A landmark immersive documentary — nominated for Best Immersive Experience at the Venice International Film Festival and winner at the Adelaide Film Festival.
Award-winning 360 video production reaches its highest expression through volumetric storytelling. The Unknown Patient demonstrates how 360 video production Melbourne-based studios can compete on the global festival stage when cinematography meets cutting-edge spatial technology. Directed by Michael Beets, this piece combines historical research, volumetric capture, and six-degrees-of-freedom spatial design to create an immersive experience that carries both technical precision and emotional depth.
"A hauntingly beautiful use of volumetric capture to reconstruct history."
— Festival PressThe Unknown Patient is a collaboration between VRTOV and Unwritten Endings, directed by Michael Beets. The project showcases our capacity to manage complex multi-disciplinary technical pipelines — merging cinematic direction with cutting-edge volumetric capture technology to produce a world-class narrative experience delivered on a strict international festival timeline.
At its core, the work uses high-fidelity volumetric capture alongside historically accurate 3D digital twin reconstruction to place audiences inside a story that would otherwise be impossible to inhabit. Every performance was captured in full six-degrees-of-freedom volumetric detail, allowing viewers to move through the space of memory itself.
The production required meticulous calibration between historical archival research, motion capture sessions, Unity Engine environment builds, and the delicate task of ensuring the emotional truth of the narrative was never lost in the technical complexity. The result is a piece that feels simultaneously intimate and vast — a ghost story told through light and geometry.
