Bring NSW heritage sites to life in animated 360° film

Heritage Near Me, a department within The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, came to us with a brief to create a roadshow VR immersive experience which would explore the heritage of various locations around NSW.

Rather than taking a typically dry corporate video route, we wanted to explore this culturally significant project with a creative and engaging short film.

Pre-production involved developing 360 degree panoramic storyboards to design how the experience would flow - an often overlooked but particularly important step in visualising VR. The film was designed so that viewers would take a journey through the experience, transitioning gracefully between each location, guided by sound and visuals which link each scene together seamlessly.

The shoot took a small VR crew all over NSW, including an underwater shipwreck dive and sweeping drone shots over one of Australia’s largest waterfalls.

In post production, we had the challenge of visually representing heritage within these locations, many of which were bare environments.  We saw this as the perfect opportunity to blend the traditional art of hand-drawn animation with the modern technology of VR.

Once each of the locations were filmed, the empty plates were handed over to a series of talented animators who spent weeks hand-drawing frame-by-frame animations.  Working closely with the client, we sorted through hundreds of archival images which we used to composite into the modern imagery.

The process was highly collaborative and we worked closely with the client throughout the entire process to ensure this creatively complicated project was always heading in the correct direction.

Our Heritage has been viewed by thousands of people on Samsung GearVR as part of the Australia-wide Heritage Near Me roadshow.  The film was also delivered for Youtube to be viewed on custom-designed Google Cardboards handed out at events.

The end result has been a VR immersive film which has not only fulfilled all the outcomes for the client but has gone on to be a successful VR film in its own right, winning awards and travelling to festivals all over Australia, including St Kilda Film Festival and Melbourne Fringe.