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Plot, Character, and Dialogue

Course video 16 of 37

In this module, you'll learn the creative and technical nuances of 360 video production and how they impact preproduction. These lessons will provide the tools and processes necessary to write, plan, staff, and cast your VR production.

Welcome to the Google AR & VR Virtual Reality and 360 video production course! Our mission is to give you the skills you need to get started with your first VR project. This course will introduce you to Virtual Reality and 360 video production, guiding you through a step-by-step process to create VR content. To begin, we recommend taking a few minutes to explore the course site and review the material. Best of luck as you get started - we hope you enjoy the course, and can't wait to see what you'll create!

Skills You'll Learn

Virtual Reality, Camera+, Video Production, 360-degree video

Taught By

Google AR & VR

Transcript

If you're working on a narrative experience,

the plot is obviously a very important part.

By plot, we mean the actions and events of the story that we actually see.

Contemporary popular storytelling is most often plot driven,

a classic model going back millennia.

In this model, the story moves forward based on

the linear cause and effect relationship of these actions and events.

Our appreciation of the story is often based on our understanding of these relationships.

This model is challenged in 360,

because we as the storytellers,

cannot be certain that the audience will see any of these actions or events.

We cannot manipulate their attention in the same way we can in other visual mediums,

where we rely on composition and editing.

In 360, you will have significantly fewer set ups and cuts,

so you will have fewer opportunities to direct

audience attention in very specific places.

As we mentioned in the last section,

it helps to think spatially.

What can you teach audiences about the story

using just the environment and the objects in it?

Imagine the ways you can use space to build more of the plot.

Character and dialogue are aspects of

narrative we've understood since we could understand stories.

But how we use them in 360 is somewhat different than in film or TV.

The audience here is more interested in what it feels like

to be this person in this environment,

because the medium is more about space and embodiment than just A to B plot.

We're much more interested in being present with

the characters and feeling what they feel.

It's a subtle but important difference in thinking

about how you will reveal who they are to audiences.

Another key difference in composing your experience,

is remembering that dialogue is not something to rely heavily on in 360.

It's not a medium that's conducive to long conversations.

This has to do with the amount of sensory information audiences are taking in.

It's hard to focus on any one thing for a long period of

time when there are distractions all over the place.

It helps to write dialogue that has subtexts

or the meaning behind our words that we might not be saying.

By writing dialogue that has subtext,

you invite viewers to participate with the story by trying

to figure out why a character is saying what they're saying.

If you do want someone to focus on something in particular,

there are ways to steer viewer attention and perhaps eliminate distractions.

We'll tell you more about that in the next module.

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