Do’s and Don’ts of Filming a 360 Video
Brought to you straight from the editor’s desk.
In traditional linear video formats, you have a lot of freedom to fix production issues or mistakes made during shoots, because the frame size you’re working with often excludes a huge part of a scene. That’s why you’ll hear many people say, “We can just fix it in post.”
When it comes to 360 or VR footage, however, there are a lot of technical details that shooters need to pay attention to in order to make the editor’s life much easier during post-production. Sadly, some things are just not fixable when working in 360 degrees.
I’ve come up with a list of what NOT to do and what to AVOID while filming in 360VR, which comes from my own mishaps and blunders while editing.
For those of you who are new to 360VR content creation, you should probably pay special attention to this list. Memorize it. Learn it. Live it. Because speaking from experience, it will save you so much time, tears, and headache…
Now, onto the list:
- Never forget the lens cloth.
A smudged lens is an editor’s worst nightmare. A shot can become completely unusable if part of it is blurred, so wipe those guys off until they’re crystal clear. In. Every. Take.
2. Don’t just put the camera anywhere and run away. Instead, let the camera placement be a very conscious decision.
Being conscious of where you put the camera doesn’t only mean that you need to pick the best angle or spot for a complete view of the scene. There are many other things to consider, like where you can place the camera so that people, or objects, are not in front of stitch lines. Objects that are too close to the camera (and moving between seamlines) could take quite some time to fix in post-production, and if you’re dealing with stereoscopic, there is a great chance the footage won’t look seamless after all because of the disparity between the right and left eye.
As a shooter, you need to make sure the camera is not too close to objects or people. This is also especially relevant if you are filming in stereo, as it could become a big pain to work with the footage later on in post-production. In many situations, it can be difficult to control how close to the camera people pass by. For example, in ‘Forced to Flee,’we were filming in a refugee camp and people were constantly milling about to get food donations or travel between tents. In scenarios like that, it’s impossible to control or keep people at a minimum distance to be able to easily stitch the scene (without people being in the shot). When possible, let people know how the 360 camera works, so that they won’t get too close to the rig and ruin your shot.
3. Learn to recognize when you need to take plate shots.
I’ve seen some post-production folks out there not giving a lot of attention to tripod removal, by either leaving the tripod as it is, blurring it (like the footage that comes out of the Google Jump Camera, for example), or adding a logo to the bottom of 360 videos. This is, and can be, a stylistic and technical choice, but I believe that for a truly realistic and immersive 360VR experience, a neat tripod removal is essential. Tripod removal is a stage of the production that needs to be taken into consideration not only by post production professionals, but also by shooters. The camera placement often affects how seamless the nadir looks (nadir is the bottom of the image). So, if you place the camera on a solid and/or uniform surface — such as asphalt or grass — it is definitely easy to mask out the tripod. But, if the camera is on a rug full of patterns or geometrical figures, or inside a car, for instance, it would make much more sense for the shooter to take plate shots.
There are two types of plate shots that we, post-production folks, usually request that our shooters take while in the field:
a. Still photos of the nadir:Still photos of the ground (or wherever the camera was placed in each shot) should be taken in order to facilitate the tripod removal process in post-production. It should be an image that is as close to how the scene looks in reality. This shot should be taken from a similar angle and height that the 360 camera was placed, preferably taken with a GoPro, so that the curvature of the photo can match the curvature of the spherical image.
b. 360 clip of the scene without any action:This type of plate shot will help post-production folks replace part of the shot with a clean shot instead, when needed. Let’s say, you’re filming a 360 interior shot and you want to use artificial lighting to make sure characters were lit up properly in the scene. The best way to do it is to hide the light where the 360 camera cannot reach (i.e. sticking LED lights on the walls, on objects or around the tripod itself etc). In some cases, however, the best solution is to use good old-fashioned lighting techniques — with proper lighting equipment — and then taking a 360 shot of the space without the gear from the exact same spot (not moving the camera) and masking that out of the shot. This might seem pretty complicated when carrying it out in the field, but trust me, it’ll make all the difference once you get to the editing suite.
4. Pay attention to the lighting and camera settings: don’t pick dark locations.
Not every 360 camera gives you the choice to adjust the color and exposure settings. Consumer-end cameras in general don’t let you play with a lot of image properties like shutter speed and saturation, for instance, though in most cases you are able to control the ISO. The first thing to keep in mind — no matter if you’re using a small 360 camera, or a high-end expensive one — is if the shot is too over or underexposed, it is rare that you’ll be able to fix it in post. Similar to DSLR footage capture, when filming with a 360 camera, you should adjust the settings to get a flat image that gives you more freedom when color correcting your piece.
5. Beware the shaky shot! Keep the camera steady as if you were balancing raw eggs or a pile of books on your head.
Nowadays, there are a myriad of tools you can use to stabilize your shot during post-production. However, they can only do so much. You must first ensure that the camera is not super shaky while filming; that’s what is going to save your time and money in post.
6. Make sure you’re recording 360 shots in high resolution.
It is really unfortunate when you are editing a piece and you realize that a very important shot for the story was accidentally shot in low resolution. Scaling the footage to frame size to match the rest of the material can work, but it can also cause export glitches, for instance, and slow down the delivery of the content. Needless to say that if you’re exporting a 6K video and one of the shots was shot in 2K, that is going to be very obvious, especially when watching the 360 video on a headset.
7. Don’t be careless while recording audio.
Sound plays a very important role in 360VR films and experiences. It sets the tone and mood of a piece, and establishes how professional a production sounds. In the past, we’ve had a lot of issues with freelancers who don’t pay as much attention to sound recording as they should. This proves to be quite the problem when editing our VR documentary films, where voice overs play a crucial role in driving the narrative and pushing it forward. If you have a noisy background, or if the person being interviewed is accidentally rubbing the mic on their clothes, those sounds will be super distracting for the audience when in 360 space, because they don’t really belong to the scene.
Additionally, fixing it in post would take a lot of time and depending on the situation, it may not even be 100% fixable. So, the lesson to be learned here: always use a professional microphone to capture natural sound and interviews and keep interviewees in a quiet (and not echoing) space. And in the event that you’re filming in windy locations, make sure to use a foam on the mic to record the natural sound separately, since the original audio extracted from the camera won’t sound great.
That’s it, folks! Did you learn something new today? Did I miss any other crucial tips? Leave me a comment below!
