In order to create a dissonance between the screen image and the surrounding urban landscape, the contemporary images of the thirteen tour locations were rendered into black-and-white, which is a genre associated with the past. This approach greatly simplified the project, for we no longer needed to shoot video. When that ends, they are given verbal directions to the next location, supported by a map and compass on the virtual ground. Then they can start the next chapter by activating the gyroscope for motion response with the imagery and then starting the audio voiceover. When the user arrives at a stop, they can take their time to orient themselves, find a safe spot to stand and spin around. So we decided to restrict the interactive component to each of the tour stop locations. If someone were to cross a street in such a state of distraction (a phenomenon that has become commonplace ever since the introduction of the smartphone), they would literally be an accident waiting to happen.
If the user were to walk along the tour route while looking at the screen of their mobile device, while listening to the soundtrack on headphones, their sight and hearing would be isolated, and their awareness of the surroundings would be seriously compromised. In planning the tour, it became increasingly obvious that safety needed to be a priority. In the case of a walking tour, it was crucial that there be a reason to move from one location to the next, to stop here as opposed to just anywhere, and that there be something to learn or discover along the way. The viewer is now ever more so a listener, and the soundtrack has the power to direct them to relate and connect aural information with the visual world around them.Īnd interactive technology creates for the user an expectation that the information or stimuli provided, whether it be in text, visual, aural, or other sensorial form, be made accessible and if engaged with, that there should be a response or outcome. Audio, which has often played a more supportive role to the visuals in cinema, moves to the foreground, as it becomes more influential. Editing is used more sparingly, for any change of location can be jarring, as if one’s entire body has been transported into a new space which requires a period of re-orientation, of settling in.
But in a 360 production, the viewer is in greater control of what they see. Controlling what, as well as, the way the viewer sees, is an indelible part of cinematic language and strategy. Other formal devices that augment the power of editing are framing devices such as the wide, medium and close-up views.
Editing plays a key role in shifting perspective or location or time. Camera movements such as tracking, dollying and zooming can be used to create a sense of moving through space or expose something revealing. In traditional filmmaking, the point-of-view can shift from third person (a fly-on-the-wall’s perspective) to first person (a protagonist’s perspective, say) to second person (someone responding to that protagonist). 360 Riot Walk was my first foray into 360 video technology, and although I had worked with video before and experienced various VR and AR projects, I soon learned that making something in surround-sight-and-sound required a significant shift in approach.