Research Guides (LibGuides): Digital Storytelling: What's New?

What is immersive storytelling?

A technique that aims to give the audience the feeling of being present within the story. Through utilizing 3D elements, this type of media is making waves in the fields of education, theater, documentaries, advertising and journalism.

Recommended 360 Cameras

Instax 360 One X Leading image quality - 5. 7K resolution makes your 360 Degree videos look sharp, while 18MP shots make for stunning photo quality. Turn on 50Fps mode to make your video buttery smooth. Flow state stabilization - flow state is as smooth as it gets. Traditional Action cameras are left shaking. Drift shots - snap into the drifter accessory and let your camera take flight. Airborne slow-mo. From a camera that shoots in every direction at once. You've never seen angles like this before. Wi-fi preview and transfer - Shoot and transfer in a snap. 50MB/s Cable transfer and 5 GHz high-speed Wi-Fi transfer. Time shift - Highlight key moments with cinematic slow-mo., or speed things up with a stabilized Hyper lapse. All in the app. Compatible devices: iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPhone X, iPhone8/8 plus, iPhone 7/7 plus, iPhone 6s/6s plus, iPhone SE iPad Pro, iPad (2018), HUAWEI: P20 Pro/P10/P9/Mate 9/Mate 10/Honor 9, Samsung: S9/Note 8/S8/S7/S7 Edge, XIAOMI: Mix/Mix2/Note3/6/8, OnePlus: 5t, Google：Pixel/Pixel 2, Vivo: X9Plus L, OPPO: R11
Ricoh Theta V
GoPro Fusion
Samsung Gear 360
Nikon KeyMission 360
Kodak PixPro Orbit 360

Tips for Immersive Storytelling

5 Lessons for Creating Good Immersive Storytelling

According to Kat Duncan's 2018 article, "5 Lessons for Creating Good Immersive Storytelling," there are five key things to keep in mind while creating an immersive narrative story with a 350 camera.

1. The Viewer Sees Everything. 360 videos differ greatly from flat video. In flat video, the editor controls what is in the frame and directs the viewer to what they want them to see. In 360 video, on the other hand, the viewer has the ability to control where they are looking within the frame. A viewer can then miss the action you included in a shot because they were looking somewhere else.

2. You Have to Either Be in the Frame or Be Able to Control Your Camera from a Remote Location. Because a 360 camera indeed rotates to include everything within 360 degrees, you will inevitably be included in the video if you are attempting to control the camera in person. You must be aware of this when considering how you want to shoot your video.

3. Give the Viewer Time to Explore. Because you want the viewer to be able to experience the immersive content, your b-roll pieces will likely be longer than they would be in flat video. This changes not only the pace of the story, but also how you would edit it.

4. Your Camera is a Person. Because the viewer sees through the lens of the camera, you should make sure the camera is set to be the height of an average person. Having the camera placed too high up or on the ground makes the story harder to consume for the viewer because you are skewing the perspective.

5. Lower Your Expectations. Though most users of the 360 camera will be used to the crystal-clear frames of a quality video shoot with a flat camera, the 360 camera technology is not yet advanced enough to have such clear images. Rather than being frustrated with this phenomenon, lower your expectations before shooting and know the capability of your tools.

Examples of Immersive Storytelling

360 Google Spotlight Stories: Special Delivery (2015) It was made as part of Google’s Spotlight series and launched for Christmas 2015. The viewer uses their phone to explore a 360° environment in which an animated pig (oh, so Aardman) sets out to catch Santa delivering presents in his apartment block. As ever with immersive experiences like this, it’s the subplots that make it feel like a living organism – you could, if you choose to, spend all your time looking at the complete opposite side of the apartment block to the pig and Santa and still enjoy every minute. This is a great example of the tech industry calling on the media industry to showcase a product – could a brilliantly crafted immersive story be the ultimate product demo for your new device or platform?
Essayan Refugee Camp (2015) This brilliant idea immediately gives a new role for virtual reality in our society – as a force for good. In 2015, the UN partnered with Unicef Jordan, Samsung and Vrse.works to create a virtual reality experience that would transport the world’s top decision makers to a Syrian refugee camp, so that they could experience the situation first hand. Their goal, in their own brilliant words, was to “connect donors with Syrians affected by the war and inspire world leaders to make bold commitments”. Bingo. In the not too distant future can we expect TV and film documentaries to be experienced in a similar way? Surely this revolutionises the concept of charity advertising?
Her Story (2015) Her Story is a cross between the TV detective series Luther and Jonathan Creek, and action game Lara Croft, without all the tomb raiding. It’s technically classified as an interactive movie, a genre that’s been around since the invention of laserdiscs in the late 1960s, which enabled instantaneous jumping between different film chapters and meant that makers could develop all kinds of non-linear ways of watching film footage. Thus, a gaming mechanic was born.
Victoria (2015) This might be the least technically immersive of all the examples, but it is incredibly immersive in its effect. On the face of it, Victoria is a film about a girl who meets a group of guys on a night out which ends in a bank robbery (no spoilers, it’s all in the trailer). The immersive trick, however, is that the film was shot on one night in Berlin and in one take. There are no scene cuts, no camera swaps, no going again on lines. You watch the group build up a relationship, grow closer, you see natural conversation (it’s broadly scripted but mostly ad-libbed) and really powerfully, you see time pass at a real-time rate (it’s pitch black in the first half and suddenly in the harsh light of day by the end).

Virtual Reality and Immersive Storytelling

This video from the University of Texas's Moody College of Communication depicts how 3D technology and virtual reality have been utilized in their institution for storytelling.

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Digital Storytelling: What's New?