How 360 video can add value to journalism
With volumetric filmmaking becoming more accessible and with WebXR soon to provide more possibilities, I thought it was important to review some of the lessons I’ve learned while working on 360 video for different media organizations.
These are lessons and thoughts that I hope will be useful for newsrooms, virtual reality companies and anyone willing to create compelling nonfiction stories.
The potential of sharing scenes of “the mundane”
It is said that renowned journalist Ryszard Kapuściński always traveled with two notebooks. In one he would write the facts that he had to submit to the Polish News Agency every day, and in the other he would note his experiences and nuances surrounding those news events.
Kapuściński became such an acclaimed nonfiction writer because he used the second notebook as the fabric of his books, allowing readers to empathize with historical and news events as if we were there. Reading Kapuściński, we are transported to the overthrowing of the Shah of Iran; the soccer war between Honduras and El Salvador; or the Angolan War of Independence. Through his descriptions of daily life during these crises, details of the mundane help us connect with characters and places that at first seem out of our reach by transforming them into the familiar. By letting us “see” people waiting at a bus stop or talking in a coffee shop and by capturing their small talk, Kapuściński enables us to empathize with the intimate realities of these otherwise invisible moments.
360 camera footage, like Kapuściński’s way of seeing, often reveals a collection of “mundane” moments. Being able to see these seemingly “non-interesting” things makes the story much more realistic. More humane. The inherent capacity of 360 video to place us somewhere else allows us to see details that are not framed by “flat” cameras. We should embrace and work toward mastering the craft of capturing these gems.
Furthermore, there is greater terrain to explore in using 360 video to film breaking news and in collaborating with journalists of different backgrounds to create unique 360 stories.
360 video is more than location, location, location
If we look at the first wave of 360/VR journalism productions in 2015, most journalists and producers had the same idea: bring the camera inside locations that were difficult to access. In particular, there was a trend to bring 360/VR cameras to prisons or refugee camps. These early works (below) had the incredible ability to probe the potential of the medium.
Characters and their daily lives
Two years later, in a New York Times Daily 360 piece about a prison, we see a difference in storytelling. The 360 video narrates a humanized story about the impact of incarceration on families.
Here, the producers are not talking about the prison itself, but what prison means for children whose parents are incarcerated. To create compelling stories, we need strong characters and we need to portray the nuances of their daily lives. In this video, for example, the scene where an inmate’s daughters are on the bus heading to prison conveys the amount of time and distance that prison interposes between inmates and their families. We see that the sisters are not alone; they sit alongside several other passengers united by the same faith in overcoming emotional and physical barriers through these regular visits.
Just as Kapuściński’s nuanced descriptions and captured small talk immerse readers in stories, this particular scene on the bus allows us to understand how prison can become quotidian for thousands of families in the United States. The long hours commuting on the bus, conveyed by transitions from a fixed point of view — the sisters are awake, they fall asleep, someone gives instructions about the personal belongings they can bring inside the prison — these are the kinds of details that have the potential to nurture empathy.
When daily life is a war zone
When Maya Alleruzzo went to Iraq to cover the last days of the battle for Mosul, she brought a 360 camera with her. We collaborated on an idea to capture moments of the battle that were impossible to film with a “flat”camera; we wanted to record mundane scenes that truly depicted what it means to live in a war zone by also including conversations with civilians.
One day, the group of soldiers Maya was following took cover inside a house where the family was present. Since there were explosions outside, she decided to intentionally turn the camera on and film. Maya was capturing daily life in a war zone for this family in Mosul — the hours of waiting, the bare living room, the presence of soldiers and journalists, the little kids sitting down without playing — when suddenly there was a huge explosion outside. The 360 camera captured the entire scene: the terrifyingly loud sound of the explosion, the blast wave blowing through the windows, the different reactions of the parents and their kids, and the scared reaction of the journalists. The video camera also captured the details inside the living room after the explosion: the looks of resignation, the nervous smiles between everyone, and then the voice of the matriarch: “It’s normal, they’ve destroyed us.”
What makes this scene so compelling is that it was captured with a 360 camera. A photographer could have captured the family’s or journalists’ reactions, but not the entire scene including the anxious anticipation around the room, the shocking sounds of the explosion (you can see it in the video above at around 6:39) or the exchanged looks afterward. Similarly, a flat video camera would have been constrained to a single point of view and experience.
With 360 video, the audience is able to experience this footage as if they were in the living room themselves. The amount of information and detail a 360 shoot can provide is much more realistic and accurate than that of any other medium before it. This turning point in storytelling is important for journalism because we are driven to depict events as truthfully as possible (and with minimal intervention).
