We have all seen events covered by photographers and camera operators but how many events have we seen covered with 360 degree videos?
A few weeks ago I filmed the Escalade, wrestling and other events with 360 cameras and it was fun. In some cases it was the opportunity to play with a new format and in other cases it was the opportunity for proof of concept.
The thing to remember about 360 videos is that you’re placing the camera at a point in space and people can look around as if they were holding the camera. Of course rather than hold the camera with their hands they are holding it with their fingers or even on their heads.
Turn your head instinctively and you see what you’d expect. Look up, look down, look behind you. You are there in full control. You will see a group of runners run towards you and when they pass you can follow them with your gaze.
It’s not just that you follow them with your gaze. In some cases you’re right by the action. When I filmed wrestling I got the camera right by the action rather than on the pilon holding up the ropes. You can look up as one wrestler jumps from the ropes into the opponent below.
Of course I still need to watch this footage and see how effective my experiment was. I suspect it worked well. When I get back to the edit suite I will be able to experiment.
A century ago Dennis Arkadievitch Kaufmann, more commonly known as Dziga Vertov, the spinning top, came up with the concept of the All-Seeing Eye. The Kinoki. The Cinema Eye. His idea was that with time life unawares could be documented and daily life would be captured by cameras for everyone to see.
https://youtu.be/yzxrSX79oz4
Until recently the idea of filming and documenting everyone with video and photo cameras was an act of fiction. Rolls of films had only 36 frames and DV tapes only lasted 63 minutes. Cameras were dedicated devices that you did not have with you at all times and to take pictures was expensive and you needed space for storage.
If we were to take 36 pictures I think we would have paid 1.20 CHF per image recently. DV tapes were about 15 CHF per tape depending on how many you bought at once.
Today we have two or three cameras with us at all times with gigabytes of storage. With the iPhone we could easily take a thousand pictures in a day if we had a way of recharging the battery halfway through.
We also have the means to share these images. We have Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Whatsapp. We also have blogs. We could mention Flickr and SmugMug but they have angered those who loved their site to the point of losing their users.
When I was streaming live from Paléo a few years ago I was groundbreaking by using the phone and QIK or Bambuser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTwDK863xJo
Manu Chao – Paléo 26 July 2008
Fast forward a few years and live streaming of music events has progressed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiEtLmnUfXM
We have gone from cameras that were stuck on the ground and barely moved to FPV video cameras that fly and follow snowboarders as they jump and slide down mountain faces. The camera no longer needs to be on the ground to be steady and get good images. Without weight the Kinoki can see scenes like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5a5mRe60sE
These all-seeing eyes can also fly in the landscape and show us the world as only a wingsuit flyer could have seen it in the past. We can see the same things without risking our lives or devoting hours of training to get to the right level of competence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyrq-qzOx1U
We then see Paris in the 1900s and now. We see how some things have stayed exactly the same and how other things have changed. The main difference is that in the 1900s it would have been a wooden camera with a wooden tripod and in modern days a carbon fibre tripod with a modern camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGQYFG4YHGw
There is also this footage of 1900s Paris in colour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue20LntcV2A
The All-Seeing Eye then takes us to 1911 New York and we see life with cars and people walking across a street. Sound was added later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aohXOpKtns0
An old-style educational video of how hydraulic steering works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDiOKqMKTO8
Compare to this modern documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL_mJeb6O04
When we jump forward a few decades we have this footage of 1960s London.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zk0eyKzp1c
Of course the diversity captured by the All Seeing Eye does not stop there. We often come across arts that are preserved by a single individual, which thanks to the all seeing eye, is preserved for future generations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITzYSYi_rGE
When I was on one of my daily walks I expected that this would be a long written blog post about theories and reasoning but in the end it becomes a collection of videos to explore the diversity of topics that the “all-seeing eye” can capture. The topic is broad and this is just a tiny glimpse.
Documenting climbing feats is an interesting challenge because you deal with issues of accessibility, projects that can last for months or even years and in some cases you’re dealing with the prospect of the climber understanding the problem, and then achieving his goal. For two or three years I really explored ideas for a climbing documentary before losing steam. My interest in the topic was still there but I couldn’t think of whom to put in front of the camera.
