My thoughts on the (very) short immersive film Submerged

So I just finished watching the immersive short film Submerged (more like an extended trailer) that was released tonight, and I must say I am a bit disappointed. It’s definitely a cool concept, and I’m excited to see more immersive content come to the Vision Pro, but all around, from cinematic choices to the hardware limitations of the Vision Pro to the length of the “film,” this missed the mark. I first want to outline the few things I liked about it before I discuss the major issues I have with it.

The Good

The acting was really good. The characters were believable, and I really could feel the energy from the actors that lended itself to a convincing start to the story. I also liked some of the camera shots. The shot where the camera is moving backwards as the sub is filling with water and the protagonist is running towards the camera was neat. And the Spatial Audio was nice, especially when they’re both eating, and you hear the guy’s voice behind you. But unfortunately, that’s where the good stuff ends.

The Not So Good

The first thing I noticed when I started watching, the scene that opens with them in the bunks, was the glare in the lenses. I know sometimes there is glare, and that’s unavoidable with these types of pancake lenses. But it was particularly bad here. I actually paused the video and cleaned my lenses with a Zeiss lens wipe because I thought my lenses must have been dirty since I had never experienced glare this bad. But to my unfortunate surprise, the glare persisted even after I cleaned the lenses. Not sure if they considered lens glare when deciding how to film, but it certainly feels like they didn’t.

Another thing that annoyed me, and this is just a director’s decision, was the ridiculous amount of close-up shots and blurred backgrounds. At that point, it didn’t feel immersive but rather like I was sitting 6 inches away from my TV. The cool thing about immersive content is that you can look around, but that was not the case for much of this. For much of it, the protagonist’s face took up the entire field of view. And the blurry background didn’t add to the ambiance but rather just felt weird that it was out of focus. I also felt there wasn’t much of a storyline. We got a brief bit of background from the guy since he had a photo of his wife and daughter, but what about the main protagonist? Who is he? What’s his brief background other than just being a soldier? What’s his specific role on the submarine? The “film” failed to adequately elaborate on major important things in a storyline which are who, what, when, where, and why. And this is because it was too short to do so. And also, some of the Spatial Audio was nice, but overall audio levels were often too low. In the cafeteria area when the two of them are talking, there’s a lot of background noise that makes it difficult to understand what they’re saying. These are all choices that I wouldn’t expect to be made by an Academy Award-winning director.

Another thing that I really didn’t like was how everything moved when I turned my head. Something I really appreciate about Apple’s Immersive content compared to other 3rd party immersive content is that with Apple’s immersive videos until now, the camera and your surroundings remain still when you turn your head. But for some reason, this wasn’t the case here. When you turn your head, everything moves a bit, which is less than ideal. Not sure why they did this when all of their other immersive content doesn’t do this.

And the last big issue I had with it was how short it was. I understand that it’s a “short” film, but it was 17 minutes, and 90 seconds of it was the end credits. And the intro was about 30 seconds. So it was about 15 minutes of actual content. When I heard “ short film,” I was thinking something like 30-45 minutes. This was shorter than an episode of The Office. It was shorter than the Alicia Keys video. Look, perhaps I just have super high expectations, but I think that’s what naturally happens when we only get a short immersive video once a month max. If there was a new video every week, that would be totally different. But when this is the only content we’ll likely get for the next month or longer, and Apple has been hyping this up since they announced it at WWDC, then expectations are going to be high, and this was underwhelming.

I don’t mean to be overly negative, and I still think it’s worth checking out. These are just my honest thoughts and reactions after watching. But if you think I’m wrong or have a different perspective, please share it and get a conversation going. I hope some of you enjoyed it more than I did.

Best,

Mundane