The Perception of Auditory-Visual Looming in Film

Auditory-visual looming (the presentation of objects moving in depth towards the viewer) is a technique used in film (particularly those in 3D) to assist in drawing the viewer into the created world. The capacity of a viewer to perceptually immerse within the multidimensional world and interact with moving objects, can be affected by the sounds (audio cues) that accompany these looming objects. However the extent to which sound parameters should be manipulated remains unclear. For example, the amplitude, spectral components, reverb and spatialisation can all be altered, but the degree of their alteration and the resulting perception generated, need greater investigation. Building on a previous study analysing the physical properties of the sounds, we analyse peoples responses to the complex sounds which use multiple audio cues for film looming scenes, reporting which conditions elicited a faster response to contact time, causing the greatest amount of underestimation.