Is GoPro VR the future?

7

70Deep

Active member
I have been following videos using the 360 kit holders for 7 and 10 go pros. The footage is quite fun to watch and will definitely dominate the real estate listings market. The music videos shot on them seem really cool too, but given the fact lighting equiptment is needed for big budget shoots and movies, does anyone think they will slowly trickle into the short and one day feature film market?

I feel the lack of ability to control where the viewers are looking dejects from the whole process. What do you guys think? Are those files incredibly hard on a computer to process? Is there even color grading? So many questions so little knowledge. Thanks for the read.

These go pro rigs, gimmick or here to stay?
 
Given the lack of true synchronization between GoPro cameras do you find yourself getting a headache watching them for any time? I think they need to come out with their own fully synched all-in-one unit sort of like that Nokia camera. They had the chance to lead on this and kind of blew it doing the multi cam thing. Maybe they are thinking it's gong to be a flash in the pan like the last 3D fad.
 
I'm sure it's a different mindset and set of logistics issues. Consider the lighting that you mentioned. Seems difficult to light a set for VR when you can see everything around you. Action seems to best be observed from a stationary camera since there seems to be a risk of making viewers sick if the camera is moving.
 
J Michael said:
I'm sure it's a different mindset and set of logistics issues. Consider the lighting that you mentioned. Seems difficult to light a set for VR when you can see everything around you. Action seems to best be observed from a stationary camera since there seems to be a risk of making viewers sick if the camera is moving.
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Agreed. The videos are cool during the day and if you can get past the nothing being truly sharp ever factor they are entertaining. How often I would want to hold my phone up in the air and spin it around for back to back videos I cant say.

Since gopros stock dropped like an anvil if they got acquired by Facebook and they tasked their teams to make a proprietary software and have it compatible with the rift they might have something nice.
 
Thanks for the article. Definitely a good read as i hadn't even heard of the that expensive NoKia monstrosity.

Still, with the business moves and partnerships gopro has made with major players I feel they will likely prevail and stay relevant. One could easily assemble a fully h4 black kit with 10 cams for under 5k after all the batteries cage and accessories and what not are bought. A reasonable investment to get in on the ground floor of the obviously emerging vr headset market with constant content imo. Theres even a gopro vr rig for sale in the market place right now making me consider a purchase lol.
 
The best thing I learned from that article...

"A $90 billion market opportunity
Tech M&A advisory firm Digi-Capital estimates that the VR market will grow from nearly nothing today to $30 billion by 2020, with much of that growth to be driven by sales of VR headsets like Facebook's Oculus Rift and related games, films, and experiences. If sales of VR headsets pick up, demand for 360-degree videos could rise and persuade content creators to buy VR cameras like the Ozo or Omni."

I think VR could be huge, I am shooting my first two VR projects, one next week and one at the end of the month. We are renting the Go Pro 6 camera rig (not Go Pro's as it's not yet shipping) and a Go Pro 10 camera rig at the end of the month. The Ozo only does 2k 30p, which is a big limitation when the market really wants/needs 4k/60p minimum. We will be shooting 1440 60p on both of these projects, I will report back how it looks once stitched and edited. The other factor, as usual for our industry, is that most VR content creators and camera oriented people have been ignoring the most important part of VR, directional sound that tracks with the view. We are renting a really expensive binaural audio recording setup but what is really needed is an Ambisonic mic hooked up to a 6-7 channel mixer recorder to record the material necessary for minimum 5.1 surround. Forget camera mics with VR rigs, they are all low quality with auto level recording. The upcoming www.sphericam.com offers the best value at only $2,500.00 for a VR camera that can shoot 4k 60p and can auto stitch up to 30p! Hopefully it will ship this Summer. For less than $2,500.00, it already far outspecs the Ozo which costs $60k. Just like with regular cameras, VR tech is changing so fast that it is impossible to keep up. But I would not even consider buying any VR camera that costs over a few thousand dollars unless you are doing narrative high end VR and then you would rent a multi camera RED VR system. Brave new world indeed.
 
At this point it's starting to look like the early WWW days with a lot of VC money looking for a place to land.
 
Gotta love to see it becoming more affordable like this though. We're soon going to see an influx of videos from vr users the same way we saw the rise of drone content.

Should be interesting to see how the medium evolves right before our very eyes.
 
So far, I have yet to see a VR piece, other than the Google Stories (Help) project that totally needed to be on VR. I am mostly seeing pieces that would work better as a traditional flat piece with the DP and director showing you what you want/need to see. The only way VR make sense is if there is a LOT to see in 360 degrees and through subtle cues, largely through audio and changing lighting, you "strongly suggest" where the viewer should look at any given moment. Or you create a landscape that is so rich in visual information that no matter where you look, there is something interesting to see. So far, I am not seeing projects that have either of these parameters, although the Google Stories Help piece comes close. I think it's a good thing to leave the viewer wanting more by giving them too much to see or such a rich scene that they want to experience it multiple times. So a question is, why isn't someone with a ton of money like Google partnering with some of the best visual storytellers like Cirque Du Soleil to really exploit the medium? I am a huge Cirque fan, everything they do is to a high level of excellence, their storytelling is as good as Pixar, but in a different medium and their performances and storytelling, especially when enhanced with green screen and compositing, could be mind blowing. So instead of teaming up with the director of Fast & Furious to make yet another tired monsters from outer space project, why is nobody teaming up with Pixar or Cirque, the real experts in incredible visual storytelling?

We are toying with the idea of integrating floating 2D elements like a window that could pop up so you could see soundbites and short interview clips within a given VR piece. This idea could increase the value of the content, especially for branded and marketing application. I have seen a few pieces with VR interviews and it's stupid, you are never looking where the person is standing/sitting when they begin talking and because it's VR, there is no b-roll or cutaways. If the viewer can control when and if they want to see a 2D window with a talking head and or b-roll in it, that is still interactive and more focused on enhancing the VR experience. We are thinking that the ability for the viewer to superimpose a 2D window that can pop up or disappear simply by them activating a "control" of some kind could be a perfect blend of passive viewing and totally interactive. I also think that VR designers need to take a cue from video games, especially like Myst, where the viewer is free explore fantastical visuals with killer sound design. The technology is almost there but it's going to take some different thinking to make it succeed as a medium. So far, VR is a gimmick to me and not a very good one, but I think it could be, given some vision and better execution of stronger contextual concepts.
 
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