The American Heroes Channel recently released a new 360-degree video titled Civil War: Letter From the Trenches. The video is planned to serve as a companion piece for Blood and Fury: America’s Civil War, a TV series scheduled to debut on Dec. 14th on AHC. The series will show the war from the perspective of soldiers during iconic battles throughout the campaign.
Letter From the Trenches on the other hand will focus specifically on a Confederate soldier that’s under heavy enemy fire in the thick of combat. Instead of taking a more measured, slow-paced, and passive approach to immersive video like most content creators, this video appears to be designed to shock and rattle viewers directly. The sounds and sights of bullets whizzing by amidst cannon ball eruptions isn’t exactly a cheery way of spending an afternoon — especially when you factor in how powerful 360-degree audio and visuals can be at tricking you into thinking you’re actually somewhere dangerous.
The experience will use a combination of Go Pro cameras and fish-eye lenses to bring viewers closer to the battlefield than ever before with this reenactment and furthers the discussion of not only mature and serious content in virtual reality — but also how VR could be used to revolutionize historical documentary-style films as well. Reliving moments from history, such as the Civil War or the Wright Brothers flight, is an excellent use-case for educational VR.
Cream Productions’ co-founder and CEO, David Brady, told The Hollywood Reporter that, “above you there’s cannonball contrails, and those are spatially directed so you can follow with your eyes as your ears tell you where they are going. The effect is to hopefully make the viewer turn their heads to see all of this.”
The video itself, Letter From the Trenches, is available now for free at DiscoveryVR. There are various ways to watch the video, as it can be viewed within your browser, on Google Cardboard viewing devices, as well as on the Rift, Gear VR, and HTC Vive.