In my free time I have watched a lot of documentary films about climbing. Some are short, filmed over just a few hours and others are about longer duration projects that can last for a week or two. When I heard that Alex Honnold was free soloing El Cap I didn’t realise all of the preparation that he had been through. It’s only after watching his TED talk that I understood and my respect for his process grew.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iM6M_7wBMc
I like his TED talk because he really goes into detail about his preparation. You see that it is a process that takes years. Moves are practiced over and over until they are perfect. This is repeated for every pitch. Nothing is left to chance.
Aside from the mental preparation of the climber there is also the process that the cinéma verité crew must go through. In the documentary that I have included below you learn about the questions of ethics that are posed. Questions such as “how do we film this without distractions, how do we film this without endangering his life, how do we make this as safe as possible. The answer is using professional climbers and friends as camera crew. People that know the sport know when to be quiet and what move to expect next.
It’s interesting that in this feature they discuss the use of remote cameras for one or two sections, so that Alex feels alone and focused on the task at hand. Remote cameras on a cliff hundreds of metres off of the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-wjmIFlnNo
If a documentary is well made, like The Dawn Wall was, then you watch a documentary on a niche topic without growing bored or distracted. If it well filmed then it is as complete as a book. A well made documentary is as complete as a book.
The beauty over documentary films, as opposed to news coverage is that documentaries can be relevant to a small niche of people rather than cater to the lowest common denominator. This is especially true in an age where documentaries can be seen at film festivals, specialist events, offered as videos on demand and more. Keep in mind that in 2020 climbing will be an Olympic sport and that in this context documentaries that are made about climbers are going to attract an ever-growing audience. What is niche today will appeal to a wider audience tomorrow.
Two years ago I volunteered at the Festival Du Film Alpin and I was really happy to watch a genre, that until then I had seen mainly on youtube appear on a big screen with a large audience. Recently I was at the Magnetic Film premiere and this was an interesting experience and last night I was at Pathé Balexert, a mainstream cinema watching a documentary about climbing. The next step would be for one of these documentaries to be screened on an IMAX screen.
One of the reasons for which this film is so powerful is that it’s written in the way that Heinrich Harrer wrote about the Eiger. It’s documenting not just a single attempt but the entire process. In doing so we get to know the people well. It gives us some context about their early days and then it spends a big amount of time on the process that led to a succesful ascent of the Dawn Wall.
When we watch short films about climbing we sometimes see the trials and errors but those trials and errors are over days and weeks, not seasons and years. It documents the process by which Tommy Caldwell spent years exploring the entire rock face to find a route that was practicable. This is the level of detail that we got in The White Spider. You even have some of those ice falls in this film although only briefly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edfw9ip9sCQ
One of the nicest moments in this film, and in this story, is when Tommy Cadwell gets to the Wine Tower and decides that, instead of continuing up the climb he would wait until Kevin Jorgenson made it across pitch 15. That’s a great example of friendship, companionship and compassion. It’s great when people suspend their own goals for another person in this fashion. That’s what makes climbing and practising other people so much better. It’s finding people that want you to succeed as much as they want to succeed themselves. “I don’t want this victory to be alone,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_lZc7nATT4
I also like how this film is shot. I like the use of tight shots on the hands, of tight shots on the feet, of shots from down in the valley looking up and of wide shots where you see the climbers and the crew filming. I also like the use of timelapse. This, to a great degree is a modern day cinema verité film in that it captures life as it happens. It doesn’t use fast cuts, plenty of music and other devices.
It does have some great mapping of the routes on that wall. These maps are used to show the routes that other people have created, the routes that he climbed to get to know the wall and then the routes that he opened himself. The most fascinating use of mapping is when you see all of the variants that he explored before climbing the Dawn Wall successfully. You see a few metres here and there, you see how some create longer routes, and then you see the variants. You also see the gaps where they’re facing a challenging climb.
I think that one of the strengths of this team is that it’s made up of a boulderer and a rock climber. With this combination you have two distinct climbing specialities, that when combined offer a great pairing. One example is the dyno move. As a boulderer part of the game/art of this discipline is being able to make jumps that catch tiny finger holds. The strength of having a rock climber is that he has gained experience of climbing techniques, route finding. In this case the fact that Tommy Caldwell has spent so long studying this problem is that he knows the climb by heart.
I would definitely recommend watching this film if you like climbing as a sport, like reading about climbing and like watching it. I would also recommend it if you want to see a film about collaboration and compassion. How it was filmed and edited is also worth the time. I never found bits long or boring. It’s an excellent film.
