the future of moviemaking.

Apple has teamed up with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Edward Berger to make their first short film, Submerged, using their brand new immersive camera, which could change the way people watch things at home forever. The camera allows filmmakers to utilize the near-limitless possibilities of Apple Immersive Video, a brand-new storytelling format that lets its users create 3D video in 8K with a 180-degree view.

As someone that has watched movies and television in every format available, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like Submerged. The film takes place on a submarine in World War II and, with the 180-degree view and 8K video, you feel like you’re there. Unlike normal movies with a traditional frame which shows you one thing, the 180-degree view means you can turn your head right and left, and up and down, to look where you want and examine the background in ways regular movies and TV can’t. It really felt like I was on the submarine, experiencing what was happening.

While this is not how I want to watch all movies going forward, I will say this is new camera opens the door to so many amazing possibilities. I would love to see Apple use this camera to film some of the amazing sights around the world so people who can’t travel can experience them at home. Imagine being able to put on your Vision Pro headset and be able to take in the Louve without the crowds, or visit the top of a glacier in Iceland. I also can’t wait for them to film concerts using these cameras so you can watch your favorite artists from the front row or the side of the stage.

Another thing they showed me was highlights from the NBA All-Star Game last year that were recorded using the new camera. While wearing the Vision Pro I was sitting courtside, and I could see everything from the sneakers that Stephen Curry was wearing to the people on the other side of the court. Again, it was like being at the game, but I was sitting on a couch at Apple.

A day after watching Submerged and experiencing the new content being made for the Vision Pro, I spoke to Edward Berger. During our extended conversation he talked about what he learned using the new camera, using Spatial Audio and a 180-degree view to create an immersive narrative, the challenges his crew overcame, and his hopes for the future of moviemaking. We also talked about how the new camera compares to an IMAX camera, the way you need to edit an immersive movie, where the idea came from to make a submarine movie, and more.

Submerged and other new Vision Pro content is now available to watch. Check out what Berger had to say below.

Helming the First Scripted Film Was a “Terrifying and Wonderful” Honor

COLLIDER: First of all, congrats on the short. The technology is, pardon my language, fucking crazy. What does it mean to you to actually have been asked by Apple to create the very first Apple Vision Pro short film?

EDWARD BERGER: It’s a huge honor. It’s a huge honor to tackle that challenge because no one really knows how it works. You figure it out. You test it. Along the way, as you go, you try to push the limits as much as you can because you wanna create an immersive, very propulsive feeling. This camera, we perceive it differently. We perceive films like that differently. It could take a little bit more time, tension plays really well, but all these things you have to find out along the way, and that, of course, is terrifying but also wonderfully exhilarating because of the challenge that you have to overcome.

How Does the Apple Vision Pro Compare to IMAX?
Image via Apple

Speaking of the camera, I saw pictures of it and saw it in motion while watching the behind-the-scenes footage. It reminds me a lot of an IMAX camera. Obviously, it’s different, but the size of the camera, it’s not something you can just put on your shoulder and walk around with. Can you talk about the camera itself? Is it silent? Does it make a lot of noise? What is it like to work with?

BERGER: No, it’s a very new camera, specially developed by Apple. It’s a specially designed stereoscopic camera with microphones that are also, in a way, multidirectional. Don’t quote me on this, but I think it’s 64 directions or so that you mix, so you need to record Spatial Audio. You can really direct the direction of the sound if it comes from behind, above, or below because you see everywhere. This camera obviously sees 180 degrees, and that comes with, “Where do you hide lights? Where do you hide the microphone? Where do you hide the tripod that the camera’s on?” You don’t want to carry it around on your shoulder.

Somehow, we found that the feeling of being in the action works better if it’s static or if you do a dolly or a crane shot rather than a shaky camera. I didn’t like that as much, but other filmmakers might find that wonderful. So, we really wanted to create this experience of being with Jordan, our main actor, of walking through the scene with him, but with those challenges of hiding the lights… Because you see everywhere, everything has to go behind the camera, or you build it into the set. You can build the sound recording devices into the set and we built all the lights into the set. If you look at the set, there’s a lot of practical lighting built within the submarine, so that’s basically how we lit the scene.

I’ve spoken to so many cinematographers about using IMAX cameras, and this setup reminds me of IMAX. Obviously, it’s radically different, but it’s the way it puts you in the movie. The negative of IMAX is the camera makes so much noise when you’re shooting film. Everything has to be ADR. I’m curious, with this camera, is it dead-silent?

