360° cinéma montage versus immersive notion: Sam Esmail and the sensory experimentation in Mr. Robot series.

Abstract

Montage will allow Cinema to find it’s identity, progressively moving away from arts from which it took root, such as oral tradition, literature or theater. It’s practice will change in time, often linked to technological innovation like television broadcasting or camera enhancement and miniaturization.Understanding this evolution in montage when we are interested in 360° cinema innovation, makes us wonder about the meaning of the concept itself and how it seems to disappear, among the written theory and experimentation on the subject. We must acknowledge that montage as used in a standard frame Cinema it’s not viable in a highly immersive sensory environment. There are numerous reasons to explain this issue, going from troubles linked to internal hearing creating motion sickness to how difficult it becomes to attract public attention towards the zone in the film where action takes place and give sense to narrative.In this text we will mostly focus on Sam Esmail’s work on Mr. Robot series and how he not only proposes an immersive 360° cinematic experience of the series, but he also uses 360° devices to achieve what seams to be technically impossible shots or at least very difficult to achieve in a conventional shooting way. Sam Esmail’s experimentation it’s just an example among others that makes us consider an important renewal in montage domain and storytelling.