Yesterday I went to Magnetic’s Geneva Premiere and I really enjoyed some segments of the film and found that others were less interesting. Keep in mind though, that this film is two hours long and that this increase and decrease in interest is normal.
What made this screening special is that many of the people that we saw in the film were present at the event. Before the film started they were presented to us individually, said a few words and then one person won some skis and another won for tickets to a ski resort.
The sports covered in this Nuit De La Glisse event were skiing, snowboarding mountain biking, e-mountain biking, speed flying, kite surfing, wind surfing and surfing. These sequences were shot in Hawaii, Tahiti, Spain, Portugal, Pakistan, France, Switzerland and one or two other countries. I don’t remember seeing that Portugal had some of the most consistently big waves. It would be impressive to see those waves in person. They can be up to 27 metres and more. Tahiti is a good place for riding barrel waves.
It’s interesting to see a sequence with an e-mountain bike because the sport is still so new. It does make biking in the mountains seem more interesting, if it about more than riding on hiking trails or going down dedicated tracks. The biking sequences were fun. They might have changed how I feel about the growing popularity of mountain bikes in the mountains. The film has achieved something.
Speed flying was filmed with a 360 camera and the image was stabilised so that the image was level but the flyer was moving from side to side as well as up and down. It was interesting to see how good this image quality was. I also like the use of the drone to film a variety of shots. Drones, when used correctly, provide the camera operator with the opportunity to get close to the subject without the use of a telephoto lens. This means that you preserve depth of field. This was used effectively in some of the mountain sequences, the surfing sequences and others. It made me want to get out and film with a selection of cameras.
Yesterday I started exploring CuriosityStream, a video streaming website that makes finding and watching documentaries easy. You can have a trial run of seven days but after watching three documentaries since yesterday evening I am convinced that it is a place where I want to watch more content.
I like documentaries that are well produced and enhance my understanding of topics. The documentaries I have watched are Dawn of the Oceans and the first episode of Quantum Physics yesterday. Today I watched Ships that Changed the World.
For documentaries to be worthwhile they must inform and educate their audiences without sensationalism and breathless commentary. They must also provide information that is interesting and relevant. I also believe that to a certain degree they need to be neutral. With Netflix I feel that their documentaries are out to push an agenda, are not that well produced and slide towards low production values and partisanship.
When documentaries are well produced they are like books. They enhance your understanding of a subject and by the end of the film or episode you come away having learned something.
The categories so far are Science, History, Technology, Nature, Society, Lifestyle and 360 videos. In the 360 videos I noticed that there is the ZDF documentary about volcanoes. This was one of the most impressive and effective uses of 360 video I have seen.
You can browse through these categories and find films on specific topics and watch them then and there or you can browse through and add these documentaries to a watch list. This is useful when watching series.
A sample watchlist.
When you find documentaries that are especially interesting you can share them straight from curiositystream to Facebook and Twitter.
Curiositystream is quick to respond to tweets. If you have comments or feedback there is a high probability that they will be seen.
When Gordon Buchanan was following bears in the United States we watched the resulting documentaries on television. We have seen him a number of times in episodes of countryfile as well. Now he is working on getting footage of wolves in the wild. For this project he is staying out in the wild and following a pack of wolves day after day for weeks. As part of this project he is filming with a broadcast camera and gopro cameras which he fixed on to a “rock crawler”. The Rock crawler is a remote control car with the body removed.
The BBC were working on a documentary about polar bears and for certain shots they created a den for filming purposes. It helped to tell the story but people felt that the purity of that documentary had been tainted. This genre of documentary aims to tell a genuine story with no reconstruction or trickery. Everything has to be genuine.
As we see from the footage above Gordon Buchanan was able to get the camera right up to the den and film the wolf cubs from the mouth of the den. This technology is great for story telling because it provides the camera operator with greater flexibility. He is able to get the camera to where he wants it to be without going there in person. In theory animal behaviour is genuine.
With this technology a greater variety of shots can be achieved, from flying with specific birds to traveling under water with penguins and lounging in a pool with tigers. In essence spy creature cameras allow wildlife filmmakers to get genuine animal interactions without relying on luck. They can make their own luck and the natural history documentary genre benefits.
If you have one and a half hours of free time I recommend watching this documentary. It discusses the anti-whaling work by the Sea Shepherd, the work it did to combat long lining around the Galapagos and it touches on the shark finning mafia and corruption.