BERGER: It is dead-silent. Yeah. Just like a regular camera, like, let’s say, an ALEXA 35 or so. It has that silence. Because it is Spatial Audio, and you have to be fairly far away with the boom, you have to be very careful of recording, because otherwise, we see the boom in the shot. You can’t get very close. So, it’s always Lavalier radio mics or booms fairly far away, so you just have to make sure to record perfect sound.

The Apple Vision Pro Invites Filmmakers to Use Every Inch of Their Sets
Image via Apple
 

With this type of technology, if you cut too fast, it could be jarring to the audience because they’re so immersed in the moment. Can you talk about how you conceived the film and how you edited the film knowing that you need to be very selective with where you’re cutting?

BERGER: We had a wonderful introduction at the Apple headquarters, testing the camera and testing the Apple Vision Pro, and from that, we made our conclusions, saying, “The tension works well, specific shots work really well, crane shots work really well, anything that creates tension, like slow dolly-ins and so forth.” The editing always felt deliberate. Basically, because you’re so in the scene, you see the people, and all I wanted to do is touch Jordan, our main actor, because you feel like he’s right in front of you. He’s so 3D. You’re so with him that you can allow your eye to linger much more and to look around the room.

If you’ve seen the shot and you know what it’s about, you can still look to the upper left and to the upper right, and it’s always great. Within that frame, you always have to imagine why you shoot it. Suddenly, when you feel, “Okay, it’s really interesting when it’s on Jordan,” but at some point, your eye wants to explore more in the shot, and you can imagine, “Why don’t we put a burst pipe in the upper left corner, or some kind of sound of creaking metal of that submarine so that your eye can also look up there where he looks?” You basically edit with your head movement. You can look from Jordan to the ceiling, or to the guy in the background, and back to Jordan. If you slow down, you just have to calculate that the audience will, by their own focus, do additional editing. If you then double that up with more editing, it just becomes too much. You want to allow the audience to explore the feeling, to explore the shot, to dive into the feeling of being within this submarine with our heroes, and that allows for a lot of time. That’s wonderful, actually, that you don’t have to rush through things.

When I was watching it, and the two of them were at the table eating, and they were talking, I was listening, and I started looking around at cabinets and little things, and it’s crazy.

BERGER: Exactly. That’s what I did. That’s what we calculated. Or the air vent — we show the air vent and then you find it within the shot, you hear the sound coming out of it. We just try to recreate our first watching experience and remembering that we did exactly what you did. We started exploring the shots, we started exploring the world underwater, and so that’s why we took our time editing this in terms of pacing.

18:18 Related ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Director Edward Berger Is Back With Another Potential Oscar Best Picture Nominee The ‘Conclave’ director is joined by Isabella Rossellini to discuss on-set fears, future projects he is (and is not) doing, and more.

Obviously, Apple was very secretive about the Vision Pro and having any information get out. How long have you actually known about the device and what they were planning on doing with it versus the public?

BERGER: I would say you probably knew earlier than I did because you’re such an insider and you’re a savvy journalist. I saw it in January this year.

Oh, so this has all been this year?

BERGER: Yeah, it’s all this year. I shot it in April. So, maybe I saw it in December. The news was out that there was gonna be an Apple Vision Pro at some point. I don’t know when it came out exactly, the news, but I found out pretty much the same time. You have to be within Apple to know about it earlier.

I had heard from some people that something was coming but I was not privy to the exact details, just that something very awesome was in the works. But people who had seen it all signed NDAs and were very much not talking.

BERGER: Exactly. I wasn’t one of those. I saw it in December or January.

Where Did the Idea for ‘Submerged’ Come From?

Once you were approached to make this, talk a little bit about coming up with the idea. It’s interesting because you’re making a short film, so you need to come up with a compelling idea that’s gonna be 15 to 20 minutes, give or take. Can you talk about some of the ideas you came up with that you almost did, or was it always, “I wanna do a submarine?”

BERGER: The submarine was our preferred approach. We had it from the beginning. There were a couple of other ideas floating around but the submarine was the best for this piece of equipment, for this device, that you can put the audience and our actors through a lot of different stuff — attacks from above, attacks from the side, torpedoes, bombs dropping, water coming in, sparks flying — and in a contained set, and not having too much VFX. Because VFX is a very lengthy process in this because the resolution is very high. So, I wanted to do as much real authenticity and real sets as possible. It felt like an enclosed space underwater seemed to be the right idea for that. You can play with tension wonderfully. For the mix of tension and action, the best player seemed to be a submarine.

You obviously spent a lot of time working with the tech before, during, and after in the editing. I would imagine at least a few filmmakers who are going to read this article and wanna know what you learned about the process of using this technology. If you could go like back in time to the first day of filming, is there anything you would tell yourself that you learned through this process about the technology or any advice you’d want to pass on to another filmmaker who’s gonna use it?

