Niman Ranch is a collective of small family farms that produce some of the finest quality meats in the world. Every farm that is part of the Niman Ranch family meets rigorous standards to ensure sustainable and humane agriculture practices. To see this first hand, Niman Ranch invites their prospective buyers from around the world to tour these farms in person. With COVID-19 restricting travel, they could no longer bring visitors directly to the farms.
Niman's VP of marketing, Alicja Spaulding, had to find a way to bring the farm to them. “We wanted to give our customers an authentic, immersive farm and ranch experience without requiring travel. One of our most impactful and reliable ways to help customers understand how we were different was to get them to a farm.”
The Next Best Thing
360 video can be an excellent replacement for the insights provided by direct travel and in person tours, without the inconvenience and cost. We proposed that Niman Ranch create 3 short 360 films for delivery on VR headsets and mobile apps for Android and iOS.
We traveled to 2 Niman Ranch participating farms in the Midwest. Together with Niman Ranch sales and marketing representatives, we interviewed and filmed farmers tending to their crops and livestock in order to produce “a day in the life” view of the farm, similar to what prospective buyers would see on an in-person tour.
Once principal photography was completed, edits compiled and approved, we built Niman Ranch 360 video apps for Android and iOS. This allowed users to watch the immersive videos with their hand-held mobile devices or using Niman Ranch branded Google Cardboard VR headsets.
We worked directly with the family farmers in pre-production via video conferencing to plan our time on the farm and understand what would be happening while we’re on location. Satellite imagery of the farms also helped us to plan our locations and time needed to transport our crew. We made it our goal to do our job quickly and efficiently, while not interrupting the work on the farm. The farmers also let us know that we should plan to get more than a little dirty. While there really is no way to accurately plan for what a day on the farm might throw at us, we prepared a shot list for each and packed our boots.
The Cattle Ranch
In mid June, when the majority of the herd was home from it’s winter range, we joined Niman Ranch reps at the Big Acres cow/calf operation outside of Prescott, Wisconsin, owned by the Beeler Family. Jake Beeler, farm manager, was already hard at work when we arrived just after sunrise, prepping the day’s feed for his herd of several hundred cattle. After greetings and tech demonstrations we got to work placing 360 cameras ahead of his equipment and in the optimal positions for 360 filming.
Taking advantage of exceptional weather and low wind conditions, we got our 360 drone up in the air as soon as possible to capture stunning aerial imagery of the farm from multiple approaches. These would be used as establishment shots for our edit on the cattle ranch.
One of the most important aspects of Niman Ranch beef production is the ingredients that make up their feed and for sustainability reasons, much of that is grown on the farm. The equipment used to mix the daily rations for the cattle is something Jake was highly interested in featuring as it was recently purchased and making a great difference to his daily workload. It also made for a fascinating 360 shot as it blended the huge quantity of high quality feed from a position that would not have been safe for any person to actually witness up close.
The pastures at Big Acres were in prime condition for the cattle’s summer grazing and we were excited to attempt to place a camera in the field that the cows might approach, but first, we needed to film the excited breeding bull herd being released onto the green pasture. It was not trouble at all getting close up shots of the bulls rushing past the camera to frolic on the green field, but one huge bull did take too strong an interest in our Z Cam S1 Pro and had to be turned away from charging it by a brave family member.
On the second morning of the production, two of the 360 Labs crew were up long before the sun to climb the 150 foot grain elevator in the middle of the farm for a sunrise 360 timelapse that makes for one of the most dramatic shots of the piece. With a camera in place, attached to the thin, tin guardrails at the very top, commanding a spectacular view, we left it in place and rolling until late afternoon. We had to race back and quickly climb up to retrieve it ahead of an incoming storm cloud that began to rain on us just after safely climbing to the ground.
