A Cathedral of Sound

Organization: The New York Times

Date: March 3, 2023

We worked with researchers who are restoring the acoustics of Notre Dame damaged in the fire, to explain the relationship between sound and form in this glorious cathedral.

My role on this project was to create a visual style and movement for the 3D interior of the cathedral as well as handle the 3D pipeline, from animation to rendering, compositing and encoding.

My early style tests focused on creating a hyper-realistic render where light and shadow became a character in the narrative.

While visually exciting, the hyper-realism felt like it was distracting from the sound-scape and blurring the line between illustration and photography. I settled on a monochrome style using ambient occlusion, with subtle shading to highlight the intricate details of the structure.

I experimented with a variety of poetic treatments for the singers. In the end, a simplified form with a subtle glow felt like the most elegant solution.

A lot of testing and iteration went into the camera movement. I wanted to achieve a dynamic experience that conveyed a sense of awe and wonder of being inside the cathedral, while trying not to overwhelm our readers with excessive motion. Tying camera animation to scroll gave our readers control of the visual progress, allowing them to traverse the 3D space at their own pace. This self-driven pacing empowered me to use grander, sweeping motions that would be too distracting in a linear piece.