

Sam Sure & Giacomo - Benjy
http://www.samsureandgiacomo.com/

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schiffern
This is interesting tech. I feel like I _should_ like it.

Watching these 360° videos, I always feel a certain anxiety. Part of it is
technical – the interface is so clunky that "swiveling my head" is painfully
awkward. But part of it is inherent – I worry that I'll miss the part I'm
"really" supposed to be watching. I feel like I _should_ replay the video 3-4
times to take it all in, but I just don't have that kind of time. I wind up
navigating away to resolve the tension.

A big part of cinematography is directing the viewer's eye through framing,
focus, etc. A brilliant example is the 3D IMAX version of _Avatar_. The giant
screen is only the first challenge. Since curent 3D technology simulates
stereoscopic cues but not focal cues, they had to direct the viewer's
attention _in 3-axes_ to avoid uncomfortable perceptual mismatch. To their
credit, this only happened to me a couple times.

So despite the cool tech, this is a step backward for visual storytelling
imho.

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niravshah
This is pretty neat - can anyone give any insight/guesses into how this was
done?

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makmanalp
Well, the stupid way to do this involves having a stand with many cameras
mounted in a globe shape, such that the viewing angles of all the cameras
overlap. This is expensive. The more elegant solution is to use half-globe
mirror (or two) to get 360 vision with 1 camera:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnidirectional_camera>
<http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~kostas/omni.html>

This is getting very popular in robotics applications because it's cheap and a
simple way to get 360 surroundings data. From this, you can localize and / or
detect obstacles.

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bsimpson
Here's the mirror way of doing it:

<http://www.360video.com>

There's a link on the home page showing what the uncorrected video looks like
(it's a giant video donut).

You get better image quality (e.g. no stitching errors), but lower resolution,
because the whole environment has to fit in the same 1080P frame.

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tsunamifury
I would say this is more of a tech demo and not a 'great use'.

A great use of 360 degree filming would be the drive the Haiti after the
earthquake:
[http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2010/01/world/haiti.360/index...](http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2010/01/world/haiti.360/index.html)

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lbotos
I wonder if we will see any "future indie cinema" use this? I'm imagining an
interesting way to show a thriller/mystery from all angles. It would be a
challenge to shoot but boy would that be incredible. There would be so much
more to "miss".

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medcab
So awesome! poignant it should reference the now seminal massive attack vid?
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbVRA6ZAhKo>

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robinsmidsrod
At 2:46, at first I thought I saw a person picking a pocket, but it turned out
to be just someone bending down to get their own wallet. That would've been a
funny easter-egg.

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jeremyarussell
It'd be interesting to know how much it cost to make this. First time I've
ever seen an interactive 360 video like this though and I gotta say I want to
try it out now.

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lbotos
It looks like you can find a bloggie for around $200USD but the 360 Resolution
is a little low. This site shows some openFrameworks work with bloggie:

[http://www.flong.com/blog/2010/open-source-panoramic-
video-b...](http://www.flong.com/blog/2010/open-source-panoramic-video-
bloggie-openframeworks-processing/)

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gokhan
@1:20, you can see the artist's shadow on the wall while holding the camera.

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citricsquid
You can also see him in the mirrors at 3:33 holding the camera. There is also
visible warping of his arm around that time (and the next scene where he goes
through a gate, very visible here)

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medcab
So awesome! some day all videos will be like this

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miahi
One hour on HN and the server is down.

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tripzilch
Does it have to be so slow?

