Please don’t touch!?

…Sure! Our cooperation partner MAGIX Software GmbH brings the open (research) museum into the living room as a 360° shot.

Actually, software development is the expertise of MAGIX . The medium-sized company, based in Berlin with additional locations in Europe and the USA, is specialized in the development of multimedia software. With that not only videos, music, photos, graphics and websites can be created and designed but also archived and presented. But what exactly makes the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin interesting for a company like MAGIX? And how can companies like MAGIX profit from the services of the Mediasphere For Nature?

In fact, the museum is often sought after as a film location. On Mondays, when the museum is closed to the public, operations in our research museum naturally continue at full speed behind the scenes. In the case of MAGIX we took advantage of the quiet of the exhibition to concentrate on filming. Among other spaces, we filmed in the dinosaur hall, in the mineral collection and in the evolution hall.

Various types of cameras were used during the shooting. In addition to 360° video cameras (one for video recording, the other for photo documentation), regular camera types were also used, e.g. for recordings of accompanying tutorials. The MAGIX team was in action both in front of and behind the camera.

MAGIX is currently developing virtual reality software programs with Photostory Premium VR , ‘VR Studio’ and ‘VEGAS Pro VR’, with which users can design and implement their own VR tours through 360° video environments. Therefore, one focus of the shooting was the production of suitable recordings for a tutorial that introduces future users of MAGIX software to the creation of 360° recordings.

In particular, for this purpose the museum with its spacious exhibition halls offers a suitable backdrop with a high recognition factor. In addition, the museum houses thousands of exhibits, which are enriched with comprehensive didactic information depending on the teaching approach. These are the best conditions for filming, because as one function of the new software programs, 360° shots can be augmented with additional media information.

Collaborations such as this one with MAGIX once again confirm our approach of not limiting the application lab ‘Mediasphere For Nature’ to its services. On the contrary, the entire museum as an organization and location can be seen as an experimental landscape, in which touching is explicitly desired under certain conditions.

In any case, we are already excited about the MAGIX software!