The easiest way to sum up TARGO’s virtual reality content is this: watch unique people, in strange places, doing interesting things.
It’s an approach that has worked well for the VR media company, which has garnered plenty of praise from the industry for their work, which has been featured in numerous popular VR applications, including SamungVR, InceptionVR, Oculus Videos, CineVR and LittlStar. And, they’ve just released their own app for the Oculus Go, where they will be releasing new content each week.
Immersive Shooter spent some time with TARGO’s CEO, Victor Agulhon, and Editor-in-Chief Chloe Rochereuil to talk about their well-honed talent for finding great stories for VR, what’s in their gear bag, and why they’ve decided to launch their new app.
For people who may be unfamiliar with your work, can you give us a brief summary of what types of stories TARGO tackles?
There are always two components to the stories we tell. First, we focus on people who have very unique and peculiar stories to tell. They have unique hobbies, they’re usually magnetic in some sense.
I’m sure you require a lot of flexibility in the gear you use to shoot such a wide variety of stories. What are your go-to 360 cameras?
TARGO uses the Insta360 Pro, seen here on the set of This Is Your Captain Speaking, and the GoPro Fusion for its productions, due to the cameras’ flexibility and performance.
Can you share some of what you’ve learned, in terms of best practices for 360 video?
Besides your cameras, what other gear are we likely to find in your gear bags on any given project?
The new news is that you’ve launched an Oculus Go app. What made you decide to do this? And why Oculus Go?
TARGO plans to build its own app for other VR headsets in the future.
How will this new app change your distribution plans, moving forward?
Chloe, at right, is TARGO’s editor-in-chief and is responsible for planning out and overseeing TARGO’s original content.
One of the difficulties in our industry is that funding usually entails some sort of exclusivity deal. How is your work funded in such a way that you maintain this autonomy?
Do you have any tips for other content creators who may want to employ your funding approach?
Does your app bring any benefits in terms of quality or new features (like AR or 6 degrees of freedom down the road for headsets like Oculus Quest)?
TARGO has launched its own app for the Oculus Go to showcase its original VR videos.
You’ve also been touching on AR, in addition to continuing your VR content production. Will that be a part of your new app?
This summer, we created an AR experience where you could became a pigeon racer, in reference to our VR documentary “The Last Pigeon Racers”. It had a lot of interactivity in it. The experience is available on the App Store, but it is was still something more experimental for us. We wanted to see if that could make sense to offer both an AR and a VR experience for our documentaries.
AR is fun and we enjoyed working on it, but we remain focused on VR. AR is challenging and exciting, but it’s also a demanding work for journalists. And because we have this journalistic approach, we thought that for now, we have more to offer in VR than in AR. We’ll definitely keep an eye on AR, but we also don’t want to change our plans because of the pressure of AR hype.
What has been each of your favorite stories TARGO has done so far?
Regarding other VR creators, Felix and Paul and Atlas V are doing great jobs too. Their experiences are always stunning! On the media side, CNN and Contrast VR are great content creators too. (CR).
Do you have any concern about the recent “cooling” of the VR industry?
When we started TARGO, the industry was going through the “VR winter”. So our perspective on the “cooling” is quite different. For the first time in the immersive space, we see that virtual reality is consolidating and growing! We’re beyond the hype. We have headset usage and sales data, so it’s real! It’s not about hoping that VR takes off, it’s about planning it. So we’re very enthusiastic about it because we see it growing and going in the right direction. (VA).
Where is TARGO headed from here?
If you have the Oculus Go, the TARGO app is now available for download. All of TARGO’s original content is also available on its YouTube channel.