Prior to our class, I had very little experience with 360 video and VR content. My first experience came when I wore the Google Cardboard to listen to the New York Times first VR 360 piece “The Displaced”.

For my final project in our class, I wanted to record a 360 video piece on the beauty of Upstate New York. I first wanted to tell a little about the history of Upstate New York but after much consideration and suggestions from Professor Harper and other classmates, I decided to have a poem go with my 360 video piece.

I first went through a test run and location scouting on my trip to Watkins Glens State Park. I made sure to check all equipment the night before and the morning of and everything was working accordingly prior to the shoot. However, while setting up for my first scene while at Watkins Glen, one of the GoPros camera was malfunctioning. It was hot that Saturday afternoon so I assumed it was overheating. I was prepared for the worst but luckily i was able to go back a few days later to get all of my footages when the park was less busy.

It took even longer for me to find a poem that I felt was fitting to the mood and tone of my 360 piece. I want a poem that adds wonder to Watkins Glen yet that had a hint of existentialism that could also play to the empathic machine of VR and 360 video storytelling.

As particular as I was about finding the ideal poem, I was extremely selective as to I wanted to do the voiceover of the poem. Thank you to Sam Maller for suggested Professor Mike Davis of the Multimedia, Photography, and Design Program department at Newhouse. I want to thank Professor Davis for being so kind to volunteer his time and voice! I also wanted Professor Davis’ voice to have some ambient mellow music to be faded in the background along with the audio that I was recording from the 360 video of the GoPros.

Another little detail I was extremely keen about for the 360 video is covering the Nadar. I wanted the experience to feel as real as possible, as if the viewer is standing next to me as I set up the GoPro rigs. With a background in photography, I knew the angle of light to take the photograph to cover up the Nadar in post production. I was extremely particular on making the Nadar look as natural as possible for the 360 video.

The one problem I encountered with 360 video is text. I did not realized that the text will not be in 360 until I was completed the upload on youtube and little star. That is the one thing I want to fix about my 360 video.

Overall, I encountered a dead GoPro due to some warm temperatures, jumped a few gates at Watkins Glen to get footage, read over a thousand poems on nature, stressed out weeks on finding the perfect and majestic voice, and hours of stitching and editing in AutoPano and Premiere. It was exhausting but good new work will take time.

Thank you to Professor Mike Davis for his majestic voice, Alyssa Paul for her poem, those who put together the Evernote on Post Production in 360 Video, and Professor Ken Harper and Dan Pacheo.

The Beauty of Thoughts
http://hellopoetry.com/TheLife-ofMe/

I wonder how the mind goes to different places so easily,
while the body stays in one place.
It travels through thousands of thoughts,
going a mile a minute.
Takes you to your dreams, to your wishes
and wills them to be true.
Most seem impossible, unreachable
people will say go for them.
Reach for the Stars

But sometimes the Stars are just not possible to reach,
instead we land on meteors flying through space
taking us farther from our goal then we hoped.

The mind is a curious place, filled with millions of things.
Filled with ambitions, and fantasies that could only come true in books.
Filled with works of art that can't be expressed physically,
can't' be made with paper and stone.

We may express our thoughts with poems,
music
art
but nothing can ever be the same as the original
that only we can think of

In our curious wonderful mind

https://littlstar.com/videos/062a3927