Jumping into Slow-motion 360-filmmaking

Please email loco@locomotion.co.uk, call us on +44 20 7304 4403, or visit our website locomotion.co.uk.
There is a special joy in witnessing a 360-film newbie spinning around with mobile phone in hand, delighting in the magical experience of the video content that surrounds them.
Loco is riding this wave of 360-video excitement by exploring emerging technologies and software as well as developing new techniques to take our creative work further into this realm. Our latest 360-film is a homage to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with the added twist of slow-motion content.
On our previous foray into 360-filmmaking, we went with GoPro. Making a name for themselves as the go-to camera brand for first person point-of-view adventure videos, GoPro have seized the commercial initiative in the 360-filmmaking arena through their release of the Omni camera and their acquisition and development of the VR editing software, Kolor. This enables filmmakers to shoot one 8K resolution, 360-film in which every shot syncs to the same frame, and each shot can be viewed and edited as a single shot rather than the compiled rushes of 6 individual cameras.
But, the GoPro Omni does not capture the high-speed frame rates needed to create in-camera slow-motion effects, a key factor for our creative brief. On our previous high-speed shoots, such as our commercials for Carlsberg, we got incredible results from the Phantom camera. It films at insanely-high frame rates, but it would also be insanely expensive to hire 6 cameras let alone the align them all to capture the full 360 degrees. Fortunately, we had already discovered with our Homeless at Christmas 360-film, that you don’t need to shoot in 360 degrees to make an effective 360-film. We could create the fully immersive effect by stitching together two 180-degree films. We just needed to find a lens which would fulfill the complete brief.
To continue our kit search, we consulted with Movietech, one of the UK’s largest and most experienced camera rental companies. They recommended that we work with Arri to conduct our lens tests. Arri suggested we pair their Alexa with the Nikon 6mm fisheye lens. Nicknamed the sack-getter because it would be so expensive to replace, the lens gives a 220º field of vision which is the same as the Samsung Gear VR headset. We could easily shoot two 180º films and stich them together to make 360º.
Initial tests with the Alexa were promising, but unfortunately, the lens aberrations from the 6mm fisheye were too distorted. Arri recommended an 8mm fisheye lens, but the trade-off would be having to film four 90-degree plates. That would mean more stitching in post-production, but we felt the results would be worth the extra time and effort. Ultimately, it was Love High Speed, the UK’s largest slow-motion camera supplier who (generously) provided their Phantom camera, the 8mm fisheye lens as well as their time and goodwill to enable us to complete the shoot.
Having successfully shot the four component 90º plates, we needed to stitch them and render out an equirectanglar image, the standard projection used in 360-video and required formatting for social media distribution and smartphone video apps. So, we contacted software experts Assimilate Scratch. We had heard that they had recently added VR capabilities to their grading system. From the get-go, Assimilate Scratch were instrumental in our post production process, giving us full access to their beta software and donating hours of technical support which included creating the stitch template, turning the four, individual fish-eye shots into one 360-degree image.
We used After Effects to composite the four individual films, layering the real-time footage over the slow motion. These individual elements were then pushed through Scratch, making full use of Scratch’s ability to animate stitching frames. Our colourist was then able to grade the full piece. The final step was to use Premiere 2017 to export an H265, the new, younger sibling of the H264 codec. The processing times were incredibly long, but the resulting file was half the size of an H264 and much sharper.
The challenge of creating a 360º content film which featured in-camera slow motion effects provided us with all the lessons of a masterclass including how to manage quadrupled amounts of footage, exponentially larger file sizes, longer renders, trickier glitches and beta-stage software. It hammered home the lesson that you can’t “shoot the sh*t” out of a subject and hope to “fix it in post” because in the land of 360-filmmaking, the amount of data quickly becomes unmanageable. As ever, a well-planned and boarded creative treatment with a decisive and disciplined shoot makes it far more likely that you’ll have an enjoyable post process, remain friends with your co-creators, and deliver what was agreed in the first place.
Director/Editor: Dave Waldman
Music: Get Up by Ryan Little