Why Oscar Winner Edward Berger Made His Latest Film For Apple Vision Pro

A submarine is defined by its confined space, constricted by its steel hull, with little room to maneuver inside. The result is a sense of claustrophobia.

If water pierces that shell, filling each space and rising room by room, it could be downright terrifying.

For his latest film, Academy Award winner Edward Berger transports viewers to that world in a way previously unimaginable. The All Quiet On The Western Front director wrote and directed Submerged, the first original scripted film shot in Apple Immersive Video, and meant to be viewed using the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality device.

Submerged is set on a U.S. submarine during World War II, with tense drama leading to a jaw-dropping set piece that makes the viewer feel like they are on the submarine next to the sailors.

“I think in this case, I saw the technology and I felt the urge to create a movie for it,” Berger tells The Hollywood Reporter, adding that when he first saw footage filmed in Apple Immersive Video it “blew my mind.”

“I’d seen documentaries, we are fiction filmmakers,” he added. “We wanted to tell a story with this medium and see how far we can push it, see what barriers we can break, how much we can make you feel that you’re actually on this submarine. And I wanted to experience that, I wanted to take myself on the submarine.”

Berger and cinematographer James Friend constructed a full scale 23-ton submarine set, and filmed Submerged over three weeks in Malta, Prague and Brussels. The film has limited visual effects, using real water, for example, to deliver its own adrenaline rush.

Berger says that he was inspired by submarine films like Das Boot, “but we haven’t seen it in a 180 environment, and to use that technology to heighten that tension even more, felt like a great challenge.”

A big part of creating that tension comes from sound. In an immersive Vision Pro environment, sounds can come from any direction, and the directer used that technology to his advantage. When the film opens, the combination of a dark enclosed space and eerie sounds drive the storytelling.

“We thought okay, how do we create tension with this medium? And where do we have tension? There’s silence, there is silence and distinct audio, noises like creaking of metal that’s underwater in the submarine. And we can take the audience by the hand and place them right next to our heroes on this vessel,” Berger says. “And the second is action we hadn’t really seen, because no one had made it, but we thought the contrast of tension is action. So to use the entire breadth of the medium of this technology, it felt like the best place to use it.”

Berger says that one of the more unique aspects of filming for the Vision Pro is that viewers can in some ways direct themselves. Yes, the director can guide them as in a traditional film, but in an immersive environment, you have to expect that viewers will also want to guide themselves.

“You have a lot of freedom to create your own guidance, or to create your own design, to create your own visual experience,” he says. “Some people might look over to the right because of that sound, some people might be more interested on the figure that crawls around in the left, so outside of your field of vision, you have a lot of things that you can design, create, use and really guide the audience’s gaze.”

Submerged joins a growing list of immersive video experience for the Vision Pro, which launched earlier this year.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told THR at the time that the company was in active talks with filmmakers and other creatives about developing content for the device. Submerged is the most ambitious scripted project yet, though others are also on the way.

“We started talking to a lot of creators, and everybody is blown away by the storytelling that can take place in this versus the tools of the past,” Cook said. “And so my gut is there’s going to be a lot of people running towards this, but we’ll see.”

Next week, Apple will debut a short film shot at the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend, and the company is launching a series called Concert For One that brings users into an immersive concert experience. And the company is releasing new episodes of its immersive documentary series Elevated and Adventure.