Its Behind You: The Parameters And Process In The Creation And Presentation Of Panoramic Moving Images
Symposium:
Session Title:
- The Experience of Film and Documentary
Presentation Title:
- Its Behind You: The Parameters And Process In The Creation And Presentation Of Panoramic Moving Images
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
During September 2010 ICCI (Innovation for the Creative and Cultural Industries) University of Plymouth, UK, organised a 360° film, arts and performance festival in Plymouth city centre. The festival was the first of a series that revive the popular nineteenth century tradition of touring panoramas here employing digital formats on a six metre high by twenty metre diameter (62 metre length) projection screen, housed within a demountable dome structure. Using the festival as a case study, this paper reflects on the parameters for and the processes involved in the preparation of creative content for the festival, particularly focusing on the issues and concerns pertinent to 360° film making, reviewing the display and presentation of film in the festival’s dome auditorium.
Early panoramic paintings relied heavily on the inclusion of architectural structures, either ‘faux terrain’ or painted, to ‘frame’ the images they depicted. One of the most dramatic adjustments that need to be considered when producing or for that matter experiencing 360 cinema is the idea that, although one is working with a much wider frame, the viewer is not able to see and experience everything at any one time. While, particularly for a standing audience, there is the opportunity to move one’s eyes, head and body to experience the complete screen, the viewer, schooled for many years of image consumption through various sizes of flat screens and by every filmic example previously experienced holds onto screen mentality and may struggle to reduce the screen horizon into a watchable frame, unfortunately, in doing so elements of the presentation may go unseen behind the viewer.
The paper also identifies a number of factors relating to the audience experience of 360° content and how the particular spatial and visual environment affects both the production and experience of work and how these factors might be understood.
