Spend a deeply creepy half hour exploring a 360-degree The Shining

The video, which uses YouTube’s still-novel 360-degree feature, is the work of digital artist Claire Hentschker, who has used the process of photogrammetry to create a virtual map of the film’s sets. The images are taken directly from the movie, but they’ve been spread out spatially so as to simulate the physical distance that would exist between objects in a three-dimensional environment. Anything not directly captured by the camera is rendered here as inky blackness. Therefore, depending on where the viewer is looking, the world of “Shining360” sometimes looks like it’s melting or disintegrating.

Hentschker’s video is surreal and disorienting at every turn, but viewers who are very familiar with The Shining should be able to find their bearings somewhat easily here. The video is arranged chronologically to match the order of the film, and the camera movements are imported directly from Kubrick as well. Therefore, just like The Shining, “Shining360” begins with a journey through the twisty mountain roads leading to the hotel, and it ends with the snow-covered hedge maze, plus a brief coda in The Gold Room. Along the way, viewers can poke around in The Overlook’s overwhelmingly large kitchen, the Torrance’s cozy apartment, Stuart Ullman’s office, and even the freezer and storage lockers. Fortunately, the original movie provides plenty of visual information for this digital simulacrum. It’s important to remember that The Overlook is known for driving its inhabitants to madness, so viewers may want to keep that in mind before devoting a good chunk of their day to staring at “Shining360.”

[via Laughing Squid]