Whether you’ve simply got a few ideas for a film on a scrap of paper or a fully scripted immersive masterpiece ready to bring to life, The ICE Hub can help. We’ve spent the past five years working with a range of clients to develop high-impact, memorable immersive education that makes a difference. When setting out on any film project, whether VR or flat 2D, there are five key considerations that we recommend exploring fully to ensure you give your project the best chance of success. Here's a preview!

1) Goals – the first thing to understand what you want your film to achieve. There will be a macro objective such as reducing road traffic collisions but try to be more specific. For example, "I want to raise awareness of the dangers of passing cyclists too closely" or "I want to improve the eye scanning and hazard detection skills of new drivers". We've found that using the SMART goals model can be useful when scoping the true objectives of a new film.

2) Deployment – once you know what you want to achieve, the next thing to consider is how you're going to bring it to market. True immersive education involves physically putting a headset on someone, whereas 360 VR film can be used with a phone or tablet device in a non-immersive environment. Indeed, Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube, etc all support VR film. Much of the decision on how to deploy your VR film will come down to resources and budget, but looking back to your goals will help you decide whether it's more important to give a smaller number of people a more immersive and engaging experience vs. reaching a greater number in a lighter-touch way. 

3) Budget – compared to traditional flat 2D films, VR is still relatively expensive to film and edit. This is partly because when filming VR, you have to account for the fact that viewers can look anywhere – this means you're locking down locations and hiding the production crew to make it feel natural and realistic, often at great expense. As a rough guide, you're looking at approximately £10,000 + £3,000 per minute to film and edit high-quality VR film. If you add special effects or stunts, the cost can go up quite considerably.

4) Timescales – because of the extra preparation and planning that goes into VR films, they can take much longer than normal flat film productions. So, if you are up against a tight deadline, VR might not be the best option. You should allow about three months to plan, shoot and edit a 5-10 minute VR film. If you’re looking between 60 seconds and 5 minutes, you can bring this down to around eight weeks.

5) To VR or not to VR? Having explored each of these points in detail, you should think about whether VR is the correct medium to use for your production. We're big VR fans - in fact, we love VR, but it's not a panacea. VR is best suited to productions where you want the viewer to look around or to be completely immersed in an environment without external distractions. The good news is that even if you decide that flat 2D film is better for your project – we can still help! 

Get in touch
The best way to fully scope a new project is to get in touch with us so we can send you a concept briefing document. We’ll work with you to develop your ideas and come up with a full production proposal, with no commitment.