Now that we're officially on Littlstar and Youtube I wanted to share a little bit about my experience working on our VR Project. Hopefully something here helps those who want to use the 360 Rig to tell stories that are more like traditional film and television shows. First though, a huge shout out to Super group for making this project possible, ya'll the real MVPs.

Obviously the 360 Cam has certain limitations, the biggest one of these being that its hard to move the camera without causing serious ghosting issues. Since this was a consideration early on we knew we couldn't stick with our original scene which was a traditional police interrogation (in large part because of the bursts of movement it would require). After going back to the drawing board a couple times I started thinking about other detective movies like Chinatown, or games like LA Noir, and I came to the realization that some of the tensest moments in those works were dominated by stationary people.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that what added energy to those scenes, especially in LA Noir, were the stakes. Although there was no motion, the audience member (or player) knew that the person in the scene was involved in someone's death. That knowledge created tension, which in turn created energy. This was what led me to use blackout narration in the beginning of the film. It wasn't just that it fit the genre (which it did) but by letting the audience know that someone in the room was a killer it added a sense of drive to the scene.

The other thing that helped was our lighting. While we used dim lighting because it is a staple of the Noir genre, it also helped to cover up some of our errors. Its harder to spot minor ghosting issues and other technical mishaps when you have limited light that draws the audience's attention (in our case towards Lefty).

One thing that didn't work out well, but I'm glad we tried was the position of the camera itself. After experimenting with the tripod on the table we weren't satisfied with the way our faces were showing up on screen. We finally decided to remove the rig from the tripod and just place it on the table. This did give us the view of our faces that we wanted but because the camera was close our Nadir looked weird.

Hope this helps.

TLDR: Use tension to add energy to otherwise stationary scenes, dim light can cover your mistakes, if you put the rig close to where you're shooting its hard to Nadir properly.