Shooting VR Footage: Getting Started

April 26, 2017

By Greg Scoblete

Virtual reality and 360-degree filmmaking sound daunting, but they don’t have to be. As filmmaker and VR maven Lucas Wilson of Supersphere Productions once told us, if you can shoot traditional video, you can shoot VR. Here are a few tips to get your feet wet.

Stay Smooth and Eye Level

Filmmaking 101 dictates that you keep your camera steady using a tripod, monopod or other stabilizer, and that’s doubly important in VR. Even the most infinitesimal camera shake can be nauseating. What’s more, it’s important to remember that while interesting camera angles can make for striking scenes in traditional filmmaking, VR event filmmaking is usually meant to simulate “being there,” so the perspective should more closely resemble what a human who was actually “there” would see. In other words, keep your VR camera at eye-level, or close to it.

Forget GoPro Rigs and Stitching

Do you have endless amounts of time, patience and GPU power? Of course not. VR rigs that combine multiple GoPros were an early favorite among filmmakers producing higher-quality VR fare, but they’re extremely labor-intensive and prone to failure. Stitching multiple GoPro videos together can take days of post-production, and GoPros can overheat in those rigs and fail. If you’re just getting started in VR, make it easy for yourself: Spring for a camera like a Ricoh Theta or Nikon KeyMission 360 that can capture and stitch video for you automatically, leaving you with a spherical H.264 file that you can manipulate and color-grade in many non-linear editors.

Stay Close

Cameras like the Theta and KeyMission use wide-angle lenses to ensure the broadest possible reach, so it’s best to keep subjects up close and personal lest they get lost in the background. Subjects further than 10 to 15 feet are likely too far away to be engaging to the viewer.

Think Spherically

For filmmakers and still photographers who are accustomed to framing a scene through a single rectangle, thinking spherically requires a mind shift. But if you’re shooting with a dual-lens camera like the KeyMission 360, having compelling imagery in front of both lenses—not just in a single frame—is critical, says filmmaker Corey Rich. “We learned that complex situations are more engaging” in VR, he says. “If there’s action in only one lens, and nothing in the other, that’s a lackluster VR shot. There’s not enough for the audience to look at.”

Another challenge presents itself during the edit. Many VR cameras record a spherical image that will appear as one, long flat image on your monitor. During the edit, this flattened footage isn’t always indicative of what the final experience will be once a viewer’s got the VR goggles on. Changes such as compositing that work on a flattened file may not necessarily translate when the footage is viewed spherically, Rich cautions. And it works the other way around: “Footage that looks a bit lackluster when viewed flat has looked much better in VR,” he says.

The Mount Matters

One of the real challenges in shooting VR is deciding where and how to mount the camera. Filmmakers need to decide whether they want the mount to appear in the video; when using boom poles and monopods, for instance, the camera may capture at least part of the pole in the frame.

Depending on the camera you’re using, you could hide your monopod in a seam created by two overlapping images. It takes some experimentation to find out just where that sweet spot lies, because it varies depending on the pole you’re using and the angle at which it’s extended from the tripod socket of the camera. Rich adds that using mounting poles that are color-matched to the background also help disguise any portion that’s visible.

Shoot in Broad Daylight

Introducing artificial light into a 360-degree shoot can be a challenge—on camera it will look like a garish hot spot. You can theoretically position lights in the camera’s seams, but they may be impractical. That leaves you at the mercy of natural and ambient light. Given the relatively small sensor sizes of most VR cameras, abundant daylight is going to be your ideal setting. On the flip side, still photographers almost always use artificial light during the reception if not elsewhere, so incorporating it in your VR film (besides being potentially inescapable) could add to the occasion’s realism.

Just Say No…To Quick Cuts, Panning or Tilting

It was during his early post-production edits that Rich learned another valuable VR lesson: Traditional pacing rules don’t apply. “In a conventional video edit, for, say, a commercial, we might do a one- or two-second cut,” he says, but that pace is far too quick for VR. “The viewer needs enough time to explore the frame. During the editing and post-production, it’s vital to structure the edit in such a way as to maximize a viewer’s time in a scene.” That means giving the viewer between 7 and 10 seconds to linger and explore a scene before cutting to the next one.

It also means you should avoid pans and tilts, which can be disorienting (remember, the viewer can look up and down in the VR viewer already—they don’t need the camera to guide them around).

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