Home Pitch – FIFA & Unit 9
Case study · Destination BC · Home Pitch
Ever kick a ball above the clouds? Ever play in front of the roar of a waterfall?
Those were the questions Destination British Columbia asked fans at FIFA Fan Festival™ Vancouver this summer. Its answer was Home Pitch: a fully playable five-a-side pitch inside a 1,115 sq m (12,000 sq ft) tent, surrounded by 360° LED screens and spatial sound that turned mountain peaks, coastal horizons and ancient forests into a living panorama of the province.
Created by Zulu Alpha Kilo and produced by Wildfire Experiential + Events and Unit 9 Productions, the experience needed moving images that would hold up across a continuous LED wall around the whole pitch. Unit 9 brought in Meta Camera to capture them – in 20K, at 60 frames per second, on a single camera.
01Why one camera, not an array
A 360 panorama at this resolution would usually mean an array: a rig of individual cameras bolted together. That means more kit, more cost and a lot more to carry around a province almost four times the size of the UK.
Instead, the Meta Four was fitted with 15mm lenses in its 20K mono configuration. That delivered the full 20K across the horizontal, with extra resolution on the vertical that was cropped by around half to create the long panoramic strip the LED wall needed. Everything was shot at 60fps, so the edit could slow moments down and still look smooth.
02Seaplanes, snowmobiles and a 1960s helicopter
Across two weeks in late March and early April 2026, the shoot started in Vancouver, crossed to Vancouver Island, returned to the city by seaplane, then headed inland and up to Revelstoke, covering ground all over British Columbia.
Most days started in a Land Rover Defender, but reaching some locations took almost every form of transport going: a seaplane, a veteran helicopter dating back to the 1960s and, to get up the mountain, snowmobiles. The core crew was just three people, with a local fixer joining on Vancouver Island.
By seaplane, helicopter, snowmobile and Land Rover Defender.
03Nothing near the lens
The brief from creative director James Medcraft had one firm rule: nothing close to the camera. That suited the Meta Four, because clean foregrounds make for clean stitching, but finding locations with nothing in the near foreground was one of the hardest parts of the job, alongside simply getting there.
The coast also brought wind. With a lightweight tripod on exposed beaches, the rig picked up micro-vibrations, so shots were stabilised in post with Fusion’s spherical stabiliser, run through a custom pipeline. It worked really well.
04Stitching and checking 20K
The Meta Camera team stitched and graded the plates in Mistika and output final 20K x 4K masters at 60fps, which went to James for the edit. Even checking files that size is a job in itself: playback checks were run at 16K to make sure every frame was right.
05On the pitch
Home Pitch ran from 11 June to 19 July 2026 on The Plaza at the PNE grounds in Hastings Park, next to the new PNE Amphitheatre, at a festival expecting up to 25,000 visitors a day. Fans were welcomed by a message from the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, then stepped onto the pitch for drop-in games, mini matches and skills challenges, while soundscapes of water, wind and wildlife shifted with each landscape. On the way out, a “Clubhouse” introduced each region of BC and encouraged visitors to go and explore the real thing.
More than 10,000 people visited on the opening weekend, and nearly 40,000 by early July.
Left: the Meta Four on the shore of a turquoise lake in the BC interior. Right: a lake landscape on the Home Pitch LED wall. Film still: Super, Natural British Columbia.
Home Pitch in action. Film: Super, Natural British Columbia.
Home Pitch is the kind of job the Meta Four was built for: huge resolution, a high frame rate and a single, portable camera that can go wherever the crew can, by road, sea, air or snowmobile.
Planning an LED wall, dome or projection project that needs capture at this scale?
