- With all the videos focusing on VR on the web
talking about headsets and games
and just generally how VR is consumed,
no one seems to be talking about the thing
that I think is just as fascinating: how it's made.
(upbeat music)
So I set out on a mission to not only find out
how VR content is made,
but how it can be made
in the entertainment industry, specifically,
and then also how it can be made using live-action filming
to be even more specific.
This, of course, let me to JAUNT.
JAUNT is arguably the company at the forefront
of this new story-telling medium.
They have investors like Disney,
that were part of a 65 million dollar investment round,
by the way, and talent from companies like
Industrial Light & Magic,
the people responsible for the special effects
on over 300 movies that, oh, I don't know,
maybe you've heard of some of them:
Transformers; Star Wars; Harry Potter; Indiana Jones;
Pirates of the Caribbean; Avatar.
You get the idea.
JAUNT was kind enough to give me a tour of JAUNT studios,
their facility in Santa Monica, California,
and let me sit down and talk to some of their top talent
to kind of try to get my head around this new medium.
First up, we need to talk about the equipment.
You can't just go out and make a 360 video
with your normal point and shoot.
You need specialized equipment that can shoot front,
back, up, down, all sides.
You're probably familiar with a few
that have made their way to the consumer market,
like the Gear 360.
Most of them utilize two wide-angle lenses,
each shooting in different directions.
The thing is that these are basically
the entry-level equipment into this type of content,
with the next step up being things like the bubble cam
and those crazy rigs with a crap-ton of GoPro's in them.
None of this was good enough for JAUNT, however,
so they built their own.
This is the JAUNT 1,
and it doesn't just have two cameras, six cameras,
it has 24 cameras.
There are 16 in a circle around the middle,
and we've got four on top and four on the bottom.
The reason for this many cameras is that JAUNT believes
that VR should not just be 360, but it should be 3D.
In order to achieve 3D with a camera,
you need multiple lenses pointed in the same direction
with their field of view overlapping.
In much the same way that your eyes work,
your brain takes the images from each of your eyeballs,
calculates the difference between the two,
and then uses that to figure out depth.
The JAUNT 1 does the same thing with its software
and its multiple cameras.
As for audio, which is a completely different ballgame
in the world of VR,
they use what's called a TetraMic.
This mic actually is four mics,
and using some fun software it can use those four mics
and determine where sound came from in 360 degrees
of the room, and they then can use that and sync it up
with the camera to give you
a complete surround-sound experience.
Not only that, but as you turn and move,
it can determine where those sounds need to come
out of the two channels that you have,
which are your left and right ear.
Which brings up one of the big challenges of filming VR,
which is an amazing thing as a user of VR
but a complete nightmare as a director,
and that's free will.
You, the viewer, don't have to be looking forward,
and for that matter forward doesn't really exist in VR,
so the camera is capturing every angle
all the way around it, up and down, within the scene.
You ever seen the behind-the-scenes of making a movie?
Generally speaking, when you're looking
in the other direction of the camera
you'll notice that there were a lot of people behind it,
from the sound guy to the grip to the director, et cetera.
In VR, the audience can actually turn around at any time
and see all of that,
so VR directors have to get a little creative
with how they hide their crew,
putting them behind large objects such as rocks,
or even putting them in the scene as extras.
Beyond the logistics of filming,
the director also doesn't know if you're looking
at what they want you to be looking at
at any given time,
so they have to get clever and use things like sound,
for example a tree falling in the distance with a loud thud
to draw your attention to there,
where the story can then continue,
and of course there is no guarantee,
which is why VR right now is being utilized a lot
for live events or things where a lot of things
are just happening at once around you
and you're just transported to this new location.
Beyond the narrative challenges,
there's also vomit.
This means no artistic close-ups, weird wide-shots,
and the other type of shots that we use
in our traditional old-fashioned 2D story-telling.
On the post-production side we then have to edit
this footage that we just captured.
Most VR cameras, you can actually take that 360 degree
footage and turn into what's called
an equirectangular video.
You can then pop it into Adobe Premier and then edit it
from there, just keep in mind
the vomit-inducing jump cuts, et cetera.
You can even then also download a plug-in
that will allow you to move around the scene in 360
using your mouse or a capable VR headset.
Audio is a little more complicated,
but thanks to a lot of really cool plug-ins,
you can actually record the audio in a 360 degree view,
and it will automatically convert it to stereo for you.
After filming and editing comes
the next challenge: distribution.
There are options like Facebook 360 video,
and even YouTube has an option for 360 video,
but for someone that's coming from a TV or a film world,
these aren't quite the best solutions.
Also add the fact that VR consumption
requires special equipment like a headset,
which, at least for now,
drastically limits the size of your audience.
That will all change soon, though,
as the phones in our pockets become more and more capable
of handling VR, whether we want them to or not.
Google Daydream is a project that Google has started
to encourage their manufacturers to put in better specs
into their phones to make them better at VR.
Basically, though, with Google pushing this certification,
what's going to happen is a lot of people are going
to have these VR-ready phones in their pockets,
whether they knowingly purchased one or not.
That means that all you need to do is buy
a very cheap headset to put your phone into,
as opposed to buying a stand-alone VR kit
like the Vive or the Rift,
and that means the pool of people capable of watching
your VR content will potentially
increase exponentially very soon.
JAUNT is also betting big that phones will be the next
level of distribution for VR content
with their own distribution app for Android and iOS.
They also recently announced that anyone who's producing
VR or 360 content can submit it to JAUNT
to be included in this app,
which makes for a very interesting, potentially huge
distribution channel for anyone that's producing
this type of content.
If you are a videographer of any sort,
I highly recommend dabbling, at least,
in 360 and VR content.
There are some unique challenges, as we've mentioned,
but it is such a new medium that it has a huge potential
to give your audiences such a unique experience
like never before.
At one time motion pictures had just come out
and everyone dabbling in this new medium
just basically copied plays,
setting the camera somewhere where it seemed
like it was just an audience member,
and it had these long shots that just kind of played out
in front and they wouldn't even jump shots very often,
but eventually this new medium matured
and became its own unique way of telling stories.
Movies as a play is kind of where we are
with VR content right now,
and it's going to be up to those people
that go out and dabble in this industry first
to really define what it will become.
Maybe the next Hitchcock or Kubrick or Allen
are out buying a 360 camera right now,
or maybe they're watching a YouTube video
on how VR content is made.
(upbeat music)