In 2016, SBS became the first Australian broadcaster to launch a Virtual Reality app, giving audiences the ability to explore the latest 360° videos produced by SBS and the independent production community.
Developed by the Distil Immersive team (formerly SBS Digital Creative Labs), the VR app was part of SBS’s commitment to utilise the latest technology to tell diverse Australian stories in new and innovative ways.
...a truly powerful new medium offering audiences unique immersive experiences to give them greater insights and understanding, with distinctive stories that explore our diverse and multicultural world.
Just discovered @SBS VR, they’ve got some really cool projects to view, there goes my long weekend.
The Project
We realised early on that VR and 360° storytelling provided new opportunities to immerse audiences in virtual worlds. By putting the user at the centre of the story, we offered them a unique perspective and a new way to interact with the world that was unraveling around them.
The catalogue we amassed consisted of original and commissioned films as well as a selection of the best international projects at the time. What they all had in common is that they exploited the full potential of immersive VR. Whilst the language of VR is still being shaped, these projects represent an ambition to effectively utilise the full 360º canvas both visually and aurally, incorporating innovative shooting, editing and CG techniques.
What We Did
Our operations around VR ranged from the pragmatic to the creative. First, getting our house in order by operationalising end-to-end VR production, be it simple 360 content or more ambitious interactive content. This in turn freed us to get creative: scripting, direction and post production.
Our output across iOS, Android, Occulus and web were unified by an inhouse CMS that ingested assets and published them out to multiple platforms.
- Production Creative Direction, Production Management, Filming
- Technology Node, Bespoke CMS, Unity, Android Native, iOS Native, Occulus SDK
