Exodus – The Great Migration

Exodus: The Great Migration

Created by: Deep VR

Directed by: Telmo dos Reis and Ulrico Grech Cumbo

Exodus was our first major push into Original VR 360 wildlife filming. A self funded world first that saw us plunged into the unforgiving grasslands of Kenya & Tanzania. This is the one of the worlds first fully narrated cinematic VR wildlife documentary.
Back in 2016 when we filmed this project, commercial VR was still in its infant state, which meant our gear, technology and even the idea to film the great migration in VR was previously untested. A lot of our filming rigs were still in their beta phase, leading to an unlimited list of challenges & problems to overcome.

From GoPros overheating & not triggering, to cameras being completely avoided by the local wildlife,

“animals were petrified of the black machine-like straight rigs, and those had to be camouflaged with nature from surrounding areas before the animals would get closer to them”

and when we did manage some close encounters we lost a camera rig to a pride of lionesses, as well as losing not one but two of our flagship drones, meant that plans, gear & solutions needed to be changed on the fly using what was available in the middle of the Kenyan grasslands.

Having just a few days to capture enough footage for an entire documentary left the team exhausted, but driven. and in the. end we successfully captured and created this piece that allowed our company to grow and even picked up a Loros award along the way.

The entire making of this film was shot behind the scenes and turned into its own mini-documentary in the form of “Made in the Mara”

For the launch we had a pool of 50 VR headsets and setup multiple VR Cinemas across the globe notably our South African premiere was hosted at the beautiful Circa Gallery, using our own proprietary software to sync playback between all of the HMD’s giving a seamless, synced 360 experience to attendees. “The wildlife documentaries we all love and have grown  up with have always been filmed from the relative safety of a vehicle and as such, kept viewers separated too. With the advent of VR, the frame of your TV falls away and you’re teleported to  the thick of the action,”

The success of this project also lead to Conservation International getting in touch the following year for us to shoot the Mara leg of their piece My Africa , as the only VR production company with experience filming in this harsh terrain, we took the experience and captured some incredible footage on that trip, including the worlds first Lion kill in stereo 360.