Immersive Content Creation

We create immersive content for planetariums, museums, science centres, exhibitions, live events and other large-format environments.

Every project starts with a question: what does the audience need to understand, feel or take away? From there, we choose the production techniques that serve the story, whether that means live-action cinematography, CGI, real-time 3D, 360° capture or a combination of them.

There is no fixed house style. The format follows the idea.

Story first, format second

We develop the narrative before we lock the production pipeline.

Research, expert interviews, scripting and multilingual adaptation establish what the audience needs to know and how the story should unfold. Only then do we determine the right combination of production techniques and delivery formats.

That might mean a fulldome film built around live action and CGI, a real-time environment created in Unreal Engine, or 360° footage designed to work across several immersive platforms.

The technology supports the story rather than dictating it.

Live action, CGI and real-time production

We bring different production techniques together within a single studio, choosing the right approach for each sequence.

Live-action cinematography can be captured at resolutions up to 14K, from carefully controlled shoots to large-scale location production.

CGI and 3D animation allow us to visualise subjects that cannot be filmed directly, from scientific processes and microscopic structures to environments that exist only as digital worlds.

Real-time production in Unreal Engine gives us another way to build and render environments, interactive content and immersive visuals.

For fulldome productions, we design specifically for hemispheric projection rather than treating the dome as a flat screen wrapped around the audience. Composition, contrast, depth, camera movement and visual detail all have to work across a 180° or 360° field of view.

We deliver masters from 4K to 8K, in stereoscopic or monoscopic formats, for projection systems and LED domes.

Content made for immersive venues

Immersive content has different requirements from conventional film and video.

A fulldome film needs to work across the entire field of view. A 360° production needs to account for the audience looking in every direction. Content for an LED dome requires a different technical approach again.

We design and master content for the environment in which it will actually be experienced, whether that is a planetarium, science centre, museum exhibition, mobile dome, LED installation or other immersive venue.

From major events to permanent installations

Some productions are built around a single moment: a mission launch, world premiere, institutional anniversary or major public event.

Others become part of a permanent exhibition or an ongoing educational programme.

We work within both environments, from award-winning artistic films to precise, on-message institutional and corporate content. Projects can be developed alongside an existing in-house team or managed by Softmachine from research and scripting through production, post-production and final mastering.

We are used to working with technical requirements, multiple stakeholders and fixed delivery dates without losing sight of the creative work.

One production, more than one format

A production does not necessarily have to live on a single screen.

We can adapt immersive content for VR headsets, WebXR, web-based 360° platforms, mobile domes and fulldome presentation, extending the useful life of a production across different venues and audiences.

Where appropriate, we also develop content with multiple formats in mind from the beginning. This can make it possible to take the same creative assets, environments and narrative into different viewing experiences without simply treating one format as an afterthought.

Spatial sound can be developed alongside the visual production, with the mix designed for the room and the way audiences experience sound within an immersive environment.

Built for the way audiences experience content

The final image is only part of the production.

We consider where the audience is, what they can see, how the image moves around them and what the sound is doing at the same time. The result is content designed for the environment it will actually occupy, rather than conventional video enlarged to fit an immersive screen.