Virtual Walk through Historical Prague

Car manufacturer ŠKODA offered a history field trip. But not only into their own past, which can be admired in the museum. The ride through Prague of days past offers not only an elegant vintage car but also look at the Czech capital during the first half of the 20th century.

19. 10. 2017 Škoda World Heritage

But in order for such a ride to happen, we needed to create the executing concept. The next step was putting together a team consisting of the creative crew, actors, and assistants who helped to turn this vision into reality.

One of the most important moments, which laid groundwork for the whole project, was constructing a 3D model of the period car in order to insert it into a 360-degree video – our stage set with the plot, sound, and the driving route. The creators came up with their own technological solution that made these two principles click together so they could work in unison. Unsurprisingly, the preparatory works showed that this project was going to be no standard film making.

The first option was to create a 360-degree footage from inside of an actual moving car but that proved to be demanding in terms of production and finances and also impossible shooting-wise. To capture the ride from the car’s interior, with the “participant” seeing both the outside scenery and the car’s inside in focus, wasn’t possible even with the present-day camera technology.

Although there were obstacles emerging continuously throughout the whole creative process, the authors retrospectively perceive their work as one big adventure. The terrain in question was rough so they needed to create their own shooting “runabout”, which was equipped with a stabilisation mechanism. The whole ride needed to be shot in one take, so a perfect coordination of all actors and assistants was needed. All were instructed on how to behave towards our “invisible” car in the field so their interactions with it look natural and real. Another obstacle was also in the mix – the impossible amount of regular traffic and tourists – so the shooting had to be done in a limited stretch of time between sunrise and 9 AM the latest. To create a perfect overall sensory experience, an ambisonic microphone was used during the ride. This special device collects all kinds of sounds from the surroundings so they can be incorporated into the footage via postproduction.

Petr Hranousek and Robin Pultera,
BRAINZ VR

“It was a spectacular challenge for all professions involved. Working with virtual reality makes you lose all footholds that you are used to in film making. There are many limits that need to be crossed, dealt with. For example, the shooting itself was very constricted by time and we only had so many attempts. One of them was even ruined by a solitary, ordinary raindrop,” commented the unique project’s authors, Robin Pultera and Petr Hanousek.

The end result is an 8-minute-long experience, set into a period ninety years ago. The L&K duo, which guides us through the opening sequence for a while, teaches us a few interesting facts to set the mood of the era. What follows after is the exclusive, 5-minute-long ride itself. Seat yourself comfortably, we’re setting out…

The trickiest part was to combine classic filmmaking processes with the digital ones. Then we had to come up with our own technological solutions, for example, with a functioning camera buggy, equipped with a sophisticated stabilisation system. Another challenge was to get a suitable camera. The market offers quite the number of the 360-degree ones but our project required one with a 250-degree overlay and shorter span of transmission delay so we could get faster results and information about the composition and if it works. This phase also required us to play developers.