Having farmed the area for multiple generations, the Beelers have several barns and homes across the upper benches of their property along the northern reach of the Mississippi River, and one of the most beautiful shots we were able to capture was just below Natasha and Jake’s home, in green rolling pastures with their black angus herd. We used Jake’s UTV to get into location, get the cows attention, as they are accustomed to the UTV for his herd checks, and place the camera in the optimal location. Due to their natural curiosity, the herd fed directly towards the camera despite our crew hiding nearby in the bushes. It’s a moment of 360 serenity and audience to animal connection to have unconcerned cattle simply investigating a novel item in their prime pasture.
The Hog Farm
New Providence, Iowa is a long way from a major airport in the southeast corner of Hardin County, but that is where Andrea and Paul Brown’s Alderland Farms has been producing Niman Ranch quality hogs since the turn of the century. The Brown’s practice pasture farrowing at Alderland Farms, which means that they provide the sows with individual shelters in which to give birth and rear each generation of hogs they raise. This traditional method is quite a departure from the modern hog farming method and would be the focus of our second film for Niman Ranch.
We found Paul Brown to be a deeply knowledgeable interviewee who was able to speak to nearly every aspect of his business with a relatable and insightful demeanor. Our interview with Andrea and Paul would anchor both our Hog Farm tour and another 360 film that we would produce concurrently to cover sustainability.
While we have worked filming cattle before, none of our crew knew quite what to expect from a hog farm, and the first thing you notice upon arrival is the overwhelming sounds. Hogs feed constantly and their feed is contained in bins with little doors that they can open with their incredible snouts. When they are done, they drop the doors with somewhat satisfied delight. The sound of these doors dropping comes from all buildings on the farm in a constant and resonating banging. As you get closer to the buildings, you begin to hear the grumble of grunting hogs as the gregarious animals interact with each other. The breeding barn, full of sows, when the boars visit, well, that particular sound is truly indescribable. Our audio engineer told us that nearly every monster movie uses this terrific screeching as the basis of the monster’s vocalizations, we could easily believe that.
The key shot that we wanted to capture to show how much more pleasant pasture farrowing pigs is than confinement operations was early light with sows and young piglets in the pasture showing natural and undisturbed behavior, and Alderland Farms, on that first morning of production, did not disappoint. While they were a bit fearful if we approached one of their shelters or made sudden movements, the farrowing mothers and young mostly ignored us and our cameras as we moved through the pasture and even snuck smaller 360 cameras into their shelters while they slept.
After weaning, the piglets are moved into a large and open hoop building to grow up with their age cohort, and each building is full of a cohort of different sizes. Being surrounded by so many little pigs in one building is a level of cuteness you can’t really capture with anything but a 360 camera.
Day two at Alderland Farms was interrupted by a thunderstorm that brought badly needed rain to the land. We took a break inside and showed the Brown family some of what we captured on day one in our virtual reality headsets. Once the rain let up, we fired up Paul Brown’s old feeding tractor and it was back to work getting the final shots on our list for the Hog Farm edit.
Next up, we traveled with Paul out to his “pollinator plot” where he has seeded wildflowers instead of crops along the south fork of the Iowa River. We again launched our drone for a low and slow course following the river towards Paul, then a dramatic rise over Paul to reveal the distant beauty of the Iowa farm country that surrounds it. These scenes anchored the Sustainability piece which would be the third video for the Niman Ranch Experience.
The Results
“The finished product surpassed what we had envisioned. Everyone who experienced the VR tours shared enthusiastic and positive feedback. It was clear that the project resonated deeply, highlighting the heart and soul of Niman Ranch in a way no other medium could achieve,” said Spaulding. “They created a 360 immersive VR experience that felt so real, it was like being there on the farm.”
In the hands of Niman Ranch sales people and marketing team, the Niman Ranch Experience became a valuable tool to transparently take a greater number of virtual visitors to the Beeler and Brown farms over the next several years so that prospective customers can feel like they’ve been there without the need to pack a bag. You can experience the Niman Ranch tours yourself by downloading the Niman Ranch app for iOS or Android.