4 Tips For Shooting A 360° Masterpiece
Choosing the right camera for your shoot is only half the battle when it comes to filming in 360°. It’s the actual shooting and editing of the 360° video where things get complicated and break with some of the familiar techniques most video professionals are accustomed to. Here are four tips to help you work within their limits and film a 360° masterpiece:
1. Disappear from view.
Positioning yourself in relation to the camera is one of the trickiest parts of filming in 360°. With a regular 2D camera, you can hide behind it or to the side while controlling its movement. But since 360° cameras shoot in all directions, you have to set up the rig and then disappear from the frame unless you want to be a part of the scene. This leaves you with little to no control over camera movements.
2. Put the camera in the action — and out of the way.
Since a scene revolves around a 360° camera rather than the camera revolving around the scene, the action needs to come to the camera instead of vice versa. The camera must be placed in the middle of the action, but without getting in anyone’s way. It would be easiest if you could set up the camera in a corner of a room, but that would defeat the purpose of filming in 360° since you would only get 180° of vision. Keep your camera placement in mind when location scouting. Also remember that the more stable a location, the better the stitching and less disorienting the final video will appear to the viewer. Having a rig on a dolly also helps.
3. Capture the action.
Putting the camera in the middle of the action isn’t always enough. Because 360° video is typically shot with a wide angle lense, the action must come close to the camera to for maximum effect. The sweet spot is typically three to five feet away from the camera. This requires either a lot of luck and pre-production planning for non-fiction material or carefully-timed choreography for fiction.
4. Get a single shot with peak action.
Because of the limitations on camera placement and direction, it is nearly impossible to construct a scene in the classical Hollywood sense: wide-shot to medium to close-up and back out. With 360° video, you only have one shot to tell a story and things get boring fast without any action.
Learn about producing 360° video and VR in our latest guidebook, “Storytelling in a Virtual World.”
