360° Video Shoot at Fattoria La Vialla

Anyone who has visited Tuscany knows the unique feel of the Italian countryside. We went to Fattoria La Vialla to capture this unique atmosphere in an interactive 360° video. And we explain why 3D 360° videos are more honest and build more trust than other media.

Many people in Germany are familiar with Fattoria La Vialla. Its boxes with the big, curving letters regularly arrive by mail in countless households, filled with wine, olive oil, pasta, sauces, and many other sustainably produced foods. La Vialla has two important exports: first, its agricultural products, and second, a way of life.

The latter comes in the boxes in the form of lovingly designed brochures and books. But that is only a small part of what you can experience on site. We traveled to Tuscany for a shoot to capture this atmosphere in 3D with our 360° camera.

360° videos can evoke lasting emotions

“Immersion” is what we call it when you become deeply absorbed in a story. When you read a gripping book, for example, you can get so absorbed that you completely forget whether you are sitting on the couch at home or in a hotel room. VR headsets can create this immersive effect much more strongly. When you watch a virtual reality simulation or a VR film, you are drawn deep into the action within seconds and forget the reality outside the headset for a while.

This very effect can be used to convey the way of life of Tuscany and Fattoria La Vialla even better. That is why we are creating a tour made of 360° videos that guides users through the Fattoria: they can watch (almost) up close as the olives are milled, the wine is harvested, and the cheese is made.

360° videos are more honest than 2D videos

No medium is as honest as 360° video, in stark contrast to traditional 2D video. Everyone knows this from the videos they shoot on their phones: there’s a power pole in the landscape? Pan a little to the side, and the picture is perfect again. The hotel is the most beautiful in the world? What you don’t see in the video is the highway running behind the camera. The many cuts in a traditional 2D video also make it possible to fake the sequence of events and hide slips of the tongue.

In a 360° video, however, viewers can look in every direction: forward, back, left, right, up, and down. There is no “behind the camera.” That is why 360° shoots almost always work with the available light on location, since there is no room for extra lamps. In a 360° video, you can hardly hide unattractive spots without viewers noticing. And 360° videos involve very little editing. The people in front of the camera have to get their scene right in one take. And if a scene doesn’t go as planned, they improvise rather than start over. The result is a style of storytelling that resembles a live demonstration or an on-site tour more than a polished corporate video. Anyone who has watched a 360° documentary in a VR headset knows the honesty of this medium from experience.

Building trust with 360° videos

Companies like to invite customers into their production facilities and offer factory tours to show that they have nothing to hide. People who have seen how a product is made feel a stronger connection to the company and trust it more. But how can customers get to the production site? Especially when they live in another country, as in the case of La Vialla, whose largest market is Germany?

La Vialla attends many events, does catering, and runs warehouse stores in European cities. These are good opportunities to have VR headsets on hand. Anyone who enjoys the Tuscan products can take a short virtual reality trip to see how the food is made. Once you have been to the Fattoria, the products taste noticeably better. And a trip by 360° video in a VR headset is almost as good as the real thing.