World-renowned scientist, naturalist and narrator Sir David Attenborough, in conjunction with the BBC, takes you up close and personal with the largest animal to ever walk on Earth.
The creature in question is known as a “Titanosaur” and Attenborough explains its unique nature side by side with a CG rendering of the beast in this new 360 video from the BBC. The video is a fantastic example of the 360 medium and VR being used together in harmony with a blend of live action and CG that conveys an epic sense of scale. We could sit here and talk about it until we are blue in the face, but really – you should just watch it.
According to BBC’s Paul Deane, this 360 offering spun out of a more feature-length TV special with Attenborough titled “Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur” which aired on both the BBC and PBS.
“…So we’d made the CG model of the dinosaur already. We’ve also made quite a few 360 films now and as soon as we saw that dinosaur model we immediately thought – we have to put it into VR and came up with the idea of a simple ‘fly-thru’ where you could gawp at the animal, with Sir David guiding you through.We’ve been working with Sir David for over 50 years, and he’s always keen to push technology in the pursuit of new ways to bring the natural world to the audience,” Deane wrote in an email to UploadVR.
The 360 video was a three-month production, according to Deane, that shot at England’s historic Pinewood Studios:
“It was a 3 month production. We filmed Sir David, on a scissor lift, against green screen at Pinewood Studios (shot at 6K 60fps on a Red Dragon), then Hello Charlie produced and did the hard work of animating and compositing Sir David in.”
This isn’t Attenborough’s first VR experience either, he also recently produced a 20 minute long VR documentary to go along side his upcoming series on the Great Barrier Reef. The experience played through January of last month at the London Natural History Museum, and is expected to have a wider release some time later this year.
BBC is in production on another series of 360 videos that are planned to go live in October, according to Deane.
