Telling stories about things that people cannot see or are difficult to understand is a challenge we relish. Making the invisible, visible through film-making and particularly immersive 360 film-making is a particularly effective way of communicating complex or hidden systems to enable the concepts to be more tangible and relatable. And this is case in point when the story you are telling is underwater and offshore. The University of Plymouth commissioned SoundView to create video content to be shown across platforms, from traditional screens to immersive dome environments to tell the story of the innovative Smart Sound Connect Subsurface (SSCS) project. SSCS is an array of nodes that sit on the ocean floor, capable of gathering data from, for example, underwater autonomous drones and then sending that data to the surface and onwards to anywhere on the planet. Uses of this technology range from environmental research to homeland security and defence applications.

We collaborated with the team at The University Of Plymouth who had already began to visualise this underwater environment by building 3D models in Unreal Engine. The data sets for these models came from a myriad of sources including google earth, illustrations and bathymetry mapping, showing the depths and contours in the ocean floor.  The result, a photo realistic world, which we are able to navigate and effect change within, it was particularly useful to alter weather conditions and sea states, to help us visually tell the story. We used these scenes to create bespoke visualisations which compliment  the narrative and real world 360 camera footage.

To capture the live action 360 elements we used the latest cameras including Insta’s X5 which offers endurance while  allowing us to get close to the action. DJI’s new-to-market 360 drone took our production values to the next level, shooting 8k stabilised 360 video and 60 frames per second. Having high end footage and visualisations and combing this with our skills, experience, knowledge and talent meant that the final production shown in Plymouth’s immersive dome at a special launch event created a deeper level of immersion and understanding for the audience.