The rise of Immersive Studios
Martin moved back to England to establish the company, then named Immersive VR Ltd. Alongside Burrows and 3D modeller and animator Steve Bjorck, the company spent its first nine months in research and development. However, there was lots of stigma attached to VR at that time.
“You’d be speaking to people that often wouldn't have a clue what you’re talking about,” Martin says.
Immersive Studios didn’t have many references to draw on when starting out but were adamant that VR shouldn’t be treated as a gimmick.
“We’ve always maintained from the early days that we want to create experiences that really add value for the client so that they get a return on their investment and it’s not seen as throwaway content. For us, it was just about getting our heads together really and thinking ‘Okay, what would we like to be working on? What do we think would be really exciting? On the other hand, what’s gonna pay the bills?’” Martin laughs.
Still, the novelty of the immersive sector made it relatively easy to get their foot in the door, leading to their first big contract with manufacturing multinational Yamaha in 2016. They filmed famous drummer Steve Gadd in 360-degrees at Metropolis Studios in London, promoting a new drum kit he had co-designed with Yamaha. They then recreated Gadd’s setup at NAMM, an annual music trade show, down to the placement of his coffee cup and towel. Attendees could witness his performance “in person” through VR headsets positioned around the kit. Martin was delighted and maintains that Immersive Studios “still sell off the back of that project now.”
“Nothing like that had been done at NAAM before, so there was a lot of excitement around it at the show,” Martin says.
For Immersive Studios’ creative director Robin Fuller, part of the appeal of creating VR projects is the “pioneering spirit” of the work. Fuller, who comes from a film and animation background, joined the studio in 2017 and describes his first VR experience as “mind-blowing.”
“What you can do creatively in VR at the moment is very much in its infancy,” Fuller says.
When approaching a new project, such as a 4D driving experience produced for Mazda in collaboration with multiple different companies, Fuller says it’s important to understand the core of the idea.
“It just comes down to creative problem solving. You look at the tools that are available to you and think, ‘What are the technologies we’ve got? What are the different tools we’ve got and how can we combine them to get the best results?’”
For the Mazda project, this involved filming a driver on location in Iceland and France with cameras mounted around the car. However, their client was adamant that the experience should take place from the driver’s perspective, with a filmed driver as opposed to CGI. Since they couldn’t strap a camera to the driver’s head, the solution was to animate a CGI car that matched the real one and film a body double in a greenscreen location. The actor mimicked the original driver in a static car whilst members of the production team were “charging around with lights” to mimic the shadows cast by the original car.
“There was so many moving parts to that, it was a little bit ridiculous, but it came together really well,” Fuller says.
