2020 Digital Storytelling Contest, Interactive, Outstanding VR Narrative

Common Ground

Production

Darren Emerson/East City Films

Common Ground is a multi-layered immersive journey into the history, politics and human face of the current crisis in the UK housing system. Through the monolithic concrete blocks of the notorious Aylesbury Estate, the biggest social housing estate in Europe, viewers enter the world of the estate from its birth in the 1960's to its controversial redevelopment today. Showcasing a diverse range of media storytelling tools – stereoscopic 360 video, photogrammetry, 3D modelling, archive and interactivity – this VR documentary questions notions of community, examines the disenfranchisement of the working class, and captures the sense of betrayal that residents feel when they are forced to move on. Common Ground stands as a valuable digital record of place in a time of changing political and social realities.

Production team

    Writer/Producer/Director: Darren Emerson

    Head of Post Production: Conan Roberts

    Executive Producer: Ashley Cowan

    Lead Developer: Oliver Lindsay

    Consulting Producer: Dan Tucker

    Resident and Contributor: Jean Bartlett

    Resident and Contributor: Judi Bos

    Resident and Contributor: Kevin Holland

    Resident and Contributor: Anthony Badu

    Resident and Contributor: Aysen Dennis

    Contributing Historian: John Boughton

    360 Camera Operator: Jessica Curran

    360 Camera Operator: Andrew Yardley

    Production Manager: Alexa Pearson

    Sound Designer: Oliver Kadel

    Unity Creative Lead: Oliver Kay

    Unity Technical Director: Adam Child

    Unity Developer: Jason Walters

    Animation: Marco Sandeman

    3D Modelling: Aaron Hicks

    Special Camera Operator: Ben Huss-Smickler

    Special Camera Operator: Sununu Hernandez