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It was with curiosity that visitors to the fair watched our team wander through the RAI palace, where the IBC is organized every year. The object of their interest? The small hemispherical camera that accompanied us everywhere, in charge of filming 360° images. It must be said that we did not go unnoticed, hiding as best we could behind elements of the decor so as not to appear in the field. This is one of the (many) peculiarities of this 360 format, which upsets the habits of the classical television journalist. And it was a good thing, since we were there to talk about the future of the audiovisual industry!
The particularities of the 360° format
We no longer present the 360° video, which has become mainstream since Facebook, Twitter and YouTube allow to post content in this format. But if we have all already seen some, few of us have had the opportunity to make videos. So we made sure to bring, among the four members of our shooting team, the 360° specialist of the Médialab from France Télévisions, to guide us through the particularities of this singular format.
First specificity, the most obvious: in 360°, there is no off-screen. Everything in the field of view of the camera is visible, including the film crew, cables (if, like us, you don't have wireless microphones), curious spectators around the camera... So you have to pay attention to the smallest detail, and make choices. Should we leave the journalist to the image, and take the decision to show the spectator behind the scenes of the report? Or, on the contrary, should we let the interviewee speak alone, in a classic on-camera intervention? It's all a question of editorial choices. For our part, we chose to adopt three different narratives for each of the subjects we shot.
In the first one, dedicated to the presentation of the IBC, we took the decision to make the interviewees speak face to face with the camera, without appearing on the screen. The second subject was embodied, with an immersion in the skin of a journalist of the future. The last one is composed of classic interviews with a journalist interviewing experts.
The challenges of 360° journalism
These three storytellings allowed us to reveal the advantages and constraints of the 360 format. Very quickly, we encountered a first obstacle when we had to conduct interviews without the journalist appearing in the picture. A complexity if we had shot with a conventional camera... but a real challenge in 360, to manage to disappear from the field while remaining close enough to the interviewee to exchange with him or her. The first lesson to be learned, therefore: this type of staging does not allow for a real contradictory discussion, in the context of an investigative report for example. We will not send Elise Lucet to interview a CAC 40 boss and ask him to hide behind a wall for the purposes of the 360 format!
A major constraint, but one that is worth the effort, because of the unique immersion she offers the viewer. What better way to discover a place than to be able to explore it at will, from all sides? In this respect, 360 remains an excellent means of reinventing the relationship between the viewer and its content by fully involving the viewer in the viewing experience and making him or her an actor in its immersion.
Another specificity inherent to the 360: adapting the staging to the conditions of a trade show, by definition noisy and crowded, while finding configurations that give meaning and added value to the 360. This is what we have tried to do by favoring circular booths, with decors, spectacular demonstrations...
At first glance, it is true that 360° filming did not seem the most suitable for a trade show, where the first reflex is above all to observe the innovations presented on the stands, and where what happens around it is not necessarily of intrinsic interest. So the challenge was to write our subjects in such a way as to make the spectators want to move through the video, both by choosing particular settings (by putting two guests face to face around the camera for example) and, above all, by inserting text in post-production to guide the spectators through the scene, in order to use all the space to inform the curious people who navigate through the image.
The lessons of a 360° shooting
We had already carried out a first 360 experiment last December, whose lessons we have given you here. This second shooting confirmed the good practices we had identified at the time (highlighting the location, guiding the viewer through the story) and above all, it allowed us to go further in the use of the 360 format, especially during post-production, by calling on a computer graphic designer to add animations and by carrying out a real work of spatialization of the sound for a more complete immersion.
The fundamental rule of 360 (and of all innovations, for that matter) remains the same: technology must be at the service of narration, and not the other way around. Because what the audience is looking for when viewing content is not a technology, it is above all a story. It's up to us, then, to find the most relevant format, the most innovative storytelling. Of course, some subjects lend themselves much better than others to image editing, even in 16:9. It's the journalist's job to succeed in making the story interesting, to explore it from a new angle and to ask relevant questions, whatever the format requested! As we have seen, 360 adds new constraints and completely transforms the way we write our stories. But it also opens up a new field of possibilities, and imposes a welcome renewal of our practices in a media universe in search of innovation!
