360 Surround - Here and Now | Facebook
We were approached by the team developing Facebook’s first 360 camera. VR films were still very much in their nascent state and a fair amount of these films or experiences tried to use the VR medium as a tool to show off, playing into the novelty of VR. A handful of directors and studios had shown how narrative could begin to be spun into VR and this was where we wanted to be.
The idea of a narrative that was spun around normal everyday life, an experience where you could just feel the humanity of a scene - where a person could be placed into a space and feel the human stories surrounding you is what lead us to telling this story in the heart of Grand Central Station.
We closed down the station for 3 nights and filled it with 400 extras and 40 principal cast members, highlighting individual stories that were weaved together to form a short, beautiful attempt at showing narrative in VR.
The full film pushed out a 360 3D image at 8K resolution, and a slightly downgraded version of the film is available in the Oculus video store (the original ran out at around 100GB). Brian Cabral, one of the geniuses leading the project wrote further about it here.
Director: Jaron Albertin
Creative Direction: Scott Trattner
Creative Team: Myself and Luke Wicker
Production Partner: Smuggler Films
DOP/Cinematography: Darren Lew
360 Crew": Brian Cabral, Joyce Hsu and Albert Parra Pozo
Sound: Q Department