360 Video Research in Preparation for Filming

In preparation for our shoot tomorrow I thought it would be good to take a chance to watch some other observational wildlife 360 videos in order to gain a better knowledge of them and what works well before shooting. Here is what I have looked at:

Elephants on the Brink (360 Video)

This one is very visually interesting because I really like how the elephants approach the camera nd come closer than you would expect them to. It almost made me jump back at times especially when the elephant did touch the camera with its trunk. I felt like it did lack interest at time though because it didn't seem to have a flow to it or much of a meaning. It has made me think about ways we could add more meaning to our 360 butterfly piece. We want to make it more poetic than this so instead of basic music like this video uses I feel like a nice bit of wildlife information or poetry would add nice element to it. The main thing I liked with this was the fade transition which moved it from one shot to another really nicely.

Wildlife 360: Life in the Swamp

This video I felt was quite disappointing to what I thought it might be. Instead of being observational looking at wildlife in the surroundings it instead seemed more like an educational video with the way it showed information about the animals instead. I felt like this was interesting though because if we went and captured some footage but it wasn't as exciting as we wanted it to be we could always try and edit in text to give information on the surrounding butterflies. This depends how much we actually capture though but it is worth bearing in mind that we can still do something with the footage either way.

In the Presence of Animals - 3D 360

I enjoyed the variety of visuals in this video especially because we got to see a variety of different animals. I would like to maybe see what other wildlife is at the butterfly park and maybe see if we can get more of a variety for our film. I however was unsure about the narration of this film because it did seem a bit forced and didn't flow too well. I feel like we shouldn't go down this route but instead if we add narration make it flow through out with a poem and music. My favourite visuals were again when the animals came up close to the camera however the stitch lines became very noticeable which was a problem for the visuals. We will need to be selective in the shots we film because if we place it to close to things it won't stitch together very well.


What It's Like Being Surrounded by Wild Dogs -- 360° Virtual Reality

This one was very playful which was really nice and I like the idea of keeping it short and sweet as my interest lasted through out. The amount of movement from the dogs helped keep me focused too moving the camera round a lot. I feel like this is very key because if we can capture a lot of interesting movement we can direct the audience to keep them moving and keep them focused. I feel like if we end up making it a very short piece there would be no harm just leaving natural sound in like they have here as it is so visual that you almost don't need should. The only main problem I saw was that the shadow of the camera was in shot but I feel like this is unavoidable at times however if we can avoid this when filming that would be better.

This last bit of research and inspiration has helped me feel much more prepared for the kind of outcome we can expect to have from this project and how we can achieve this while shooting tomorrow.