Behind The Scenes of Portraits of No Man's Land

The No-Man's Land Project used a range of immersive technology that allows viewers to interact with stories, assets and objects in new ways. To produce this content, the team utilised a range of capture and productions technologies.

Using the Google Jump system coupled with the Yi HALO camera. The team were able to capture ultra high resolution 3D 360 video. The camera system has different requirements to normal cameras which makes the filming process more complicated. Sunlight, the distance from a subject and the cameras stability are all factors that can destroy a potential clip.

Capturing immersive sound is essential when working with immersive mediums like Virtual Reality. Oliver Kadel (1.618 Digital) worked to capture 3D audio at the highest resolution possible. We wanted to deliver authentic sound and capture the sonic fingerprint of all of the locations we’ve visited. Each location offered something unique, be it unusual and eery soundscapes of former WW1 battlefields in France or fauna rich rainforest in Colombia.

The audio for was captured in a few different ways. Here Oliver used the Ambeo VR mic to record diegetic audio along with the camera. Interviews were recorded on boom and lapel radio mics.

Working to produce 3D and 8K was a significant challenge for such a small team and budget. It produced about 64 times the data compared to an HD movie. Working using proxies was essential. Here the edit process nears an end, you can see the video, graphics, metadata, visual effects, subtitles and reference audio all layer up.

Working in 3D, we had to produce separate images for both the left (top) and right (bottom) eyes. Working using proxies was essential - allowing the team to use smaller files, until the final export.

With exception of several scenes where we felt the image alone wasn’t able to reveal all the complex layers of the story or particular twists in a plot, we resorted to sound design to disambiguate and make the message clearer. For example adding archival footage audio, news reports or tonal textures to create tension and suspense.

We delivered in high spatial audio resolution in a 3rd order ambisonics across 16 channels, for a comparison traditional TV or streaming services typically deliver in stereo (2 channels).

Photogrammetry is a process that uses photographs to recreate accurate 3D models. On location we used photogrammetry to capture a range of objects such as houses in the jungle or airplanes! Using a combination of high-end digital cameras and drones we captured thousands of photographs that were then processed in software.

Here, each triangle represents a photograph and a camera position moving around the plane. The coloured dots that make up the airplane are called a 'point cloud' and are the beginnings of a 3D model.