Less than a minute into the 360 video “Yemen’s Skies of Terror,” the viewer is being led on a walk through the streets of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. The guide is a boy named Akram, and in the immersive environment, one feels as if they are walking side-by-side with him. Throughout the almost six-minute video, Akram and other young people tell their stories of a country that has been the target of thousands of airstrikes since 2015. An estimated 230,000 people have been killed.
AJ Contrast created the interactive video from footage and interviews captured by freelance photojournalists. The narrative gives the viewer a sense of what it is like to live in a city under constant attack. The innovative video was named the 2018 Excellence Immersive Storytelling in the Online Journalism Awards presented by the Online News Association.
It is also an example of audio interviews used as voice-overs to narrate. Throughout the video, it is the voices of the young people who tell the story.
To accomplish this, the team at AJ Contrast needed to be intentional and have a solid plan. The media lab is of Al Jazeera, an Arabic news agency based in Qatar and funded by its government.
Joi Lee, one of the producers on "Yemen’s Skies of Terror," said that in planning the project, their team knew interviews would be important and that they would connect with the visuals from the destroyed neighborhoods.
“It’s not just your interviews or the news story that you’re covering, but the location itself becomes a character in the story,” Lee said.
AJ Contrast chooses to avoid narrator voice-overs as their default, Lee said. And their journalists are never seen in the videos. The goal is to have character-driven stories and to highlight the people in the videos. It’s important to hear the voices of those people in something longer than a quick sound bite. A narrator from outside the scene is especially disruptive in immersive 360 video, where the viewer is more engaged with the setting. The voice of an unknown, unseen narrator can break that experience.
As we look at the interviews in “Yemen’s Skies of Terror,” there are points that are essential to creating interviews in interactive 360 videos that will help viewers follow the story:
· Have a consistent visual and editing formula for presenting each person interviewed.
· Think of locations as characters.
· Voice-overs reinforced with subtitles can carry the narration.
THE INTERVIEWS
For “Yemen’s Skies of Terror,” AJ Contrast hired photojournalists in Yemen. The freelancers knew the story well, had strong contacts and it was safer for them than for outsiders. They conducted the interviews and captured the video. The AJ Contrast staff trained them on the 360 video cameras through remote video sessions and had the user guides for the cameras translated into Arabic.
The journalists conducted preliminary interviews with audio-only. In some projects, the team will later re-record portions of the interview using video. But that was not needed for this story. Also, these interviews were in Arabic and English voice-over translations for videos distributed outside of the Middle East.
Lee said that at AJ Contrast, it is their practice to record each person in a scene in a way where they are obviously the most dominant person, either by being the one closest to the camera or the only person in the scene. In the final edit, the voice-over is that person introducing themself. This connects the voice to their image for the viewer.
“We always need that establishing intro-shot of that character that differentiates them from any other person that might be shown in the film,” Lee said.
Akram, the first speaker in the video, is first seen walking the streets of Sanaa. To make the video, the boy carried a 360 camera mounted on a monopod (selfie stick). The viewer sees the street and passersby with Akram’s face in the foreground. His voice-over is reinforced with subtitles placed in three different places in the 360-degree view of the video. This ensures that a viewer, no matter where they are looking, will catch sight of the text.
In the edit, Akram’s introduction is sandwiched between two establishing scenes that use a locked-down camera that doesn't move. The next time we see Akram, he is standing on a pile of large, broken blocks that had been his neighbor’s home.
This same formula introduces the other characters. In interactive 360 videos, viewers often have to learn quickly where to look and how to understand the video. By establishing a pattern early, it is easier for a viewer to follow the narrative. Lee said it is important to be consistent with these patterns within each video. In this interactive medium where they can change the experience, the viewers often need guidance:
“How to look, where to look, when to look, who to focus on, what to focus on,” Lee said. “These are things you have to train them on throughout the story.”
In linear video, each scene is kept on screen for a short time before changing to the next view. A scene often lasts no more than four seconds before cutting. In 360 videos, the scenes are longer. Because the viewer can look at several angles by turning around, each scene has more time. In "Yemen's Skies of Terror," the scenes range between four and 10 seconds.
Abu Bakr is the next person interviewed. A teenager, his introductory scene is static, similar to a still photo portrait. He stands, arms folded and staring at the camera. He is outside, leaning against the doorway to what we assume is his home. The next scene is Abu sitting on a curb on the street, talking to a man next to him. In the next scene, he is back inside the home, lying on a bed reading. The scenes have a more a quiet feel and contrast with the first scene. But the framing and editing formula is consistent.
Wedad, 7, is introduced as she walks a street in Sanaa, carrying the 360 camera on a selfie stick. It mirrors the approach in the opening scene, and since she is also a young child, the motion implies the energy and excitement of children running in the streets.
The next scene opens next to a road with piles of building debris on each side, presumably from buildings destroyed in the bombing. The girl's voice-over continues, and from around the curve in the road, you can see someone moving toward the camera. It is Wedad, and she runs past the destruction.
Wedad, 7, is introduced as she walks a street in Sanaa, carrying the 360 camera on a selfie stick. It mirrors the approach in the opening scene, and since she is also a young child, the motion implies the energy and excitement of children running in the streets.
The next scene opens next to a road with piles of building debris on each side, presumably from buildings destroyed in the bombing. The girl's voice-over continues, and from around the curve in the road, you can see someone moving toward the camera. It is Wedad, and she runs past the destruction.
This action coming into the scene is a technique to direct the viewer. Her action leads to an animated graphic superimposed over the pile across the street. It is a ticker counting the rising total of airstrikes in Yemen. The graphic is used throughout the video. Full-scene animations are also used at the beginning and near the end to explain history and event details. These are useful devices that can bring in history, context, and data that isn’t covered by the narration.
At the very end, each person interviewed returns. The camera placement is locked down, and the framing is again like an environmental portrait. Each one has a simple, evocative final quote:
“We are all afraid of air raids,” says the boy Akram.
“I don’t know if the world is aware of what is going here in Yemen,” says the teenager Abu.
“I wish the world could hear us,” says the young girl Wedad, as she holds a doll and stands by the rubble pile that was once a building.
This story could be told in linear video, still photos, or in text. But in 360 video, a viewer can have an immersive experience. Lee said putting on a headset and looking around conveys the mood more than other mediums.
“It’s really hard to understand what Yemen feels like. What the people sound like . . . how they live their day-to-day lives,” Lee said. With 360 video, viewers get closer to that experience.
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