Celtic Routes: Capturing Two Nations

4Pi was commissioned by the Celtic Routes consortium to create a 360° tourism film capturing the landscapes, heritage and outdoor culture of East Ireland and West Wales. Filmed across 50+ locations with drone-mounted 360° cameras, the campaign was delivered in English, Welsh and Irish alongside six 4K social films.

The Celtic Routes consortium wanted something that hadn’t really been done before: a 360° VR film, shot mostly from drones, covering over 50 locations across Wales and Ireland. They needed it in three languages. And they wanted it to actually make people want to visit.

The project was part of a long running ERDF funded initiative led by Carmarthenshire County Council, working with Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, and three Irish local authorities: Wicklow, Wexford and Waterford. So there were a lot of stakeholders, a lot of locations and a lot of ways this could go wrong.

Why 360° drone footage is challenging

With a normal drone shot, you point the camera in one direction and that’s your frame. With 360°, everything is in frame. There’s nowhere to hide the crew. There’s nowhere to hide the support vehicles. If someone’s standing in a field 200 metres away eating a sandwich, that’s in your shot.

The camera rigs are heavier too, which means shorter flight times. Wind affects them more. And because viewers can look anywhere in the final video, any shake or wobble becomes much more noticeable. You can’t just stabilise it in post the way you would with traditional footage.

We also had to coordinate crews in two countries, secure permits for flying over protected areas, and work around weather that didn’t care about our schedule.

We conducted creative workshops with all the consortium members to explore the brief further before work began on the script, storyboard development and selecting locations to capture.

We ran the whole project from our headquarters in Cardiff, with our production team managing the Irish crews remotely before they travelled across Wales to handle the local shoots. Four drone operators worked across both countries: Michael Surcombe, Matt Wright, Rhys Davies and Mauri Martin.

Multilingual voiceover

The voiceover work needed three versions. Aled Wyn Thomas recorded the English and Welsh narrations. He’s a native Welsh speaker, which matters. Saoirse Anton did the Irish version. All three went through proper mastering so they’d sound consistent.

Post-production

Post-production started in October from our studio in Cardiff. Our team of video editors and VFX creatives worked alongside our producer and director to finalise the 7 distinctive films. We also delivered all the audio post-production and utilised our team’s expertise to design the sound FX for all videos.

Stitching 360° footage is its own discipline. Every cut has to account for where the viewer might be looking. We produced the main VR experience plus six 4K films sized for social media, so the Celtic Routes team had content to use across platforms.

The permits took time. Flying drones over protected areas requires paperwork in any country. Doing it in two countries, with multiple local authority partners involved and site owners, added layers. We got it sorted, and got everyone excited to take part.

More than 3,000 people have experienced the Celtic Routes VR film at tourism events across Wales and Ireland. The feedback has been consistent: people feel something watching it that they don’t feel with regular video.

One viewer called it an "outstanding immersive experience." Another said it "wowed family members across age ranges (22-60)." These comments resonated with us as when you’re making tourism content, you need it to work for families, not just tech enthusiasts.

The social films are still circulating through Celtic Routes’ channels. By producing multiple formats during the same shooting period, we got more value out of every location and every flight.

What we proved: 360° drone cinematography at this scale is possible. It’s not easy. It requires serious planning, experienced operators and post-production workflows built for immersive formats. But it works. And for tourism content, where making someone feel like they’re actually there is the whole point, it works better than anything else.