- With all the videos
focusing on VR on the web talking about headsets and games and just generally how VR is consumed, no one seems to be talking about the thing that I think is just as
fascinating: how it's made. (upbeat music) So I set out on a mission
to not only find out how VR content is made, but how it can be made in the entertainment
industry, specifically, and then also how it can be
made using live-action filming to be even more specific. This, of course, let me to JAUNT. JAUNT is arguably the
company at the forefront of this new story-telling medium. They have investors like Disney, that were part of a 65 million
dollar investment round, by the way, and talent from companies like Industrial Light & Magic, the people responsible
for the special effects on over 300 movies that, oh, I don't know, maybe you've heard of some of them: Transformers; Star Wars;
Harry Potter; Indiana Jones; Pirates of the Caribbean; Avatar. You get the idea. JAUNT was kind enough to give
me a tour of JAUNT studios, their facility in Santa
Monica, California, and let me sit down and talk
to some of their top talent to kind of try to get my
head around this new medium. First up, we need to
talk about the equipment. You can't just go out and make a 360 video with your normal point and shoot. You need specialized equipment
that can shoot front, back, up, down, all sides. You're probably familiar with a few that have made their way
to the consumer market, like the Gear 360. Most of them utilize
two wide-angle lenses, each shooting in different directions. The thing is that these are basically the entry-level equipment
into this type of content, with the next step up being
things like the bubble cam and those crazy rigs with a
crap-ton of GoPro's in them. None of this was good
enough for JAUNT, however, so they built their own. This is the JAUNT 1, and it doesn't just have
two cameras, six cameras, it has 24 cameras. There are 16 in a circle
around the middle, and we've got four on top
and four on the bottom. The reason for this many
cameras is that JAUNT believes that VR should not just be
360, but it should be 3D. In order to achieve 3D with a camera, you need multiple lenses
pointed in the same direction with their field of view overlapping. In much the same way that your eyes work, your brain takes the images
from each of your eyeballs, calculates the difference between the two, and then uses that to figure out depth. The JAUNT 1 does the same
thing with its software and its multiple cameras. As for audio, which is a
completely different ballgame in the world of VR, they use what's called a TetraMic. This mic actually is four mics, and using some fun software
it can use those four mics and determine where sound
came from in 360 degrees of the room, and they then
can use that and sync it up with the camera to give you a complete surround-sound experience. Not only that, but as you turn and move, it can determine where
those sounds need to come out of the two channels that you have, which are your left and right ear. Which brings up one of the
big challenges of filming VR, which is an amazing thing as a user of VR but a complete nightmare as a director, and that's free will. You, the viewer, don't
have to be looking forward, and for that matter forward
doesn't really exist in VR, so the camera is capturing every angle all the way around it, up
and down, within the scene. You ever seen the behind-the-scenes
of making a movie? Generally speaking, when you're looking in the other direction of the camera you'll notice that there were
a lot of people behind it, from the sound guy to the grip
to the director, et cetera. In VR, the audience can
actually turn around at any time and see all of that, so VR directors have to
get a little creative with how they hide their crew, putting them behind large
objects such as rocks, or even putting them
in the scene as extras. Beyond the logistics of filming, the director also doesn't
know if you're looking at what they want you to be looking at at any given time, so they have to get clever
and use things like sound, for example a tree falling in
the distance with a loud thud to draw your attention to there, where the story can then continue, and of course there is no guarantee, which is why VR right now
is being utilized a lot for live events or things
where a lot of things are just happening at once around you and you're just transported
to this new location. Beyond the narrative challenges, there's also vomit. This means no artistic
close-ups, weird wide-shots, and the other type of shots that we use in our traditional
old-fashioned 2D story-telling. On the post-production
side we then have to edit this footage that we just captured. Most VR cameras, you can
actually take that 360 degree footage and turn into what's called an equirectangular video. You can then pop it into
Adobe Premier and then edit it from there, just keep in mind the vomit-inducing jump cuts, et cetera. You can even then also download a plug-in that will allow you to move
around the scene in 360 using your mouse or a capable VR headset. Audio is a little more complicated, but thanks to a lot of
really cool plug-ins, you can actually record the
audio in a 360 degree view, and it will automatically
convert it to stereo for you. After filming and editing comes the next challenge: distribution. There are options like Facebook 360 video, and even YouTube has an
option for 360 video, but for someone that's coming
from a TV or a film world, these aren't quite the best solutions. Also add the fact that VR consumption requires special equipment like a headset, which, at least for now, drastically limits the
size of your audience. That will all change soon, though, as the phones in our pockets
become more and more capable of handling VR, whether
we want them to or not. Google Daydream is a project
that Google has started to encourage their manufacturers
to put in better specs into their phones to
make them better at VR. Basically, though, with Google
pushing this certification, what's going to happen is
a lot of people are going to have these VR-ready
phones in their pockets, whether they knowingly
purchased one or not. That means that all you need to do is buy a very cheap headset
to put your phone into, as opposed to buying a stand-alone VR kit like the Vive or the Rift, and that means the pool of
people capable of watching your VR content will potentially increase exponentially very soon. JAUNT is also betting big
that phones will be the next level of distribution for VR content with their own distribution
app for Android and iOS. They also recently announced
that anyone who's producing VR or 360 content can submit it to JAUNT to be included in this app, which makes for a very
interesting, potentially huge distribution channel for
anyone that's producing this type of content. If you are a videographer of any sort, I highly recommend dabbling, at least, in 360 and VR content. There are some unique
challenges, as we've mentioned, but it is such a new medium
that it has a huge potential to give your audiences
such a unique experience like never before. At one time motion
pictures had just come out and everyone dabbling in this new medium just basically copied plays, setting the camera
somewhere where it seemed like it was just an audience member, and it had these long shots
that just kind of played out in front and they wouldn't
even jump shots very often, but eventually this new medium matured and became its own unique
way of telling stories. Movies as a play is kind of where we are with VR content right now, and it's going to be up to those people that go out and dabble
in this industry first to really define what it will become. Maybe the next Hitchcock
or Kubrick or Allen are out buying a 360 camera right now, or maybe they're watching a YouTube video on how VR content is made. (upbeat music)
