When a crew at The Verge had the opportunity in 2016 to interview then first lady Michelle Obama in 360 video, they faced the challenges of being in the White House — which is impressive — but looking at an empty meeting room for the interview.
Because The Verge is a technology news website operated by Vox media, their crew was also tech-savvy. They had access to an elite VR camera that cost $4,500 a day just to rent. Most importantly, they had a team experienced in motion graphics and history to enhance interview stories.
This was the group’s first 360 video, and it was part of a larger reporting package “@MichelleObama: An exclusive look at how the First Lady mastered social media.” Online, the presentation included photos from a stylish fashion shoot with Obama and a 3,000-word story focused on her success with social media, especially on the Vine video platform that shut down less than a year after this story was posted.
The interview was conducted in the White House. The seating was a standard set up with the interviewer on one side and across from Obama and a member of her team. The Verge team knew that it wouldn’t take long for the scene to become boring, so most of their work was in post-production, creating sophisticated graphics that supplemented and at times replaced the 360 video. In a story on The Verge site after the project was published, the crew said the goal was for the illustrations to grow the interview and move it forward.
The illustrations are more than overlayed text. Graphics are in continuous motion, directing the viewers’ gaze. Some of the illustrations act as visual explainers. The person who made the graphics said some of them had more than 100 layers in the After Effects file.
The graphics come early and often in the 10-minute video. The opening scene starts with traditional text overlays. But 10 seconds in, a blue, semi-transparent screen covers the fashion shoot video, moving it into a ghosted background. In the video, the interview is seen without graphics for about 49 percent of the time, with the longest clip about 20 seconds long.
Sometimes, the graphics are simple. The designers created a circle that would pop up with a tight video of Obama’s face as she answered questions. This effect presented a close-up, which is not workable in 360 video. A traditional camera with a telephoto lens, positioned at a distance, captured that video. Other graphics emphasized the social media message by showing a graphic of a smartphone displaying another camera angle of the interview.
For much of the video, the interview is in-focus video, but at times, the blue screen returns as an overlay. At other times, the 360 interview video is blurred to bring more emphasis to the graphics. The graphics software’s limitations as it worked with the stitched 360 video meant the whole scene couldn’t be blurred. Because of this, a portion of the “behind” part of the room isn’t blurred during these sections. Most viewers would be looking at the interview, so few would ever see this.
The Verge had produced a series of linear videos with Bill Gates in the years before the Obama interview. Those videos used interviews with Gates as the narration, and the video of him speaking was shown briefly and as part of motion graphics. This style resembled the graphic style of some print infographics, with the addition of continuous motion. It was a look that helped inform the work for the Obama video.
In the Obama 360 video, the graphics help direct viewers and keep the story moving forward. The “being there” aspect, however, is minimal. A less-than-interesting room hampers the scene. The camera position also didn’t change. The Jaunt VR camera used is large and extremely expensive, so multiple cameras probably wasn’t an option. Smaller and cheaper 360 video cameras would be a couple of years away.
With those limitations—and the fact that this was the team’s first VR project—the graphics’ heavy use was effective. Because The Verge is a technology news website, it has posted numerous 360 videos since the Obama project, but they are examples from outside creators. There’s no evidence of a follow-up 360 video from The Verge team.
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