Immersive Storytelling Now Available for Every Journalist
Virtual Reality is helping Journalism achieve an inflection point. The impact immersive environment has for the content consumer is undeniable. This has been proven in stats as well as on individual experiences.
However, 360 Journalism aka immersive storytelling has been a domain for big news media houses such as New York Times, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Time and lately even CNN.
Each one of these heavy hitters have their own VR production team and their own in-house solution on how to create, deliver and publish 360 News. But what about other smaller media servants who would like to deliver engaging immersive stories as well?
Now they can.
Virtual reality is perfect medium for delivering stories with a greater impact. Chris Milk (founder of Within (ex-VRSE) calls Virtual Reality the ultimate empathy machine. Virtual reality tricks our brain thinking what is happening in front of our eyes have more meaning than traditional video storytelling we watch on a flat screen. It brings us closer to the subject.
On March, 12th, 2017 Seattle based startup VIAR has announced Viar360 — a white-label digital publishing platform for creating and publishing cinematic virtual reality experiences.
Creating 360 degree videos demands special tv crew and long post-production process before it can be published online. Viar360 makes it easy to combine both image and video media inside a single Virtual Reality experience. Every piece of media is enhanced with so-called hotspots — an interactive action points that trigger a certain effect. Range of effects includes spatial audio, informational hotspots, which can embed additional video inside a VR story, transitional hotspot and others. Advanced features include “choose-your-own-adventure narrative” experience, dynamic hotspots and even a two-way collaboration mode between the producer of the story and the supervisor.
Viar went ahead and reached out to top Journalistic Universities in USA and offered professors and their students free use of the platform. The results were encouraging. Until now, they have partnered with universities such as University of Kentucky, Syracuse University, Penn State, Michigan State University and many others.
In public their work is already used by DefenseNews while other tech companies such as Samsung are using the platform in entirely different matter (training simulation).
A 360 View: From China to Russia, touring IDEX
First 360˚ Report from DefenseNews www.defensenews.com
Democratizing Immersive Journalism and make it available for every media house out there is a good enough incentive to get on board. The platform is made in a way that anyone can add interactive elements on top of the 360 content with ease.
The coding/programming part is taken out of equation. Instead of hiring someone to produce the story, journalists themselves are capable of quickly creating and publishing the story in same day instead of weeks when news get cold already.
And as for every piece of content that is published online, every story released has its own analytical report that counts number of views, where the views are coming from and what paths the viewers took in your VR experience.
for further information please contact: Dejan Gajsek / dejan[at]viar.si or visit our website www.viar360.com
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