Light Sale VR Paranormal Activity

Light Sail VR goes ‘Paranormal’ with 360Heros

With a background in cutting-edge technology, new media and storytelling, Light Sail VR is embracing the future of entertainment in Virtual Reality and 360 video, and a key part of their production setup is the 360Heros Pro10HD.

Light Sail VR’s team, producers Matthew Celia and Robert Watts with their partner James Bickford, has produced several immersive videos with their rig, including this one as a companion for Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension.

Behind the Scenes

You don’t have to be a horror fan to appreciate the hard work that goes into shooting a feature like this in 360 video. Matthew credits his whole team for their extraordinary performances. Here’s what he had to say:

Behind the scenes at Light Sail VR's Paranormal shoot.
Behind the scenes at Light Sail VR’s Paranormal shoot.

Matthew: This piece for Paramount’s Paranormal Activity franchise was exciting and fun to work on. It was an original video set in an iconic world and we knew we had to pull out all the stops. It presented some challenges in 360, however. With blood effects, shelves crashing and a “paranormal ghost” we needed to be smart in how we approached it. I knew from the start we wanted to do everything practically so we called upon our art department to rig up the baby carriage, the umbrella, and the rocking horse to move. We also used a flickering light gag to help hide the cuts so that we could reset after big moves like the shelf crashing and the mannequin choking scene.

“Ultimately, the success of a project like this comes down to the team.” — Matthew Celia

When we decided to shoot this piece, we did a lot of research on what camera rig to go with. Our research led us to the HDPro10. I wanted the ability for the actors to be able to get close to the camera and I also wanted to capture in the highest resolution possible so the image would be crisp. The ability to have such a high amount of image overlapping and still generate an 8K file meant that we could block action closer to the camera and that our footage would look great. The look of a super-sampled 8K file ‘downrezzed’ to 4K for playback just looks better to me. It’s the highest quality monoscopic capture I’ve seen in 360 video.

Shooting on 10 GoPros also meant managing all that data and we again turned to 360Heros for their 360CamMan software. Someone would have to be insane to attempt to do it by hand on a high profile job like this. Having done my fair share of assistant editing work in the past, it’s a dream.


Matthew Celia
Matthew Celia

Thanks, Matthew and Light Sail VR, for your endorsement and we’re proud to see that your awesome content is created using our 360 video solutions!

Light Sail VR says their approach to creating immersive experiences involves capturing scenes in crisp detail, at frame rates up to 60 fps, and crafting realistic 3D audio environments to accompany the scenes.

They are a full production studio, offering writing, production and post-production services. Visit Light Sail VR’s portfolio page to see more of their great work in 360 video.

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