deep cut: 360°

Seven years ago, one of our clients tasked us with producing a video about a wild college basketball game day experience in the interest of attracting new recruits to the team—something that would allow players to envision themselves opening the door to the arena, walking through the same halls as the team’s legendary alumni, and finally, encountering the screaming fans after stepping onto the court.

The hitch? We needed to create this first-person experience when the actual arena was empty, the alumni long gone, the fans in absentia. Our partner agency brought us some archive and fan b-roll and shot some great footage walking up to the hallowed hall and opening the door… and then?

Over the span of several weeks, we used blueprints, measurements, and photos and painstakingly modeled the inside of the arena in 3-D. We pinched and pulled at the finest details, from the championship banners and dramatic lighting to the number of seats and pixels on the center-hung scoreboard.

What we produced was an infinite number of postproduction possibilities. Everything you can do on a video shoot—dramatic crane shots, cameras mounted in mid-air or swinging from the rafters, tripod-smooth pans and turns—you can do in our 3-D arena.

The real magic, however, comes in what you can’t do on a video shoot. In our 3-D arena, we can composite in video of former players as though they’re ghosts haunting the court, add in videos and memorabilia that don’t exist yet, or even have the playing surface break into pieces and flip over to display a highlight reel.

What does this mean to you, a person who (probably) doesn’t own a basketball arena?

Anything you want!

We’ve since used our 3-D capabilities to illustrate how certain construction processes are done, design complex projections that suspend reality for sports fans, and create product “footage” and “photos” for a variety of companies.

Coupled with 360° and VR video technology, we’ve even used it to visualize intended use for spaces that haven’t been built yet. We modeled a ballroom in Oklahoma City’s under-construction Downtown Convention Center for a VR treat for the groundbreaking event, then took it a step further and decorated the room for a proposed event. Check that out here, in a desktop browser, or move your phone around in the Vimeo app!