Ebola Outbreak

Ebola Outbreak: A Virtual Journey is a VR documentary that explores the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the largest and most widespread of its kind. Captured with 360-degree cameras, this immersive experience leverages virtual reality technology to place viewers directly into the heart of the crisis, offering an unprecedented level of engagement with the story. It’s an exploration of how the massive epidemic began, and why it wasn’t stopped sooner

Filmed on the ground in West Africa in partnership with PBS investigative series Frontline and Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, the gripping documentary features heart-wrenching interviews with the victims and organizations involved in the deadly epidemic, recounting the events that began with a single infection and grew to impact the globe.

Concept Design

Working with the executive team at Secret Location, I helped to develop the creative concept behind the virtual journey. My role involved shaping the narrative to effectively capture the vast scale of the Ebola outbreak, from the microscopic virus to the widespread devastation it caused across West Africa.

Virtual reality was the ideal medium to tell this story, allowing the audience to move from the minuscule environment inside the human body, through the intimate, harrowing experience of encountering the virus at the individual level, and upwards to the global impact of its transmission.

Digital Narrative

VR helps champion the narrative by placing viewers directly into the environment, making them feel as though they are witnessing the events unfold firsthand.

By leveraging immersive VR technology, we enabled viewers to step into key locations, like the initial village in Guinea and the makeshift field hospitals overwhelmed by patients, providing a visceral understanding of both the personal and systemic scale of the crisis.

My focus was on ensuring that the transition between these locations felt fluid, utilizing VR’s unique ability to create empathy and allow the audience to feel as if they were physically present at the heart of the outbreak.