Maya not only captured an explosion; she compelled viewers to empathize with a family living in the landscape of war.
In between photography and video
In my experience with 360 video, I have come to understand the differences and similarities between my videographer and photographer colleagues and myself. And I think that’s because the main characteristic of 360 video is that it genuinely lies in between these two mediums.
For example, 360 producers need to know what we are expecting to capture when we leave a 360 camera recording. Like a photojournalist, we need to wait for the right moment, the right time when all the elements will conjure up an image or scene.
We are tiptoeing to the future. Photojournalists capture moments, 360 producers capture audiovisual scenes.
Like a videographer, 360 producers are aware of the dialogue and action happening around us. But we won’t create a sequence of B-roll and shots. Instead, we have to wait to place the camera at the right time in the right place and capture the best scene.
This is the magic and power of 360 video.
Breaking news
360 video has great potential for conveying the poetry of the mundane and, compared to photography or flat video, is intent on capturing entire scenes. But 360 cameras possess another key function: capturing the magnitude and emotion of news events.
Last September, I traveled to Texas to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey for the Associated Press. It was one of the few times I was dispatched to cover a breaking news event. I worked within a considerably high turnaround, producing an average of one story per day.
While filming the flooded streets of Houston, we learned that 360 cameras are ideal for shooting natural disasters because 360 video allows us to quickly see the magnitude of the devastation. Even raw 360 footage is more compelling than a flat video.
During those days in Texas, I also realized that I was operating under a double window of timing: 1) I was pressed to arrive on location at the moment we anticipated something would happen; and 2) I underwent a condensed, compacted period of postproduction in order to publish the content as quickly as possible.
For example, for this video we arrived at the locations at the same time residents were returning to see Harvey’s impact on their homes, and the video was published only a few hours later. Maintaining this double timing is key to delivering an emotive experience to the viewer.
In 2017, there were several climate disasters, and I wonder why we have not seen much 360 footage from the South Asia floods, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the wildfires in California or the earthquake in Mexico. There seems to be, still, a reluctance to place 360 cameras on the front lines or to publish 360 content with the same urgency as flat video or photos.
The technology we have today allows us to film and publish content in a short amount of time. If we do not utilize 360 video to cover breaking news, we are missing opportunities to deliver more provocative content.
Collaboration inside the newsroom
More than a week before Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, AP reporters Jason Dearen and Michael Biesecker requested a copy of the EPA’s “screening analysis” involving Superfund sites around floodplains in danger of sea-level rise. After the hurricane, Jason mapped out all the Superfund sites we would visit to assess possible damage. The Superfund site seen in this video was accessible only by boat.
Our collaboration resulted in one of the most relevant pieces about Harvey. Before the EPA released any kind of report, we confirmed that toxic sites had been flooded and, in doing so, sparked the rage of EPA officials, who claimed our fact-checked research was “incredibly misleading” (Business Insider). However, public pressure continued to build until the EPA confirmed, weeks later, that the Superfund was indeed damaged and they would assess it.
In this case, it was combining both contemporary and traditional journalistic tools that led us to this unique and previously unexplored story.
Relationship between space and time
Among the qualities that 360 video offers is its unique way of showing the relationship between time and space — what we sometimes refer to as the “before and after stories.”
For “A Fight to Stay in Chinatown,” a story I produced for Fusion Media Group in early 2016, we began by filming the collapsed ceiling inside a house on Elizabeth Street in New York’s Chinatown. The landlord had refused to repair the ceiling, and the room had remained in this deplorable condition for weeks. We filmed the tenants’ struggle and their efforts to organize against the negligence of the landlord, awaiting the day that the ceiling we had filmed would be repaired … or not.
Almost six months later, we were able to film in the same location with the new ceiling, new lights and repainted walls. The tenants had won the battle, and the 360 camera proved to be a powerful tool to show the dramatic before and after.
If you know of a location that will disappear or is under threat, I would strongly advise you to film it and keep the footage for the future; allow it to age like good wine.
Why these lessons are important
Immersive journalism is still in its infancy, but if we don’t apply the lessons we have learned to the medium, we risk letting the dust pile up on our VR headsets and leaving our 360 cameras abandoned in newsroom drawers.
How are you going to capture mundane “gems” for your journalistic stories? How are you going to use 360 video to document climate change? What characters could you follow to convey the nuances of their daily lives? What landscapes or places are about to disappear or change?
There is value in filming and publishing 360 video. I hope this article will help us see the potential that 360 filmmaking already brings to journalism and immersive storytelling.
I’m a freelancer who is looking for future collaborations and/or to join a team full time. If these lessons resonate with your work, please reach out to me!! :)
