Final video link

Original Concept:

The scene of my video will be a large, open space with the camera at sitting level. The video will be taken outdoors during the day, and there will be some movement near and far from the camera. I plan on the setting being at an off-leash dog beach in Jamesville. I'll be recording audio of the dogs running around and playing with a separate microphone. I hope to virtually transport the viewer into a stress-relieving environment surrounded by dogs and puppies. It's been scientifically proven that playing with dogs and puppies reduces stress by increasing oxytocin, a stress-reducing hormone, and decreasing cortisol, a stress hormone. If someone is feeling particularly stressed out, from final exams, for example, they can put on their VR headset and be surrounded by animals who are playing and having a good time. Everyone should have the ability to escape when they feel like it, even if that's only available to them virtually. I think being in this time and place will make people feel happy and loved, since dogs are such loving animals. I plan on putting some dog treats near the camera so that dogs will come up to it and the viewer will be able to experience dogs close to them when they put on the headset. The only reason I can think someone may want to avoid this experience is if they have a phobia of dogs, which is usually not the case.

The subject of my story will be the dogs, of course. Their playing and movement will move the story forward; in order to direct the viewer's attention toward the most important aspects of the story (in this case, the dogs), I will apply audio of the dogs barking and playing in the direction that I want the experiencer to look. I think it's important for other people to have this experience because interacting with dogs is truly such a euphoric ordeal-- dogs have so much love and energy to offer and people should be able to experience that even if they don't have the chance to surround themselves with real animals. This experience may also be useful to people who are trying to get rid of a phobia they have to dogs. If they can expose themselves to dogs virtually, they'll be once step closer to exposing themselves to dogs in real life, too.

It makes the most sense to place the camera in the middle of the beach. I assume dogs will be running all around, so I want the camera (and the viewer's "head") to be in the middle of it all. That way, no matter what direction they look in, there will be dogs to see all around. The experiencer will be sitting, so that it seems as if they're sitting on the beach as dogs run up to them and try to play. The 360 rig will be placed into the sand and secured that way as well. If I or another subject were to be in the scene, it'd be to show some humans playing with the dogs. If this is the case, then it'd be safe to record in this open area because I'd never be too far from the camera. This reduces the risk of the equipment being stolen, or of people becoming suspicious of the camera.

Final Product:

Our team designed a 360 video of Jamesville Off-Leash Dog Beach. Initially, we had planned on keeping the viewer’s “head” at eye-level with the dogs so that it’d seem as if they were sitting on the floor. Also, we’d planned on having dogs running around from all different angles so that, no matter where the viewer turned, they’d be seeing dogs. However, things changed when we actually began filming. On Friday, Audra, Gabe and I went to the park with the camera I rented and took a ton of videos from all different heights and angles. There were many dogs there that day so we got some great content. Unfortunately, early on we decided to switch out the regular lenses from the Nikon 360 Key Mission to water-proof lenses in order to protect the camera, since we’d been placing the tripod in shallow lakes to capture the dogs swimming. A majority of our footage became unusable because you can clearly see the huge square lens cap in the videos. However, Gabe went back to the dog park on Sunday with the camera that Audra had rented out and captured new, usable footage. There weren’t as many dogs there that day, so we had to stray from our original plan of having dogs running around from all angles. Instead, we have a couple of dogs coming from one or two angles. The video isn’t hindered by this because the dog park is so beautiful that the surroundings are just as interesting to look at as the dogs are.

We didn’t end up capturing any extra audio with a microphone or using dog treats to lure the dogs toward the camera. We figured having them super close to the lenses would cause some stitching issues, which we wanted to avoid. Also, we didn’t end up using audio as a way to focus the viewer’s attention since we weren’t sure how to direct the audio in one particular location. Instead, we just centered our videos so that the viewer would see what we wanted them to see upon first putting on their headset.

Over the course of about two to three days, I edited the 17 minutes of usable footage we had down to just 3 minutes of our best content, where the dogs are the most visible. I also added transitions between the short clips so that they’d seamlessly blend. When he filmed on Sunday, Gabe captured videos from about 5 different locations in the dog park. Instead of mixing up the many short clips we had from each location, I kept them in order with all clips from one location one after the other. I thought it might be strange to constantly be jumping around from place to place in virtual reality, so it made more sense to place all of the content from one location together, then jump to the next location once we’re fully done with the previous one. I didn’t have time to work on the audio or centering of the videos at all because I travelled home for my grandma’s birthday on Friday and returned Sunday night, but, before leaving, I left my hard drive with Audra so that they’d be able to do the last of the editing while I was away.

Over the weekend, Audra added audio transitions to our video. We were hoping that our audio would be a bit more sophisticated (since there’s a lot of talking included), but we ended up just sticking with the audio that the 360 camera initially captured. Jesse worked to center the videos with Premiere and export the final product. He also uploaded our video onto YouTube. As the producer, I managed the final steps of getting the video up on the class blog.