BERGER: About the technology, I learned a ton. But the great thing is, I think every filmmaker and every new film that’s gonna come out is gonna push the boundaries. There were a lot of things that we were worried wouldn’t work because this device is different. We watch movies differently. As we said, we don’t need to edit as much. We can just settle into the scene and let it happen to us and watch it and just be wowed by the authenticity of it. But the more we used it, the more we realized that we can keep pushing boundaries and that we can actually do things that we thought we wouldn’t be able to do. Apple kept pushing the limits and exploring the technology.

I would just recommend to every filmmaker who keeps exploring this, the next movie that’s going to be made, it’s going to push the boundaries even further. The audience is going to get used to this technology. Part of this movie is also introducing everyone to narrative filmmaking for the Apple Vision Pro. I would imagine that 10 years from now, these films look different, and our film will be one of the first ones, and people will go, “Oh, that’s cute. Now we do much more things.” So, if every filmmaker that comes keeps pushing the boundaries and keeps making it more immersive and more propulsive and more energetic and more interesting for the audience, I think this tech technology is gonna go a long way. If we stop being in awe of it, but use it as a tool to create an incredibly visceral, propulsive, immersive story, and make the audience feel what our characters feel, then I think this can be a great expansion of the cinematic vocabulary.

Exploring Other Genres With the Apple Vision Pro
Image via Apple
 

One of the things I was thinking after I saw your film and all the different things Apple showed me was that someone’s gonna make a horror movie using this tech, and it might be, all kidding aside, too scary for some people because you are literally gonna be there, and if something pops out… Do you agree?

BERGER: I think tension is one of the best things for this medium. We kept saying that while Jordan walks down the corridor and hears sounds, we don’t know what’s lurking around the corner. It could have been a horror film. We use the techniques of a psychological thriller, a psychological horror, to create tension. If I were a horror filmmaker, I would use this tool to create the first horror film.

Oh, I’m definitely curious about that. This is a question that you might not be able to answer, it’s a little more technical, but how much space does one minute of footage take up or one hour of footage? I don’t actually have any knowledge of how much space the footage takes up.

BERGER: I’m so sorry, I knew this, but I forgot. You should ask the tech people at Apple. They’re so savvy with it. I know that we ran through a lot of SD cards, so they fill up fairly quickly. We obviously had enough SD cards, but I remember, they fill up.

Could you shoot a five-minute take if you wanted to?

BERGER: Yeah, definitely. These SD cards come pretty large. The technology is mind-blowing in terms of what it can do, what it can capture, the quality of the image, the reality of the image, and so it’s literally limitless in terms of exploring it. I think we as a team only scratched the surface.

100%. In three years’ time, there are gonna be radically different things made as people figure out how to use the tech, but it has to start somewhere.

BERGER: Yeah, exactly.

What Else Can the Apple Vision Pro Be Used For?
Image via Apple
 

Do you actually have a Vision Pro, and what is your favorite stuff about it to use? I have some filmmaker friends who have done their VFX reviews while doing laundry, or multitasking while wearing their vision headset. I’m just curious if you have one and what you’ve done with it.

BERGER: I love my Vision Pro. I have one, and I keep watching movies because it is like in the cinema. The audio is amazing. You sit back, and you have the audio coming, and I don’t know how it works, but it feels like it comes from the room. Then you can select the size of your screen, the setting, where you want to watch a movie — in a theater, outside, by a lake, or by the mountains — you can dim the lights, you can bring them up. You keep forgetting, yourself, that you’re watching a movie.

But what I first found when I first tested it is immersive photographs are amazing and they could be an amazing tool. Let’s apply it to my job: it could be an amazing tool for location scouting because it’s the first time that I see a location, let’s say, the desert or a house, and I seem to be in the place. I really feel I’m there. Usually, when I get 2D photographs, I always think, “Oh, I’ve got to see this location, that location, and that location.” I think with this technology, you could eliminate a lot of those visits and a lot of those costly travels for a lot of people. You can really hone down on your locations and see that. But I also obviously love watching our movie as an immersive quality, and I love watching my cuts from my 2D movies because I feel like I am in the cinema. So, I use it for a lot of different things.

I’m optimistic, and I’m hoping that Apple will film the Louvre or a big museum using these cameras and allow people who are not able to travel to be able to put on a headset and experience other places through the magic of this device, being able to walk around the Louvre and look at the Mona Lisa without a crazy line of people in front of you.

BERGER: Absolutely. Great idea.

Submerged is now available to watch exclusively on Apple Vision Pro.

Image via Apple TV+