360 Film - The Process

The 360 Film project has been a very eventful project to say the least. I started by partnering up with Jodie and we began to brainstorm ideas for the project. I thought about possibly trying something similar to KickthePJ's 'Tiny Planet Explorer' as I liked the idea of possibly making it into a retro video game style of video. I spoke to John and some of my peers about the idea but it didn't seem practical enough with the time we had and John also said that he'd prefer if we had a 360 video where the viewer had to actually move themselves around to watch instead of bending the footage into a sphere. A week or so went by and Jodie came to me with the idea of taking the 360 camera to a local gig. We liked the idea the the practicality was achievable as the venue was close and we knew the band. Unfortunately once we got around to deciding a date to film on, it turned out that I had a doctors appointment back in my home town and wouldn't be able to make it to the gig so due to this impracticality myself and Jodie thought it would be best to break off and do our own individual projects. At this point I became quite worried and stressed as we had 2 weeks until the deadline and I'd had to start fresh. I spoke to my peers and John and Savina suggested that I do something which I enjoy and mentioned trying to do something with cooking which is a small hobby of mine. With a little bit of help we managed to sort an idea out for me which would be for me to 'host' my own 360 cooking show so I booked my equipment to pick up in two days time. Due to having other projects going on at the same time, all of which due on the same day, I couldn't find the time the following day to find Rosie and have her sign off my idea. This all meant that I had to find Rosie, get her to approve my idea, get her to sign me off, pick up the equipment and film all in the same day so I could return the kit the next day. As you can imagine, stress levels were through the roof but nevertheless I managed to pull it off (somehow). When filming I was supposed to have Jack and Jacob lend a helping hand but unfortunately they were caught up and couldn't make it meaning I had to sort the camera myself. The camera was easy enough to film but as it was something I've never used before I was worried that something would go wrong that I wouldn't know how to fix. Filming went fine and I thought the audio was okay too until I got to the edit.

When I got all of the footage onto the editing software the footage looked okay but had a few stitch lines. I tried my best to fix them but couldn't find anything in my notes and couldn't find any tutorial online which is a slip up on my part but in the end all I could do was align the vertical lines to give myself a perfectly straight video. It's a very poor excuse but I think due to having three and sometimes four projects to do all at once just mentally and physically drained me so in the edit I just didn't have enough time to make the changes I wanted to because the whole editing software was completely alien to me. The audio which I recorded separately on a radio mic ended up sounding blown out and because there was a washing machine on whilst I was filming that is all you could hear so the external audio was unusable. I went out of my way to have graphics made for the video but for the life of me I just couldn't remember how to make them stick in their place when turned into 360 mode. I'd even forgotten how to mask out the stand of the camera. My main worry is that it looks like my work looks lazy and I couldn't be bothered to try what we learnt in class which definitely isn't the case. I believe I just had too much to take on in such a short amount of time. To put it in simpler terms, I cracked under the pressure and forgot everything we'd learnt in class. In terms of the final product, yes technically it is a 360 cooking video but it's just a bit annoying when you plan to do it so differently to the final outcome. I am very disappointed in the outcome and in myself for not being able to achieve what I wanted but the only silver lining in this is that I need to make sure that I can manage my time better for future projects and to definitely not to take on so many projects that all have such short deadlines.