Lights, ice floes, action: Antarctica glory unveiled

An extraordinary coup has been pulled off by one of Australia’s new breed of nature documentary makers.

The new ground breaking virtual reality film titled "The Antarctica Experience"

An extraordinary coup has been pulled off by one of Australia’s new breed of nature documentary makers, with the launch of the world’s first 360-degree film of Antarctica this weekend in Perth.

It’s the stuff of dreams as wild as the Antarctic landscape itself. Briege Whitehead, a 26-year-old West Australian filmmaker, grew up in the wheatbelt town of Bruce Rock cherishing a desire to visit “the mysterious place at the bottom of the globe”.

She got permission from the Australian Antarctic Division to visit in February to shoot a virtual-reality film about Antarctica.

Then she approached Warner Brothers, Dolby sound experts and the BBC’s producer of David Attenborough films to ask whether they’d help make The Antarctic ­Experience, which has its world premiere at the WA Maritime ­Museum today.

“I knocked on the doors of the best in the business,” Whitehead says.

She admits the line “Hello, I’m Briege from Bruce Rock” might not have inspired confidence, but thought “the worst they could do is say no”.

They said yes, presumably reassured by Whitehead’s record as a producer of factual series like Predator Pets and 72 Cutest Animals for Netflix and National Geographic..

The Antarctica Experience was produced by Briege Whitehead.

She also co-owns a Perth company, White Spark Pictures.

“When I heard about virtual-reality technology, I thought it would be perfect to give people an emotional reaction to Antarctica, to really appreciate it,” she says.

“You don’t want lots of people going down to Antarctica, so the next best way to influence people is to give them the experience of being there.”

Briege Whitehead.

As a novice in shooting virtual-reality films, she sought out as her co-director Phil Harper, a BAFTA-winning BBC director whose credits include directing Attenborough in an underwater submersible on the Great Barrier Reef. In February, Harper and Whitehead travelled to Antarctica for a gruelling two-week shoot, lugging 160kg of equipment. They used a six-lens virtual-reality camera to capture 360-degree, high-resolution images of walking among Adele penguins, skirting icebergs in a boat and tailing scientists in the field.

“We were able to bring audiences to places that even people living and working down there don’t get to see, like flying in a helicopter and landing on Sorsdal Glacier,” she says. “Everything is in view, ­including you as the filmmaker. There’s no hiding from it, you become part of it.”

Briege Whitehead and camera operator Dean Chisholm at Davis research station in Antarctica.

In one of several film firsts, the pair captured the spectacular Southern Lights over Davis Station in 360-degree vision. They were also given the first drone ­licence in Antarctica to capture dramatic footage from above the vast icescape.

“The people who worked on the project are a bit of a story in ­itself,” says Whitehead.

“I ­approached DNEG from London, the best visual-effects company in the world that’s won Oscars for the Marvel films and Harry Potter films. Somehow they came on board for free to re­stitch everything together to create the 3-D effect.”

Post-sound design was done in Los Angeles at Warner Brothers, whose sound designer David Raines approached her and asked to be involved. “David also engaged a Dolby atmospheric consultant for the entire project, someone who ­‘locates’ the actual sounds so if there’s the pitter-patter of a penguin walking past you, the sound is there right next to you until it passes.”

Filming took place during the summer of 2017-18.

Actor David Wenham agreed to voice the film’s opening and closing passages.

Robb Clifton, the Antarctic Division’s operations manager, says the film “will be a real game-changer for conveying our ­message”. It has also won plaudits for the Western Australian Museum, which has partnered with Whitehead — and supplied dozens of viewing headsets — to take it on tour to the National Museum in Canberra and major museums around the world.