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What were your trying to achieve with 6 Nations: Pitch Side?

Virtual reality puts the viewer at the centre of the action, a much more immersive experience than traditional television. The team in Wales wanted to experiment with what it could mean for our coverage of big events, and there aren't many bigger events in Wales than a home game in the 6 Nations.

That doesn’t sound, er, simple...

Indeed! Our 6 Nations games are filmed with 29 cameras, to achieve the very best TV coverage, but this makes placement of extra 360 cameras difficult. They need to be close enough to the action but not get in the way of the other TV camera shots or the movement of players, stadium staff and those infernal pyrotechnics. One novel solution is the use of a head mounted camera, more usually used for capturing adventure Sports but in this case much easier to move around than a tripod.

What are you most pleased with?

It was really quite a coupé to get access to the Principality Stadium for an RBS 6 Nations match in order to film 360 video for the first time. With its closable roof, the Stadium has an amazing feeling of both scale and intimacy, made all the more intense when filled with 74,000 fans. Capturing the experience of being on the pitch was a massive opportunity.

How was it made?

We worked with the WRU, Visit Wales and Cardiff based VR specialists Atticus Digital on this experience. The filming used a Freedom 360 Explorer + GoPro array with 6 Hero 4 Black.

What did you learn?

The technology for doing 360 filming is getting easier and easier to use. We’ll probably be able to do live experiences like this in the next year and I would hope we could do more moving footage like the walk down the tunnel in this experience.