Being There: Why Virtual Reality is Catching On

Anyone who has been to their share of weddings has probably witnessed a few of those zany moments that go down in family histories, like the one Sam Chung and Austin Hitchcock caught recently: “The bride, instead of throwing a bouquet, threw a napkin,” recounts Chung. “Someone came running from out of nowhere to try and grab it and almost wiped out right in front of everyone.”

If you were shooting that wedding and you were on your game, you might get the dash across the floor, the bride cracking up or a cluster of guests with surprised expressions. Hitchcock and Chung—they got it all. Shooting with a 360-degree virtual reality (VR) video rig, they captured every player in the scene, and the audience, too. Anyone with a pair of VR goggles or even a smartphone can be instantly transported into the middle of the event they shot to relive its slapstick hilarity again and again.

Central Perspective
Because VR capture systems cover 360 degrees, they give viewers a perspective from the center of the shot, with the ability to swivel around and see the surroundings in any direction. When you’re wearing VR goggles, simply turning your head changes your view. With a smartphone or tablet, viewing VR video is like having a live camera view on your screen: The scene changes as you move the device.

The Trailblazers
For anyone in the business of preserving family memories, the usefulness of VR video for capturing weddings should be obvious. And with a raft of new VR products and services in the pipeline, 2016 promises to be the year when this cutting-edge technology goes mainstream. We talked with a few of the trailblazers who have already started shooting VR wedding videos: Chung and Hitchcock, who head up the Toronto-based team Idoido Weddings, and L.A.-based Janae Tyars of Tyars Media, who has a new VR-centered venture, 360ography.

Package Possibilities
Tyars put herself ahead of the curve early this year by starting to integrate 360 capture into the traditional wedding videography services she offers her clients. She began the process shooting with Ricoh’s Theta S VR camera and offering 360 videos to her clients as a free add-on to her regular wedding videography packages, while building awareness about the technology and fine-tuning her workflow. Starting with the consumer-priced Theta S has allowed her to get the ball rolling with a low-cost investment and scale her equipment up as the market grows. “As the demand increases, we’ll upgrade,” says Tyars, whose plans include a multi-camera GoPro rig from 360Heros that would permit higher-resolution capture and a multidirectional mic that would allow the soundscape to shift along with the view during playback. She expects her VR-only packages to be as profitable as her traditional video offerings once consumer demand hits its stride.

Chung and Hitchcock, who have been shooting VR video for over a year and a half, currently use a 360Heros rig with seven GoPro cameras mounted on it. Like Tyars, they capture sound on a separate stereo recorder. “We’ll have a lav mic on a few individuals at the wedding and we’ll also have another mic that picks up the room,“ Hitchcock explains. “I’ll mix that in with the audio that I get from the GoPros, just to get a mix so that nothing gets lost.”

Whether with a dedicated VR camera like the Theta S or with a multi-camera rig, the setup for VR video capture is fairly simple. The videographers position the capture device on a tripod or stand near the couple (but not so near that it interferes with other image capture) and control cameras via a smartphone app. While shooting with a VR camera eliminates the need for handheld camera work, camera placement does require some care. “You don’t want to have your footage at waist level when you’ve got people in skirts and dresses,” says Tyars. “And you don’t want to have it too high, because then you’re looking at the top of people’s heads.”

Tyars began the process shooting with the Theta S and offering 360 videos to her clients as a free add-on to her regular wedding videography packages. Photo © Tyars Media.

Lighting Lowdown
VR shooting requires skill with using available light, since there’s nowhere to place a video light outside of the shot. And as Hitchcock points out, “lighting is very important when it comes to shooting with these small cameras. They have a smaller dynamic range than traditional cameras.” He and Chung scout locations in advance to make sure there will be adequate available light and determine the optimal camera placement. “I’ll set the cameras up in a particular way so that they’re able to accommodate the contrast in lighting, especially when you have the sun coming through a window into a darker church.”

Tyars sometimes uses a video light on her regular video camera during receptions, but takes care to avoid creating flare in the VR footage by pointing her light at the VR camera. “When you watch the 360 video, you might see me in the background with my light and camera,“ she says, “but that just makes the viewer feel like they’re really there.”

Smoother Workflow
For a videographer who is already skilled at editing, VR post-production isn’t much of leap. But the time requirements and complexity of the work depend on the gear used for capture. Single-camera setups like the Theta S offer the most efficient approach. “It’s pretty similar to my regular post-production process,” says Tyars, who works in Adobe Premiere to create finished pieces that incorporate the video, 360-degree stills and sound in a music video style. “The only trick with the editing is that you really have to keep in mind the user experience,” she says. “You can’t cut the way that you would normally cut a music video. It leaves the user feeling like they’re time-warping. When you’ve got your VR goggles and you skip from the ceremony to the reception site, it’s jarring. You have to kind of fade in and out really slowly.”

Using a multi-camera rig requires more work in post, because footage from the cameras has to be synced, stitched together and adjusted to eliminate parallax. Hitchcock uses software from Kolor to accomplish the initial piecing together of the footage, then finishes editing in Premiere before exporting finished videos. An increasing number of websites, apps and browsers support VR video, allowing it to be shared with anyone who has a computer or mobile device.

Looking Toward the Future
One of the great promises of VR video for wedding shooters lies not in the cool playback features but in live streaming that allows viewers to virtually attend the event. Neither Tyars nor the Idoido Weddings team have been hired to stream a wedding live yet. They point out that the ability to do so is contingent upon the availability of reliable, high-bandwidth Wi-Fi and would require constant monitoring to prevent any glitches. But while that would raise production costs and impose limitations on the location, they expect to start offering the service as soon as consumer awareness of VR video picks up.

“It’s not on their radar right now,” says Chung. “People aren’t thinking, oh my God! I need to find a 360 videographer for my wedding!” But already the tastemakers of the wedding industry have begun to be more aware of the technology and drive demand. “The wedding planners and photographers I’ve shown it to really feel they can sell it to their clients,” Tyars notes. And the clients whose weddings she has produced VR pieces for? “They absolutely love it,” she says. “It has its limitations now, but I do think it’s the technology for the future.”

Aimee Baldridge is a content developer, author and editor specializing in imaging and technology. Based in New York, she has previously worked for Pop Photo College Edition, CNET Networks and Ziff Davis Media.

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