American brand Shinola teamed up with Reel FX and Hollywood brothers Andrew and Luke Wilson to take fans behind-the-scenes of the company’s massive Detroit factory. The Wilsons served as co-directors for the four-and-a-half-minute 360-degree experience, which shows the company’s watches, bicycles and leather goods. Luke Wilson had previously worked with Reel FX on a project, and after seeing the brothers’ short film on the Los Angeles transfer of the Space Shuttle Endeavor, the VR company reached out to them to work on the Shinola short VR experience.

“The brand is something that we have a lot of respect for and it’s a great company,” Andrew Wilson told [a]listdaily. “We know the people involved with the company and have a lot respect for those people, so it was a natural fit for us.”

Andrew Wilson explained how virtual reality gives brands a chance to stand out from the crowd. “It’s a way to differentiate yourself,” he said. “We’ve seen it with past technologies. We’ve seen brands affiliating themselves with cutting-edge technology throughout the history of marketing and this is just the latest example of that.”

“VR could help brands make their products more accessible,” said Luke Wilson, telling [a]listdaily how virtual reality is opening up new opportunities for brands that want to stay ahead of the curve. “You could see yourself riding a Shinola bike around their factory, or in their stores in Detroit or on Abbot Kinney. It’s hard for me to push my brain to think of just how far it will go; it’s beyond what you can ever imagine. There are some truly technical visionaries that will think of not only how great a Shinola watch would look on your hand, but what it would look like with, say, a Filson jacket!”

Luke Wilson referenced a recent Charlie Rose episode where Tommy Hilfiger talked about a new flagship store that won’t even have actual clothes. “You will go up to a screen, see how something fits and how it will look on you and what color looks best—it’s unbelievable,” he said.

During the two-day shoot, the brothers worked with Nokia’s Ozo 360 camera. Andrew Wilson said that in wanting to utilize the technology and the most effective form, they didn’t want the 360 technology to take over the message. “Because we did you the classic ‘man on the street’ interview style, that naturally holds people’s attention if it’s a short thing,” Wilson explained. “And Luke is doing a real (David) Letterman-esque gift of gab, fast talking and chatting with people and joking around. So that helps to generally hold people’s attention, and then you’re free to look around. We wanted people to look around. Obviously, that’s a great feature of the technology.”

Virtual reality also gives early brands that are exploring the technology the ability to capture consumers’ attention through multiple views, since they can look in different directions and control the action. “It helped me a lot to watch it multiple times, and I saw things that I’m sure that people that watch it once or twice won’t see,” Andrew Wilson said. “That’s a thrilling aspect of the technology. It’s like a theater where one audience member might be looking at one part of the set and somebody else might be looking at something else. So you take very different experiences away from watching it because of the freedom that you have as a viewer.”

The Wilson brothers are the latest Hollywood names to jump into the VR game, following directors like Jon Favreau, Robert Stromberg and Doug Liman. The brothers both are game to further experiment with 360 filmmaking.

“I’m just like everyone else in Hollywood right now, learning about the medium as it’s developing,” Luke Wilson said. “In the past 20 years or so that I’ve been in Hollywood, I’ve seen it go from 33mm to digital. VR seems like the next step in technology, though not necessarily for everything.”

Luke Wilson added that VR opens the opportunity to take a short length and make something a little more fun and interesting to watch. “The first time I put on a headset, I couldn’t believe what I was watching,” he said. “It really does seem like the future.”