The entire process of shooting and editing our 360-video was much easier than anticipated. Even though I have already done this once, I figured there would be more complications this time. There were only minor issues.

FILMING

Filming with a 360 camera is very easy. You don't have to set up the shot. Since you are shooting in 360 all you have to do is hit record, and you capture everything around you. However, one of the biggest issues you do have is not being able to see what the shot looks like. Each time we hit record we were shooting blind. While we knew that the camera was capturing everything around it, we didn't know if the camera was straight or if we wanted to adjust the camera a bit. It was a matter of being sure that we were getting the correct show. Also, since we couldn't see what we were filming we didn't know where the stitch line would show up. This resulted in us having a blurred shot of the dock. Overall, the stitch line didn't negatively impact our video. Since we were on the water which is, for the most part, monochromatic and very symmetrical the stitch line didn't overtly appear.

EDITING

Editing is fairly simple for a 360 video too. Since you don't have to set up a shot and there are no sequences, editing is a matter of cutting the clip where you want and dragging it into your timeline. Using the specific 360 editing features was easy too. One thing I noticed was that even if you offset the beginning of a clip where you want it, that doesn't mean every time the video transitions to that clip you see the desired offset position. When you start watching the video, the offset position is oriented to the front of where and what direction you were looking at when you started watching. So as you begin to turn around and the video transitions to a new clip, you may miss what the editors wanted you to see because you are looking elsewhere. It doesn't automatically reorient the video to what direction you are looking at. Easy ways to fix this is to add an extra title to the opposite side that can direct you where to look or extend the length of the title.

EXTRAS

I thought that our video would be nauseating because it was shot on an unsteady surface, the water. I especially thought that roll tacking would make the viewer feel queasy. As it turns out, the swaying of the boat and the large rocking of roll tacking wasn't unsettling. However, it would have been nice to have a gimble of sorts that could account for the boat movement. Also, it would have been nice to have more mounts for the camera so we could get a variety of shots.