The documentary also looks at the public perception of sharks. It shows that they are not the dangerous animal that they were thought to be until recent history. The film ends with a shot of the narrator free-diving with sharks and being perfectly relaxed. At one point he says “sharks are so sensitive that they can feel your heart beat, if you are calm they will stay but if you panic they will flee”. I paraphrased his exact words.
Another theme that is explored in this documentary is the food chain. He mentions that plankton absorb a lot of Carbon dioxide and that with the overfishing of sharks the ecological balance will be ruined as the apex predators are lost. He pushes strongly for the conservation of shark numbers. We are familiar with the current Save our Sharks movement.
This is an interesting investigative documentary about the economy surrounding shark finning and why it has a negative impact on the food chain. If the documentary was updated it could look at the economic viability of shark tourism that has grown in recent years. Sharks, in some places are more valuable alive than dead. If you don’t have time to watch the entire documentary then I recommend that you watch the last thirty to fourty minutes.
The documentary is split in to volumes and each volume is divided in to sections. At the beginning of each section you have footage showing the diversity of landscapes in which people live as well as the people themselves. You see images of a caravan on a dune, images of a river delta, a fishing boat being unloaded.
People are answering questions about love, abuse, work and more. You feel compassion for these people because they stare straight in to the camera and they are speaking to us, who are in the audience. We feel compassion for these people, we are moved to laughter by some and to tears by others. There are some beautiful images created by what the people say.
One person speaks about buying things. He says that we don’t buy things with money but that we buy them with time. That is a beautiful and more accurate image than we are used to. I love gadgets and sports so I often think of how long an investment will take to offset. I used to think “in a week” I will have covered the expense.
Another image painted by words that I like is that of wealth and comfort. When you are poor the river is empty and so every stone is a challenge. With wealth you do not need to worry about the stones because the river is full.
It brings us to the “All Seeing Eye” that Vertov discussed at the very birth of the documentary genre. His ideal was to have cameras that would film and document “life unawares” as they went about their daily lives. In so doing the cinema was an observer, without interacting. Of course these are just interviews so there is some interaction between the camera operator and the talent on screen. They are meant to speak from the heart, without censor. They were meant to give us an honest representation of who they are and how they feel. It gives us a serious glimpse in to the lives of others.
it makes me think of the interviews I have listened to, of the stories I have heard told when I was logging and transcribing footage for a video archive. Some of the things people speak about are timeless and others are contemporary. With this documentary record of people’s thoughts and emotions so a moment in time is preserved. I have yet to watch the next volumes and will do so in the evenings. I recommend you take the time to watch at least part of these documentaries.
Recently Netflix Switzerland made Mythbusters available on their service. As I watched episode after episode I noticed the camaraderie between those who participate in the show. We see that Adam and Jamie occasionally argue but that overall they are having a lot of fun. We see them laugh, joke, tease each other, and collaborate.
Their show is a science show where fun myths are challenged. They have two goals with each myth, establish whether it is confirmed, plausible, or busted. They then scale up and reproduce the results.
The first two seasons are short and low budget using prosumer cameras and we notice the difference between camera image quality from shot to shot. The first “season” as it is called on Netflix Switzerland must be the pilot episodes.
Information is taken from the Wikipedia page
The first episodes of the season are great because their editing style is good. Every minute of the program covers something new. In later seasons, at least for the broadcast versions and those shared via youtube advertising provisions ruined the watchability of the show. I am speaking of the lead in each segment and the lead out.
Netflix is paid for directly by the customer and there are no ad breaks. As a result of this, I would re-edit content for the 50-minute duration rather than broadcast the TV edit. It allows for the producers of the show to provide more content and information to their audiences.
Netflix content should be reformatted for a longer viewing duration. It should take advantage that there are no commercial breaks to get content to flow without fade to blacks and without repetitions. It should also take in to account binge viewing.
Documentaries will benefit from services such as Netflix and Video on Demand. They will benefit because they can edit content to be seen without commercials and without the constant need for repetition. As a result, rather than have 40 minutes of content and 10 minutes of repetition documentaries will have 50 minutes of content for the viewer.
Two stories or more are usually explored per episode and in the earlier episodes, you have cut from one story to the next no more than two times. As they produce more episodes so the editing goes from Story A to B to A to C to A to B to A again and then to C. This flip-flopping between experiments results in the editor having to summarise what happened before and what they want as a result frequently. This repetition is optimal if people watch just five minutes of a program but ruins the viewing experience for those watching an entire episode. Let’s see if they resolve this issue for Netflix.
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