#EUsavesLives 2 Kenya (3D Sound Demo 360 Video)

What does daily life look like for a 13-year-old boy who was torn from his life in Somalia and now goes to school in a refugee camp? That was the question behind the second round of #EUsavesLives. After the first round in the Cox’s Bazar camp in Bangladesh had shown humanitarian aid, this time the topic was education. We filmed in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, as a documentary 360° video for the European Commission’s DG ECHO department.

We were a team of four: 360° camera operator, VR director, camera assistant and me as sound engineer. The picture was shot stereoscopically on a Z CAM V1, and I recorded the sound with Ambisonics microphones and wireless systems.

Why this film was not meant to stage pity

Getting there was a challenge in itself: three flights to a camp at 40 °C. On site, people were friendly and cooperative throughout, including those who live in tin huts and own almost nothing. Encounters like these are something I value greatly in this work.

That is exactly why the film was not meant to pull at the heartstrings. 360° helps here, because the all-round picture can hardly be staged. You see what it is like.

How the sound carries the story

For sound, Kenya went well. Everyone was happy to be wired up with microphones, including the teacher, so we got very clean recordings. There was also something that matters a lot in 360°: little is built with concrete there, and I could hide well out of shot behind stones.

Music only sets the mood in this film. It is deliberately sparse, a little piano and synthesizer. Whenever the boy appears in a cutaway, the music moves a little towards him. That way you always know where he is, even when he is just sitting there and little else happens acoustically. The rest is told by the soundtrack. One scene that worked especially well: the children danced and sang for us.

The experience ran as an app by VRdirect, a custom-built Unity application. For the spatial sound we used the multichannel TBE format (Two Big Ears). On top of that came sounds for the user interface: click, hover, select, confirm. As soon as a 360° experience runs inside an app, it needs two sound layers, the spatial scene and the interface.

What came of it

As in the year before, the experience toured on a roadshow. On Facebook 360 the video reached almost 5 million views, 30,000 reactions and 1,000 comments.

What keeps fascinating me about 360° for topics like this: the all-round view without interaction turns the viewer into an observer. You are there, but you can’t do anything. For a film about a refugee camp, that feeling of helplessness is exactly right.

Here are a few pictures from the shoot. How it began with the first round in Belgium, Denmark and Bangladesh is told in the case #EUsavesLives Roadshow.

Frequently asked questions about 360° documentaries

How big does a team for a 360° documentary need to be? In Kenya there were four of us: 360° camera, VR director, camera assistant and sound.

Where does the sound engineer hide on a 360° shoot? Out of shot, in Kenya for example behind stones. The protagonists wear wireless microphones, and an Ambisonics microphone records the surroundings.

How do you guide the viewer’s gaze in a 360° film? With sound. In this film the music moves slightly towards the boy, so you can find him again in the all-round picture.

Planning a 360° documentary? Let’s talk.

Sound that carries the story, even under difficult conditions.