Filming an Interactive Immersive Documentary Using a Custom Blackmagic 3D Camera Rig

Jun 06, 2025

Jeremy Gray

A woman sits at a wooden table examining documents, surrounded by boxes of papers. A camera on a slider is positioned in front of her, and sunlight streams in from a window with houseplants on the sill.

Last week, PetaPixel spoke to the creative team behind the new immersive documentary, D-Day: The Camera Soldier, that explores the untold story of a D-Day combat cameraman through reconstructed old photos and footage and current-day interviews for Apple Vision Pro users. Today, Blackmagic Design detailed the miniaturized 3D rig it made for filming the immersive experience.

Blackmagic claims that traditional high-resolution 3D camera rigs are extremely large and cumbersome, making them challenging to use for real-world documentary filmmaking. So instead, for TARGO’s D-Day: The Camera Soldier, TARGO developed a mini rig using a pair of Blackmagic Micro Studio 4K G2s to capture the immersive experience’s spatial footage. These are the world’s smallest 4K UHD broadcast cameras, often used for live production, sports broadcasts, and specialized television programs.

“These cameras gave us the right balance: cinematic image quality with a compact, lightweight form factor,” says TARGO’s Victor Agulhon, a three-time Emmy-nominated producer. “They were small enough to mount on a light beam splitter, allowing us to move the system easily and stay mobile indoors, outdoors, even on beaches.”

A person in military attire holding a camera is superimposed above an open book, which shows the same image in black and white. A hand is turning a page of the book.

The Director of Photography for the immersive scenes, Mael Joanas, touts the Micro Studio 4K G2’s image quality, portability, and flexibility.

Since the rig was compact, the team could film in really tight spaces, explains Emmy-nominated director Chloé Rochereuil.

“We could film in tight spaces, between furniture, in basements, close to our subjects. One standout example is a beautiful shot that mimics the effect of a dolly zoom, using the cameras mounted on sliders. We could only make these choices because the rig was so lightweight and compact.”

A professional video camera on a tripod is set up in a cemetery with white crosses on green grass under a clear blue sky. Some gravestones have small American flags placed in front of them.

Agulhon adds that the team wanted to “fully saturate the Vision Pro’s capabilities and approach real world fidelity.” He says that Blackmagic’s cameras deliver the sharpness and depth required to achieve this goal.

While TARGO has made many immersive video experiences, D-Day: The Camera Soldier was the first project on which it used DaVinci Resolve Studio for the entire workflow. The software natively supports stereoscopic 3D workflows.

A computer screen displays video editing software with a stereoscopic VR video of a cemetery showing white crosses, blue sky, and grass. Editing tools, video effects, and timeline clips are visible in the interface.

“Unifying our video pipeline for edit, conform, grade, and delivery in one tool reduced the variables and centralized our process around a familiar skill set,” Joanas says.

“We were essentially operating in a 2D environment, using stacked left and right images that synced with a few clicks,” Joanas adds. “It allowed us to edit stereo video using a mono display while still exporting in side by side formats for delivery.”

“We are most proud of how naturally it all came together, both for the story and the viewer,” concludes Rochereuil. “We succeeded in unifying multiple formats while staying grounded in a profoundly human narrative.”

D-Day: The Camera Soldier is available now exclusively for Apple Vision Pro for $4.99. For much more information on the interactive documentary, check out PetaPixel‘s interview with its creators.

 Image credits: TARGO, TIME Studios, Blackmagic Design