The screenshots in this post are stills from videos that were recorded on the day dedicated to closing-of-term teaching and learning activities in Home Economics. The videos were shot with two different wide lens live action cameras.
The special feature here is that these are 360-degree videos. A 360-degree video is also called periscopic or spherical, as its views are recorded in every direction at the same time. The video is shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras. The spherical video has been acclaimed for the immersive experience it can offer, especially when a VR format is applied.
Our use of live action cameras and spherical videos for teaching and learning purposes aims to allow us to better understand the dimensions of immersive experience. What stories, scenes and angles support the element of immersiveness and what direction immersiveness can take, are some of the questions we will be seeking responses to, in the Home4Action virtual space.
When we integrate audio-visual technologies in teaching, editing the videos is part of the immersive experience. The purpose, therefore, of this post is to offer insights into what the editing process is like and, in this way, bring forward some of the details of post-production. The screenshot (1) below, for instance, shows an instance from the closing-of-term event.
screenshot 1
As the shooting included scenes that we were not always meaningful (e.g., long silence gaps, irrelevant footage etc.) we decided to edit into shorter clips that would be shared online at a later stage. However, as becomes evident from screenshot (2) below, the panoramic/spherical effect was no longer available after editing.
screenshot 2
In order to improve the visual effect in the still, the image was cropped in screenshot 3 below. Although the cropping technique does not apply with video, it does help widen the scope of the still image by bringing forward the characters and shrinking the overwhelmingly wide frame.
screenshot 3
As periscopic/spherical video technology is largely unexplored at this moment, lessons learnt, and insights gained from this initial experience show that for true immersiveness, the totality of the experience should be taken into account.
Such totality includes, in addition to the story, scenes and angles recorded, the post-production and the possible multimodal uses of the footage. Multimodal use of audio-visual material can also be about written text, like this one, and still images, like the screenshots of this post are. Multimodal content can lead audiences, teachers and students into the greater detail of an event, and, in this way, to a better understanding of a phenomenon.
So, stay tuned for more about what lies behind the multimodal scenes and video storytelling!
