MAKING HISTORY: THE GREAT MIGRATION IN VIRTUAL REALITY
Get a sence of what watching the great migration could be like:
A crew of four storytellers, wildlife enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and tech innovators are risking life and equipment to tell the story of the world’s biggest mammal migration like you’ve never experienced it: in virtual reality.
VR is the year’s biggest tech buzzword, and for good reason. This new video format allows viewers to be a participant in a scene with the ability to look all around. However, the format has rarely been used to capture a story which, were it experienced in person, would mean certain death. Until now.
Meet the team
Deep VR, a South African cinematic virtual reality studio, is heading to Kenya to film the Great Migration in early August. Earning its place on the Seven Natural Wonders of the World list, the migration sees three million wildebeest and nearly a million gazelle and zebra grit through a multicountry trek for food. The content will be used to create a shortform, narrated wildlife documentary called ‘ Exodus: The Great Migration’.
“Our goal is to forever change how people experience wildlife through technology”, notes Ulrico GrechCumbo, cofounder of Deep VR. “The wildlife documentaries we all love and have grown up with have always been filmed from the relative safety of a vehicle and as such, kept viewers separated too. With the advent of VR, the frame of your TV falls away and you’re teleported to the thick of the action.”
This type of shoot poses many technical challenges. For one, to capture the stampede from the point of view of its constituents, an unmanned, 360degree camera rig has to be placed inside it. “We have developed a payload drone designed to pick our cameras up and drop them into the stampede”, explains Telmo dos Reis, fellow cofounder. Other innovations include stampedeproof “black box” cameras designed by the team, and remote triggers that increase the triggering distance from 5 meters to over 2 kilometers.
