A Framework For Presence Maintenance: Evoking Synesthesia and Empathy in Cinematic Virtual Reality

As VR films have evolved from traditional 360-degree films into 6DoF cinematic virtual reality (CVR) storytelling experiences, CVR authors are now striving to pursue engaging content with a narrative arc that elevates emotional engagement. However, in most CVR content, the audience's positioning has not been properly addressed, reducing them to invisible observers and resulting in a failure to maintain presence throughout the movie. Inspired by Shin's two-tiered process of immersion model, this paper presents a presence maintenance framework in the production of the VR cinema The Midnight Rendezvous. The framework incorporates elements of mise-en-scene and the mechanism of synesthesia to accentuate narrative and technical immersion, leverages the viewer's head movements to evoke proprioceptive involvement, and arouse emotional responses toward the protagonists. We believe that if a viewer is able to vicariously engage in the character's role, their feelings of presence can be sustained, which is the point we'll verify in future experiments.