Labor für Virtuelles Studio / Virtuelle Realität

Abstract: How does good storytelling work in a 360-degree-video and what does an answer to this question mean for the future of the medium? [DE]

In recent years, the 360° video has appeared in parallel with the classic 2D and 3D film with the further development of virtual reality. To do this, a camera captures the entire scene around them. This creates a film experience in which the video material stretches completely around the viewer and the viewer can freely look in any direction. This high level of freedom created new challenges in terms of storytelling. Since many of the well-known stylistic and narrative tools used for decades no longer work in the 360° video, the filmmakers have to acquire a new kind of film language. For this reason, the focus of this work was on research into effective storytelling. For this purpose, three hypotheses were put forward, which dealt with storytelling elements, camera movements and parallel storylines. On the one hand, a 360° video created in advance was evaluated by heatmap analysis and on the other hand, two 360° short videos with different content and storytelling elements were created as part of this work. These were presented to a study group of 22 people, who participated in an online questionnaire for this study. From this, the functionality of the elements used was established. In the final step, the hypotheses used to collect data for all three videos were used to test the hypotheses and thus give effective methods for good storytelling.

Keywords:

360-degree video, VR-Video, Cinematic VR, Storytelling, directing attention, Immersion, 360-degree video production, 360-degree camera, spatial audio, Ambisonics, object-based audio, Head-Mounted-Display, Heatmap

Supervisor:

Prof. Jens Herder, Dr. Eng./Univ. of Tsukuba
Dipl.-Ing. Phot. Christian Eichenauer

Location:

The research took place at the Virtual Sets and Virtual Environments Laboratory.