Our Work
In our quest to make history as immersive as possible, we’ve turned an early 20th century camera into a time machine, bought the creator of an iconic arts and crafts garden back to life to take visitors on a personal tour of his life’s work and challenged children to track down a mischievous time villain guilty of messing with Britain’s industrial history…
Putting on a Puppet Show for Delapre Abbey
Many attractions would love to put on a puppet show – a great way to attract family audiences. Problem is, putting one on – coming up with a story and scripts and, worst of all, finding volunteers willing to operate the puppets and do the voices – can be a difficult. However, one client of ours – Vikki Pearson at Delapre Abbey – approached us to help with a creative solution to the problem.
Looking into the Past for ss Great Britain
At their new Being Brunel attraction, the ss Great Britain team had worked tirelessly to re-create both Brunel’s Duke Street office in London and his dockside office in Bristol. However, one thing was ruining this magical time travel experience – the views through the windows. Our brief was to replace these early 21st century vistas with something authentically mid-19th century and make it so realistic, people would think it was real.
Immersive Helms
Our immersive helms will whisk your visitors back in time via the magic of cutting edge 3D sound. A knight’s great helm transports the wearer into the heart of a medieval battle. A gladiator’s helmet pitches the listener into Rome’s Colosseum, surrounded by the cacophony of the baying mob. A WW1 helmet and gas mask will sink the listener ankle-deep into trench mud with the sound of shellfire exploding all around them.
360 Fire Rescue VR for the BBC and London Fire Brigade Museum
Until you’ve put on that headset, VR experiences are hard to grasp. Some kind of physical installation, housing the VR, can be a focal point and a tangible tease, creating some of that rollercoaster queue anticipation that enhances the whole experience. And something familiar (less alien than a VR headset still is to most people) becomes a kind of a guide rope to take the newbie VR viewer from the real world into the virtual one.
Turning Forest VR for BBC R&D
How do you stand out amongst 50 virtual reality experiences jostling for attention in a crowded , noisy, shiny modern gallery. This was our challenge when we showcased a BBC R and D/VRTOV Virtual Reality experience at Storyscapes, the Tribeca Film Festival’s VR fest. Our task was to – almost instanteously – transport visitors to a world of fantasy forests that would trigger memories of childhood adventure.
ss Great Britain Steerage Soundscape
If any historic attraction has been a pioneer in immersive storytelling over the past decade, it’s ss Great Britain. So we were delighted to be asked to design a soundscape for the ship’s new steerage experience. The brief was for visitors to step back into the 1850s as soon as they stepped into steerage, to experience 5 minutes of life onboard during one of the ship’s passenger voyages to Australia.
The Shackleton Immersive Cinema
Oslo’s Fram Museum charts the story of Polar exploration, and no recounting of the tales of Antarctic endeavour would be complete without the story of one of Britain’s finest, Sir Ernest Shackleton. The Fram team had experienced Hurley’s Camera but they needed something that could immerse more than one visitor at a time. So we designed the Shackleton Immersive Cinema.
Spanner in the Works Game
Gloucestershire Archives set us a unique challenge – to bring to life the story of Fielding & Platt, an iconic engineering company of the 19th and 20th century whose factory is now buried under a 21st century shopping centre. We cracked it by coming up with a mobile game – Spanner in the Works – in which children were challenged to thwart the plot of evil time villain, Mr McGuffin.
A Walk with Lawrence Johnston
Visitors to the National Trust’s Hidcote Manor were spellbound by the beauty of the arts and craft garden but understood little about its history. Our suggestion to the team at Hidcote was to bring its creator, Lawrence Johnston, back to life to take visitors on a tour of the garden and its provenance.
Hurley’s Camera
2014-17 marks the centenary of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s epic attempt to cross the Antarctic Continent. Dulwich College, which houses a permanent exhibition dedicated to its former pupil, wanted an exciting exhibit to mark the event so we dreamt up a way to transport visitors to the Antarctic ice to join Shackleton during one of the key events of his doomed expedition.
Gloucester Cathedral Great Lives
Gloucester Cathedral has hundreds of stories within its tombs, memorials and stained glass windows. Our challenge was how to tell those stories without cluttering its inspiring space. An audio tour wasn’t a practical solution due to the investment required in hardware but what if we could give visitors inspiring audio content on the hardware in their pockets?