Studio Brief 1 - D&AD Crimewatch - 360º Footage

The reason for 360º footage?

The reason for the 360º footage is to allow the user to scan the crime scene themselves, to give them a tool in which they can feel in control of the outcome. A tangible feeling that they can really solve a physical case. It's more then just watching Crimewatch on the screen, now they can interact, see every little detail with no clue gone un-noticed. When people see a crime in real life they often feel powerless, scared and often not confident enough to step in. The 360º feature overcomes that. It cuts out the physical contact now the user can control the crime within their comfortable surrounding without being threatened or scared by the surrounding of a crime. Also the user being as valuable to Crimewatch from their homes then being a witness to the crime.

The process

Out off everything I had to film and create the 360º footage was the most complex in terms of making the footage look like it was filmed and controlled like the real thing. Going into the process 360 I knew that I couldn't actual film the crime scene with an actual 360 camera as they aren't regularly available in the university and in general due to the technology being relatively new in the tech industry.

I came up with different solutions to how I could fake a 360 experience. They all would essentially work but they wouldn't be a moving image and only would work as stills. There was no way to actually film the footage and move it around in all 360º in real time. Therefore, I have to fake it to make it seem like the user was actually moving around the crime scene in real but in actual fact the footage was pre-recorded.

My idea for the solution was to film the scene and move the camera in directions to act as if the user was moving it with their fingers. For example filming the crime scene and suddenly turning the camera in a quick manner to represent the user swiping their finger in that direction. It's hard to explain but in the video that I shot below you will be able to understand how I went about filming the 360 footage.




So with the pre-recorded footage filmed all I had to do was to learn the camera movements and guess when the camera was going to suddenly move. Once learning the movements then It would look like the user was actually interacting with a 360º video. The video below will showcase the final outcome of the 360º feature of me faking it.