Quicktime VR's Utility for the Production Designer

...as these ideas evolve, in concert with the director, so do the sketches. They become a blueprint for building the world a director will tell his or her story in.

"Immersive photographs", 360° seamless panoramas of environ-
ments the production designer and the director might consider to build this world in will become a welcome tool to add to the designer's kit. The process might unfold something like this:
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Sites are found and recorded digitally in such a way that allows for high resolution Quicktime animations to be presented early on. The director would choose several of the sites and pass their selects on to the production designer.

The designer would be able to look at these sites "in the round" as well, providing that same sense of being there the director had when choosing his favorites. (No matter how many still photographs are shot of a site, as single-frame wide angle representations, tight-cropped

details or multi-frame "joiners" – or "panoramas" – there simply is not that same sense of knowing the location, with still photos, that the Quicktime VR animation is able to provide.)

Both production designer and director alike can print a file on their desktop printer that will create a 5" x 28" (12.7cm x 71cm) "flat" rendering of the 360° site panorama. (SEE how here...) Ideas for sets to build at or in a selected site can then be sketched in pencil, or whatever media one prefers, directly on the paper version.

A 360° panorama rendered as a "flat" file. Use this darker version as reference for the worksheet version – below – rendered at 60% opacity. The lighter version allows you to better see your drawings. (LOOK here)

"Flat" digital renderings can be drawn on by way of a pressure sensitive tablet in a drawing or painting program like Illustrator, Painter, Photoshop or one of several 3D rendering appli-
cations. These digital versions can then be reconstructed back into Quicktime VR animations so the team can easily navigate through the space that has just been created. (SEE these examples of how to zoom-in

and zoom-out, using Quicktime VR's as a "director's viewfinder".)

"Immersive photographs" will allow a production to better plan shots in advance, head off problems with pre-existing elements at a site – buildings, trees, power and light poles, signage, etc. – perhaps even preclude the necessity of time spent for some "director's scouts" because the entire site,

the full 360°, is able to be looked at from a single point of view while you work in your office or in the comfort of your home.

(Please, if you have any thoughts on how I might adapt this service to fit with how you do things, let me know your ideas.)