#1558: Series Director of “Adventure” Series on Apple Immersive Video and Grammar of 180 Video

Voices of VR

Charlotte Mikkelborg is the series director of the Adventure series on Apple TV, which is shot on Apple Immersive Video and co-produced by Atlantic Studios (formerly Atlantic Productions) and Apple. I think it has the strongest storytelling released by Apple so far, and it also has some of the most innovative and cutting edge shots that really show the power of the 180-degree format of Apple Immersive Video. In this conversation, we cover Mikkelborg's 10-year journey into working with immersive formats starting with 360-degree video, multi-sensory VR, and most recently 180-degree video. We also talk about the emerging grammar of 180-degree filmmaking, and the introduction of close ups, which I feel like work sometimes and other times feels almost too close or can feel a bit uncanny or jarring when changing scales or results in warping or other distortions. We also talk about some of the behind-the-scenes insights about the Adventure series. One concerning thing that I noticed after watching all of the Apple Immersive Videos released so far is that many of these videos do not contain any credits for who worked on these projects. I did an audit of all 22 of the published Apple Immersive Videos, and I found that 14 of the 22 don't have any credits at all,. Most of these are by Apple Sentity LLC productions, which is presumably Apple's in-house production team. I found that 5 out of the 22 have partial credits, including the four episodes of the Adventure series as well as Man vs. Beast, which features DGA director Ryan Booth. And there are 3 out of the 22 Apple Immersive Videos that have full and complete credits including Submerged that features DGA director Edward Berger, and the Prehistoric Planet Immersive series, which is a co-production with Fairview Portals. See the table below for more information: It is deeply concerning to me that only 3 out of the 22 Apple Immersive Videos seemingly have full and complete credits. Apple did not provide any comment about why this is or why some of these pieces have no credits, why some have partial credits, and why some have full credits. It is nice to see at least some credits on the Adventure series, which is a co-production between Apple and Atlantic Studios (formerly Atlantic Productions), but they're only listing the director, executive producer, and key talent while all of the other key creative talent are not being credited. Atlantic Productions did not provide any official comment about why there are only partial credits, while a few other productions have full credits and many other productions have no credits. You can see find a partial a list of some of the Adventure series creative talent on IMDB, and episode 3 protagonist Ant Williams posted a partial list of credits on his Instagram announcement post. I was able to get some additional context from Mikkelborg about the credits situation, and it does sounds like the co-productions likely have a bit more leeway in dictating what types of credits are shown. While the Prehistoric Planet Immersive series co-produced by Fairview Portals series has full and complete credits, and the Adventure series by Atlantic Studios only has partial credits. The two Apple Sentity LLC productions that do have credits also happen to be directed by directors who are a part of the Director's Guild of America (DGA). The DGA has specific credits requirements, "For feature films, the Director’s screen credit must be accorded on a separate card, which shall be the last title card appearing prior to principal photography. This credit shall be no less than 50% of the size of the displayed title of the motion picture, or of the largest size in which credit is accorded to any other person, whichever is greater." The rules may be different for immersive productions or emerging media projects, but the director credits for Submerged and Man vs Beast seem to both meet DGA's credits requirements for film.