Still: Flow VR - Adriaan Lokman

In 2019, Dutch filmmaker Adriaan Lokman premiered his extraordinary short film Flow*, which presented in physical form the power of the air that surrounds us. He did so by linear-tracking the movement of wind around solid objects (humans, buildings, a turbulent sea, even a lazy hand languidly extended from the window of a sports car) and then removing those objects from the frame.

As he told SEE NL in 2019, “everything that is invisible, I turn visible. Everything that is visible, I turn invisible.” 

The effect was mesmerising, dramatic and poetic, like an animated Turner or the verses of Byron rendered into motion. 

Now audiences are able to experience the Flow VR*, in which we are placed within those same air disturbances created by the movement of human bodies, metro trains or birds in flight, and eventually swept into a maelstrom reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, replete with flying umbrellas, trees and cows. (The VR world-premiered to great acclaim at Venice 2023 where it was awarded the Special Jury Prize, before going on to secure many more awards and festival selections.)

This time, the action is presented within an equally intense soundscape which serves to make the heart race faster but also to direct us to the evolving narrative within the VR. 

The story is simple. We follow a woman throughout the day as she rises from her bed, leaving her boyfriend/husband behind. She walks along a street, takes a ghostly metro and drives in an open-top sports car. Then we take wing and fly into the wildest of storms before the night folds in, and the young woman rises from her bed once more. Was it all a dream? And why has a note been left on her pillow?

Each body and object we encounter is without solid form, defined instead by its effect on the air that surrounds it in an intense pattern of swirls, curls, undulations and darting lines. 

Lokman describes the challenges of transposing his original vision for Flow into VR format. “The biggest challenge for Flow back in 2019 was to invent the parameters and the technique to paint with air and wind to get this look. For the film, that took me three or four years to finally get to a style that fitted with what I had in my mind.”

“But obviously a film is just a flat screen set at a certain angle, and everything that's behind, above or below you is not there and therefore you don't have to render it,” Lokman explains. “But suddenly in VR, you have to create everything that's missing.” 

Which is where smart ambisonic sound design comes into play, which enables a sense of audio spacialisation both to direct the user and to orientate them within the VR.

“With this spacialised sound, you have the possibility to much better separate the soundscape from the music,” Lokman adds. “So the music doesn't interfere with the sound and the other way around. This is not a new technique, as cinema uses it as well, but in VR you can even explore it better.”

How does Lokman reflect on the successful delivery of Flow across two radically different formats. “I do prefer the VR version, but across the whole process it was more fun to make the film, in a certain way because the big challenge was to learn to paint with the wind. So artistically that was more interesting. On the other hand, it was more rewarding to do the VR because everything fell into place and I thought, ‘okay, all this work that I did for the film now becomes kind of rewarded in this version.’ And it's not even finished yet because now we're aiming to see if we can make a dome (planetarium) version, so this product is following me till I die, I guess.”

Lokman is currently working on another film/VR combo, titled O*, once again with the theme of ‘flow’ but with an altogether element - water and its properties - as its subject. “This time the VR version will be very different from the film version,” the master Dutchman signs off.

Find the Dutch line-up at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival here. Or discover the festival on https://clermont-filmfest.org/en/global/home/

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund