Opening plans, images of the cathedral fire broadcast around the world. From the first seconds, we are immersed instantly in the anguish of this disastrous evening of April 15, 2019. Produced by the young Parisian shoot TARGO, the documentary in virtual reality (VR) "Revivre Notre Dame" takes the viewer into total immersion 15 minutes in the heart of the monument damaged by the flames.
To do this, you need to equip yourself with a Quest virtual reality headset from Oculus and prepare for a moving adventure. First-person exploration mixes vibrant images from a first documentary filmed by TARGO in December 2018 with those filmed one afternoon last December in a building silenced and in the midst of consolidation. It is this contrast that is most striking.
"We filmed images that were both sad and magical with colors that produced a naturally dull final result, because there was still a lot of dust," explains Chloé Rochereuil, the director.
There is a strong temptation to pause this film in VR in order to scrutinize in detail the scenery captured at 360 ° thanks to cameras in ultra-high resolution 8K.
The four successive narrators - Patrick Chauvet, rector of Notre-Dame, general Jean-Louis Georgelin, in charge of restoration, Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris and Jean-Michel Leniaud, president of the Society of Friends of Notre- Lady - also appear with a surprising sensation of relief rarely seen in a VR film.
Ultra-fast post-fire shooting because of lead
He asked for eight months of work from a team of ten people. The post-fire shooting, completed in just five hours, was particularly constrained by the lead contamination of the monument. "We had to wear special and disposable clothing, clean all our equipment at the end and adapt to the constraints of the site which involve dangerous operations", details Chloé Rochereuil.
Access to the central nave, the place where the flaming arrow tore the vault, was therefore only possible with a "rover", a robot controlled remotely. The scale of the disaster materializes before our eyes in high definition on an almost mystical soundtrack.
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A gaping hole, barely veiled by a tarpaulin, sends us back to the brutal collapse of part of the structure at the end of this tragic night. The age-old marble appears cracked and still strewn with rubble. The high-level shots reveal the importance of the work to come.
Distributed free of charge, but in a limited way
We just regret that this free work in French and in English is only available via Oculus headsets, property of Facebook which produced it to democratize VR. "Our content, which is haute couture, was designed to be seen with spatialized sound on the most popular virtual reality headset," explains Victor Agulhon, the boss of TARGO.
This audience, certainly global but limited, could expand thanks to a viewing location soon to be established near the monument to let the magic of virtual reality operate among all lovers of Notre-Dame.
> “Revivre Notre-Dame” available free on Oculus TV in the Oculus online store .
