The Walking Dead VR Demo

In 2017, InMobi opened their annual developer hackathon up to the global creative services teams in order to draw attention the value that creative brings to the company. I wanted our team to do two things—first, to push the boundaries of mobile ad experiences with new technology, and secondly, to demonstrate our agility and resourcefulness. We decided to create a 360° VR video for The Walking Dead. Over the course of 36 hours, my team of three created this experience entirely from scratch. While the effects are crude, it served as an effective proof of concept that could be replicated with better production values on future projects.

Click and drag with your mouse to move around the 360° video below.

Spark Hackathon Presentation

In the video below, I walk you through the presentation I gave to the hackathon judges. We received 2nd place for our efforts, which is admirable considering we were up against the best developers at InMobi.

VR Demo

Below, you can see a demonstration of the video as viewed within an Oculus headset. I can’t help but feel ridiculous watching myself watch it.

Photoshop Composite Image

Here you can see the effort that went into creating the static backdrop on which the video was rendered. VR video and photographs are typically this 2:1 aspect ratio, with a curvilinear distortion that is corrected when the image is rendered within the device.

Green Screen Videography

We filmed ourselves walking in place in front of a green screen, which we then remove via chroma key in After Effects. The green backdrop and studio lighting are my personal belongings which I used for live streaming on Twitch.

After Effects and Mettle Magic

Here is the scene within After Effects. The chroma keyed zombie videos are overlaid as 3D planes within the scene and the video is rendered for interactive 360° viewing.