Fantasy Flight 360° VR experience for Thomas Cook Airlines
How a 360° VR experience can be used to inspire your next holiday
The Challenge
Catch Digital approached Visualise to bring to life the immersive element of the Thomas Cook Airlines social media campaign, #TCAFantasyFlight as a 360° VR experience.
Visualise was tasked to produce a series of three 360° videos onboard the airline’s newly refurbished A330 aircraft featuring a cast of 50, including real Thomas Cook Airlines pilots, cabin crew along with some famous looking faces.
The main objective was to capture the attention of UK holidaymakers and help Thomas Cook Airlines show how they put the fun back into flying. The 360° videos were hosted on a microsite, where visitors to the site were challenged to spot clues in each 360° video and enter a competition to win a £3,000 prize holiday to Los Angeles, two pairs of long-haul flights or one of five Ricoh Theta 360 cameras that were up for grabs.
“This campaign highlights that travel companies are realising the potential that VR has when connecting with customers. The initial ‘Try Before You Fly’ destination campaign saw a 180% increase in NYC excursions booked after the VR launch, and we’re hoping that this campaign continues to build on that success.”
Henry Stuart, Founder & CEO of VISUALISE
The Solution
The Visualise team is adept at capturing challenging environments in 360°. The location of the #TCAFantasyFlight campaign was filmed inside an actual A330 plane and not a set. This meant a huge about of pre-production was required to ensure we could capture the action within the cabin’s relatively narrow width of just over 17ft.
The concept behind the 360° videos, which was to inject fun into the brand and provide clues for the competition meant that a continuous flow of lively action took place to hint at the destination for each flight. From a surf board and giraffe in the cockpit to a string quartet in economy, each scene of action within the film had to be carefully plotted.
To capture the vast amount of activity within the aircraft cabin we used a small rig comprised of three cameras with special wide angle lenses, meaning there would be less stitch lines to deal with in post-production.
The competition has now closed but you can still immerse yourself into the Thomas Cook Airlines 360° VR experience by following the instructions below.
The 360° videos need to be viewed in the YouTube app on your iPhone or Android device, or on Chrome or Firefox on your computer. For a truly immersive 360° experience use a VR headset like Google Cardboard.
Download or update to the latest version to view the 360° experience:
iOS: http://apple.co/1R7CH4w
Android: http://bit.ly/1OusQkS
The Results
500k YouTube views | 11% followers increase | 22k competition entries