VR Fireside Chat | Immersive 360º Shoot for Agency Client

Agency 5S enlisted our help to capture a series of intimate fireside conversations as source footage for a fully immersive VR experience Agency 5S was producing for their client. Agency 5S’s goal was to make viewers feel like they were sitting in the circle, participating — not watching a production. 

The shoot took place on Indigenous land at The Forks in Winnipeg, across three sessions filmed in changing light conditions: daylight, sunset, and nighttime. We brought our XR and video production expertise together to set up a 360° camera rig that could handle the changing lighting, with a live feed running to our video village so Agency 5S and their client could stay connected to the footage in real time. Strategically placed lighting, careful set dressing, and a lot of creative problem-solving were key to immersion. 

Working closely with Agency 5S, every technical decision was made collaboratively and in service of their creative vision, with deep respect for the land and the conversations happening on it.

Agency 5S trusted us & our expertise to develop a solution to the project’s overlapping constraints: 

Filming outdoors on sacred, Indigenous land in cold weather conditions‍

Shooting over a live firepit across three different lighting conditions ‍

Providing Agency 5S and their client a live feed so they could monitor footage in real time

We needed a camera that could perform across daylight, sunset, and nighttime conditions (wide dynamic range & low light shooting capabilities) with live transmission support to our video village. A live feed was a non-negotiable for Agency 5S and their client. 

In mapping out our setup ahead of the shoot, we made sure to be mindful and respectful of the sacred Indigenous land we were set to shoot on.

With Agency 5S based in Toronto, we used the XGRIDS Pixel L2 Pro scanner to capture a pre-vis scan of the location ahead of the shoot, giving the team a clear picture of the space before arriving in Winnipeg. 

Drawing on our understanding of the project's technical and creative requirements, we tapped into our connections to source the Insta360 Titan 11K: a rig with wide dynamic range, low light capability, and live feed support. 

We used props, foreground elements, and the actors themselves on shoot day to mask equipment from the frame, with everything neatly arranged so it would blend naturally into the background as the natural light changed. Supplemental lighting was concealed in the surrounding bushes and behind the firepit.

Our video village setup needed to account for both respect for the sacred land and the view of the camera. We set up behind a large concrete wall, with a 150 ft ethernet cable running neatly through the grass to establish a live feed with the camera. This meant our team, Agency 5S, and their client could view the footage together in real time, catch stitch lines, check equipment visibility, listen in on conversations to provide feedback, decide when to reshoot scenes, and make creative calls on the fly.

After the shoot we carefully processed the footage, blending and correcting the auto-stitch where the firelight and low light conditions pushed the software to its limits. We delivered the final files as raw, stitched footage with a base LUT, giving Agency 5S a clean, flexible foundation to complete the VR experience on their end.