360 photos of the old Upright Citizens Brigade theatre in Chelsea
I’m an improv nerd and I’m also a virtual reality nerd; and last year I had the privilege of spending two hours inside the old Upright Citizens Brigade theatre in Chelsea and photograph it in 360 before it closed its doors forever to be relocated to Hells Kitchen. So I asked for permission, the theatre agreed, and they gave me two hours do the whole thing, so I went for a practical solution which I think worked out pretty well.
Luckily, Ricoh had just released their new Theta V — with HDR — and Manfrotto had just released a VR tripod, I’d say the perfect VR tripod. (You can add a regular base or even a dolly base).
In order to succeed I had to be quick and minimize mistakes to get every pano in a single click. The Ricoh Theta was really good at handling the quick shots while connected to my Pixel phone. I had done some tests with low fi equipment with the Samsung Gear 360 (have a look) but that was too flaky, and you had to hack Android for it to work, and most of the time it didn’t. Have a look.
Planning
As in every shoot, planning was very important. In this case I knew the theatre very well, having done a few shows there and having seen more than one hundred. So I mapped every shot to leave improvisation :| to a minimum.
Platform
I went for an off the shelf 360 tour experience platform (I had zero budget and I had already spent my zero budget on the Theta and the tripod) and I decided for roundme.com . They offer enough customization, tour creation, hot spots and a VR mode at a reasonable price. The systems is quite heavy though and it can get a bit choppy.
Grading and Editing
Because it makes all the difference, I spent time making the best out of the images on Lightroom. The final images are in color; the black and white pano at the top of this article is a special edition graded to print. Because equirectangular is beautiful.
