Immersive Production

If a production is shooting natively rather than looking to conversion in post, then a single rig or camera solution will rarely satisfy a whole shoot. A bird in flight in a Borneo jungle. Riders passing at two hundred miles an hour on the Isle of Man. Kate Moss at a thousand frames a second. This is native stereo, shot on location or in the studio by people who have done it for thirty years.

The natural history work is the hardest version of the problem. The rig has to be small enough to travel, quick enough to react to an animal, and reliable enough to survive a six-month shoot with nobody to call. Flying Monsters, Penguins 3D, Natural History Museum Alive and Conquest of the Skies, all with David Attenborough, took five major natural history awards between them. Stereo separates a cluttered scene front to back, so an animal that is lost in the frame in 2D reads clearly. That is what makes it worth carrying.

In the studio and on location the same team has shot commercials for Sony, Philips and Microsoft, drama for the BBC and RSA Films, a native stereo feature for Warner Bros, the 2012 Olympic idents for the BBC and Kate Moss for AnOther Magazine on Phantom cameras. The Foundling won the Lumiere for Best 3D Short. TT3D was a UK independent documentary with no second takes and a theatrical release which included run-and-gun style shooting to capture the story.

We also shoot for headsets. My Africa was captured in stereo 360 in Kenya with bespoke rigs for the shots the standard cameras could not take, and the Jaunt productions for the Royal Opera House, Manchester City, Land Rover BAR and Virgin Media put 360 rigs backstage, pitchside and on the water.

The unit can be two people or a full stereo department inside a larger crew. Either way the team responsible for designing the 3D on the shoot is the same that will be in the depth grade later, and that continuity is the point.