A Prologue in Editing

As a continuation in our series on VR storytelling we look at how editing influences the story aspect in Virtual Reality.

Jessica Brillhart, Principal Filmmaker for VR at Google, was trying to edit together her first VR content shot with a prototype 360-stereoscopic rig back in 2015.

She first put together an edit based off of viewing the VR content in a 2D environment. She was quite satisfied with her work. Until she viewed it in a headset. The content was edited all wrong. She was confused, annoyed and bewildered by her own work product.

Brillhart, however, did not listen to those telling her editing in VR was impossible. She believed it just wasn’t done right.

The first important distinction Brillhart made was noticing that traditional frames don’t exist in VR. The VR creator and editor needs to think about windows of experiences based on the viewer’s field of view and not just frames of view. Jessica decided to design a new visual aid that would help her understand the path and shift of attention that takes place for a viewer during a VR experience.

In Brilhart’s new visual different scenes expand from each other, like the trunk of a tree. Brillhart then identified the different experiences in all those scenes to better understand how the viewer might engage with them. This way she could identify possible paths between them. Using this visualization helped Brillhart better understand the world of VR content editing.

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that editing harnesses the power of discovery. The path our minds take when being privy to an experience such as VR needs to be taken into account. All the different shifts of attention and patterns of interest must be considered. By using a visualization, just as Brillhart did, content editors can better understand the proper and optimal way of editing Virtual Reality while taking into account the user’s point of view.

This article first appeared on Medium.com

Read the original piece by Jessica Brillhart here.