Start with making 360 virtual reality video

Credit: Screenshot of Immersiv.ly’s Hong Kong Unrest

Video journalists across the world are now embracing virtual reality as a new way to engage audiences and encourage emotional connections between viewers and the people in their stories.

Just like computer-generated experiences and games, 360-degree video is a form of virtual reality – and many believe this can be used to expand and enhance traditional, narrative journalism.

The viewer is immersed in the story and can see everything happening around them, witnessing a real scene and experiencing what they can’t first hand.

Just as news activist organisation Ryot recently took viewers into Syria’s largest city with the 360-degree film Welcome to Aleppo, London-based company Immersiv.ly also aimed to demonstrate that virtual reality can be a powerful platform for news with Hong Kong Unrest, showing viewers last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong.

Interactive video specialist Edward Miller filmed and edited the footage for Hong Kong Unrest, and believes the progression of 360-degree video is inevitable for the future of news organisations.

“Platforms like Twitter and Facebook can offer instant news far quicker than larger media organisations can react. So I see news organisations moving towards the role of the analyst,” he said.

“It’s this progression towards ‘slow news’ and long form which I think will make content such as virtual reality a compelling way to provide extra value that users couldn’t get anywhere else.

“Watching [Hong Kong Unrest] in a virtual reality headset gives the user a sense of what it was like to have been at the protests alongside police clashes, capturing small details that simply would have been missed with traditional fixed perspective cameras.”

Creating a 360-degree video comes with its own challenges, but get the fundamentals right and you will avoid making any newbie mistakes.

Read more