The Situation

The client had a desire to exhibit the layout of various manufacturing and virology laboratory spaces in their Philadelphia location. Due to the extremely sterile environment, it was not feasible for physical touring by outsiders and the amount of detail was too much for standard photography to capture.

The IMS Productions Department was approached to create an ultra-high resolution, 360 degree, interactive video tour for each of the 5 laboratory spaces. The final product was initially to be used at an industry trade show event 3 weeks away, and then permanently visible on their public website.

The IMS Solution

Due to the complexity of this project, each step of the process was defined; from scheduling the site survey, specifying the gear for the shoot, listing crew names for security purposes and outlining the phases of shooting, coding and IT implementation.

This breakdown was posted in an Online Client Project Portal, where each client participant could login and follow the progress of the phases that involved them. This portal allowed each user to post status updates, upload files, comment on the actions of others and see the completion of tasks and milestones. This was highly beneficial to all, as a single source for project communication without overwhelming all parties with email chains and attachments.

Shooting 360

After the initial site survey, IMS returned with two photographers for the shoot, one for the 360 stitching shots and another for capturing client requested B-Roll and stock photos of various pieces of equipment. Each lab had it’s own sanitation standards, which necessitated the shoot crew to dress head to toe in sanitary lab gowns and gloves.

As the shoot took place, the client saw that various elements of the labs would need to be removed from the final product. These included power strips, extension cords, mail bins and instructional stickers on the doors of some of the storage areas. IMS provided the raw photos to the client in PowerPoint format, which were then returned with markups to indicate areas to clean up/remove in post-production.

In addition, several lab technicians were brought in during the shoot to demonstrate how the equipment was used. Due to the photography process some of these had to brought in after the main shoot was finished and inserted digitally in the final 360 tour.

The Result

The resulting 23,000 x13,000 pixel stitched images were supplied to the client coded to allow the 360 product to be viewed locally (via thumb drive), online or via Android/ iOS mobile devices.

The code was initially tested and hosted on IMS’ own dedicated domain (www.3hundred60.com), then transferred to the clients web hosting solution.

The end result was a definite win for the client, who was extremely happy with the professionalism, process, quality and fast turn around of the 5 laboratory tours. Plans are now in the works for creating 360 tours of the laboratory spaces in 8 additional facilities nationwide.

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