360 Video & Case Study - 'VICE NEWS VR : Millions March NYC 12.13.14'
In this article I take a look at 360 video for documentary, using the following as a case study; VICE NEWS VR : Millions March NYC 12.13.14 (released in 2015). Created by Chris Milk and Spike Jonze, VICE News presents this piece as “One of the first virtual reality newscasts produced by a major news organization”.
This 360 video includes clips from various places and times at and during the Millions March in New York City on the 13th December 2014 when people protested racial profiling by police.
One sequence in the video follows Vice reporter Alice Speri as she walks with protestors through the streets, commenting on the protest into a microphone. She then interviews a protestor.
The fidelity of the image is quite low probably due to the equipment available at that time, and it suffers from low light noise which is often a challenge in low light videography. There are also some visual imperfections at the stitching points of the videos. Nevertheless the feeling of being at the protests is very effective. These technicalities will be solved with improved equipment over time.
The piece is best viewed using a VR head mounted display. The only agency one has is to choose the direction one looks. Spatial audio is used which helps orient the viewer- letting one move to see what’s happening in the perceived direction of a sound.
When I watched this piece I was struck by the high degree of presence I felt. Having never visited the USA in my life the experience of feeling like I was in the protest was very impactful, and would not have been possible, I feel, simply by watching a 2D video of the same events. I felt like I was witnessing protestors’ pain, feeling empathy for them and their cause. The energy of the crowd is palpable and despite me watching this six years after the protest, I felt like I had time-travelled and teleported there.
The disturbing subject of police racial profiling is sadly still relevant today. On on May 26, 2020 George Floyd a 46-year-old African-American man was killed by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer. The police brutality protests that followed began locally and then spread nationwide and to over 2,000 cities and towns in over 60 countries in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
This makes the 2014 documentary even more relevant and important- it is evidence that half a decade before the George Lloyd tragedy US citizens felt compelled to protest police racial profiling, to little effect.
As a tool for sharing human experience 360 video is an excellent format. What if all the police officers in the USA had watched this video when it was published? What impact on racial profiling might that have had? These questions are impossible to measure, but using available immersive technologies to begin education programmes to end racism seems a sensible idea to try.
Cmmunicating human experience
The realism of a format determines the degree to which it can place a person in a documented experience.
For example, World War II was mostly documented using black and white film photographs which feel impressionistic, with a risk of dehumanising human subjects. It’s a mental leap to place oneself in a scene presented in this format. Furthermore, it took time to transport the film to labs, process it, more time still to select, publish and distribute it. Further to this, at the time the main distribution method for images was in newspapers, and selections were often chosen or omitted for propaganda purposes in order to uphold and increase a nation’s support of its part in the war.
By the time of 1968 the US were involved in the Vietnam War, and most houses in the US had a television. Coverage of the war was regularly broadcast and sometimes beamed by satellite. This brought raw and vivid footage of the war into people’s homes and the war became known as The Living Room War and “The First Television War’’.
The coverage of the Vietnam War provided evidence to US citizens of the disparity of official accounts and what journalists were witnessing. Correlations between intense levels of coverage and shifts in public opinion show the great impact on people’s perception of real-world events.
Transparent media
When people can see what’s happening on the front-lines of real events such as this, it becomes harder for others to tamper with their perceptions. This empowers content creators in sharing moments and events with others in a way which is more transparent and true to life than previous formats.
Conculsions
As VR and MR headset prices drop and more get in to circulation the opportunity for people to see this piece and similar pieces will grow. As more content is captured and shared in this format it may become the go-to format for many people who prefer to judge events for themselves.
Advances in bandwidth with 5G and beyond enable live 360 broadcasts, giving viewers a first person view of events around the world. It is worth noting that these increased bandwidth applications rely upon suitable tech infrastructure which will take some time to reach poorer nations and regions.
I am very interested in how 360 video will be used in the near future and the impact it is making.