youngindiefilms
Well-known member
I would like to share my first 360 VR short film "Yeren - 野人" with you guys.
https://youtu.be/zPzpeZcB_UI
It is a experimental horror short based on a Chinese folk tale that we made as a test.
Rather than shooting random stuff or all those horror VR experiences where there is no real story told I decided to write a simple script, something that we could shoot in one day or less.
We decided to make this literally three days before Halloween last year, with the aim to release it on Halloween.
Go figure, it didn't happen. I shot it on the Insta 360 One X which was still pretty new at that time. The audio from the camera might be ok for b-roll but not for a narrative and Hong Kong is one of the noisiest cities in the world. A nearby construction site made all the dialogue unusable. We had no means to get a location sound person on short notice so in the end we decided to do some ADR and release it much later.
I have been exploring VR since Occulus Dev kit 1 and finally got the chance to make some content for it. I love VR as it can really draw you in the story and I think it's the future of entertainment. Can't wait to do another, better VR film.
It was a steep learning curve as you can't shoot as you would shoot a traditional film. The biggest problem of shooting 360 is obvious, you have to hide all crew and basically everything that's not supposed to be in the film. This was challenging at times but worked out ok for a small scale production like this.
A much bigger problem is "monitoring" your footage. Once you hit record the Insta 360 One X (and others in this class) give you a very low res. (think Commodore 64 blocky graphics lol) preview. Not very good. If you were to do a intricate film with set design and lots of props, you may miss stuff because the resolution is not high enough.
The second problem is audio monitoring, as in, there is none! I had to hide approximately 10 meters from the actors, so I could barely or not hear at all what they were saying. We didn't have a lot of rehearsal time but it worked out after a few takes. We got most of the scenes done within 2 to 4 takes. Only the "picnic" location took what should have been like 6 or 7 takes as there were hikers and other people walking their dog through our shot. Another downside shooting 360.
Aside from some quirks and bugs in Premiere Pro, post production went smoothly. My friend and composer Gary Gibbons did a great job on the original music and sound design. Linda Tse did an amazing make up job, unfortunately it doesn't come out that nicely on camera. Needless to say, these things have to planned and tested beforehand, so if this was a paid gig where you have the luxury to do so it would be a no brainer.
If you guys would like to know more about VR filming and the making of this film let me know. I'm happy to answer questions.
https://youtu.be/zPzpeZcB_UI
It is a experimental horror short based on a Chinese folk tale that we made as a test.
Rather than shooting random stuff or all those horror VR experiences where there is no real story told I decided to write a simple script, something that we could shoot in one day or less.
We decided to make this literally three days before Halloween last year, with the aim to release it on Halloween.
Go figure, it didn't happen. I shot it on the Insta 360 One X which was still pretty new at that time. The audio from the camera might be ok for b-roll but not for a narrative and Hong Kong is one of the noisiest cities in the world. A nearby construction site made all the dialogue unusable. We had no means to get a location sound person on short notice so in the end we decided to do some ADR and release it much later.
I have been exploring VR since Occulus Dev kit 1 and finally got the chance to make some content for it. I love VR as it can really draw you in the story and I think it's the future of entertainment. Can't wait to do another, better VR film.
It was a steep learning curve as you can't shoot as you would shoot a traditional film. The biggest problem of shooting 360 is obvious, you have to hide all crew and basically everything that's not supposed to be in the film. This was challenging at times but worked out ok for a small scale production like this.
A much bigger problem is "monitoring" your footage. Once you hit record the Insta 360 One X (and others in this class) give you a very low res. (think Commodore 64 blocky graphics lol) preview. Not very good. If you were to do a intricate film with set design and lots of props, you may miss stuff because the resolution is not high enough.
The second problem is audio monitoring, as in, there is none! I had to hide approximately 10 meters from the actors, so I could barely or not hear at all what they were saying. We didn't have a lot of rehearsal time but it worked out after a few takes. We got most of the scenes done within 2 to 4 takes. Only the "picnic" location took what should have been like 6 or 7 takes as there were hikers and other people walking their dog through our shot. Another downside shooting 360.
Aside from some quirks and bugs in Premiere Pro, post production went smoothly. My friend and composer Gary Gibbons did a great job on the original music and sound design. Linda Tse did an amazing make up job, unfortunately it doesn't come out that nicely on camera. Needless to say, these things have to planned and tested beforehand, so if this was a paid gig where you have the luxury to do so it would be a no brainer.
If you guys would like to know more about VR filming and the making of this film let me know. I'm happy to answer questions.
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