I hit upon an idea for my Emerging Media Platforms field test when Prof. Dan Pacheco suggested that we use some of the new storytelling technology we’ve been learning about to help someone solve a problem.
A question popped into my mind though I’m not much of a hiker: are the public trails in my small town of Tolland, Connecticut underutilized? I thought if I produced a 360-degree video of one of the trails and publicized it, more residents of Tolland and eastern Connecticut might go hiking there.
The Technology and its Applicability for Journalists
On Prof. Pacheco’s advice, I bought the Insta360 Nano because it works seamlessly with my iPhone 6 and automatically stitches video. It comes in a box with a handy, built-in Virtual Reality viewer.
For $145, the camera is a relatively affordable way to take 360 video and photos. You can use it alone with a micro SD card, but I found it easier to pop it onto my phone. It has dual fish-eye lenses, shoots video with 3K resolution and lets you livestream to Facebook, CNET.com reports.
It would be handy for journalists at breaking news scenes such as a fire, flood or blizzard who want to give viewers an immersive story. Since it works so smoothly with Facebook, it’s a great way for reporters to give their followers a unique view of the news.
Like Virtual Reality, 360 video provides that elusive idea of “presence” that journalists want readers to feel. David Smith, a multimedia specialist at West Virginia University, wrote for Mediashift.org that content stands out with the immersive technology.
“Immersive storytelling is by definition a great tool for grabbing an audience and “hacking into their brain” so they can experience another world,” he wrote.
Hypothesis and Target Audience
By producing a 360 video of an under-used trail in Tolland and sharing it with residents on Facebook, I will raise awareness about the town’s 13 conservation areas. My target audience is active residents who live in, or within an hour’s drive, of Tolland. Watching the 360 video will make them feel immersed in nature and more likely to hike the trails in Tolland. The 360 video will be more effective than 2D video in raising awareness and a viewer’s likelihood to visit the trails.
Metrics
To measure awareness, I will count how many people watched the 360 video and said it made them more likely to visit the trails. To determine the effectiveness of the 360 video, I will ask them whether it made them feel immersed in nature.
I will also produce a 2D video of the same trail and count whether respondents who watched it said they are more likely to visit the trails. I will then compare that rate to the rate of the 360 group.
To help the groups that oversee the trails, I’ll collect the names and email addresses of respondents who are willing to share them with the town so that they can get more information about the trails. I’ll compare whether a higher percentage of the 360 respondents wanted to share their contact information than the 2D group.
Background
Bob Rubino, head steward of the Tolland Conservation Corps, told me the trails are underutilized. He said most of the residents he talked to at a town festival in September were unaware of the 1,000 acres and 23 miles of trails that the town has preserved.
“This is an issue,” he said. “The Conservation Commission wants to become more proactive to have greater public awareness about the trails we have in town.”
The town has posted detailed maps on its website, including GPS coordinates, and the commission maintains Facebook pages for the various areas.
“A lot of people don’t even know there is a trail, in many cases, within walking distance of their front door,” Assistant Town Planner Kevin Berger said.
The town does not keep solid numbers on trail usage. But based on wear and tear on the land, Rubino estimates that “a couple hundred folks” hike there every few weeks and two to three times that number visit a couple of times a year.
Peter Marteka, the longtime nature columnist for the Hartford Courant, told me that Tolland is one of the pre-eminent towns in eastern Connecticut when it comes to preserving open space.
“The town is definitely a leader,” he said. “Tolland has a strong grassroots and volunteer effort and that is key in protecting and preserving land.”
I decided to highlight an old cranberry bog in the Knofla Conservation Area because Rubino said it was a distinctive spot where 360 video might be effective. That’s my photo of the bog at the top of the page.
Methodology
My plan was to produce the 2D video and the 360 video, publicize them on Facebook and have people answer a survey on Google Forms.
On my first try, I didn’t like that I was visible in the 360 video because it diminished the immersive feeling of the shot. (It didn’t help that I carried my equipment in an orange Syracuse bag that was also visible.)
So I borrowed a selfie stick and traipsed back to the bog. I hid behind a tree and shot a 24-second, 360 video that I was happy with. It can be seen on my Facebook page or on YouTube.
Below, you can see a bit of me and the stick, but that was less distracting than when you could see all of me.
For the 2D video, I included details about the conservation areas and the town URL for people who wanted more information. I didn’t add any facts on the 360 video because I wanted to see if it was powerful on its own.
Now it was time to produce my surveys. I hadn’t used Google Forms before, but they were easy to set up once Jodie Mozdzer Gil, an assistant professor of journalism at Southern Connecticut State University, showed me how to embed the 2D video in the first survey. Here it is: Survey About Tolland’s Trails – Google Forms
It asked people their name, email address, town they live in, how often they visit the trails, whether they learned anything watching the video and whether I could share their contact information with the town. The key question was whether they were more likely to visit the trails after seeing the video.
In the 360 survey, I included basic facts about the trails. I asked people the same questions that I had asked on the 2D survey, but added two key questions to test my hypothesis. They are “after watching the 360 video, did you feel immersed in nature?” and “after watching the 360 video, are you more likely to visit one of Tolland’s 13 public conservation areas?” Here’s the survey: Tolland Trails 360 Video Survey – Google Forms
Findings
I counted the results of 79 respondents, taking out four of my own tests and two from people who lived too far away. Forty-nine of 59 people I asked to watch the 2D video did so, for a return rate of 83 percent. The response for the 360 video was lower, with 30 of 45 people, or 67 percent, taking the survey.
Both videos raised awareness of the trails and interest from people who wanted me to share their contact information with the town. A higher percentage of the 360 video group agreed, at 26 of 30 or 87 percent, compared to 33 of 49 or 67 percent of the 2D video group. That shows that the 360 video had a greater effect when it came to raising awareness and interest in the trails. I view it as a success that 59 people were willing to let town officials contact them about the trails.
My hypothesis that the 360 video would make people feel immersed in nature was proven true by an overwhelming margin, with 22 of 30 people, or 73 percent, saying it did.
The response was also overwhelmingly positive when I asked if the 360 video made them more likely to visit Tolland’s trails, with 26 of 30 people, or 87 percent, saying yes.
Respondents in the 2D video group also were more likely to visit the trails, but at a lower percentage than the 360 video group. Thirty-six of the 49 people said they were more likely to visit, which is 73 percent – compared to the 87 percent response to the 360 video.
Both parts of my hypothesis, therefore, were proven true. My 360-degree video of an under-used trail in Tolland raised awareness of the public lands and made people feel immersed in nature. A higher percentage of the people who watched the 360 video said they were more likely to visit the trails than those who watched a 2D video.
Responses and Interviews
Some of the 360 video respondents said that the video made them feel present in the woods.
“I felt I was actually there, and could see everything I wanted to. It was a very cool experience!”
“By being able to turn in a complete circle, you feel like you are there.”
“[I] liked the feeling of being wrapped in nature. The video allows you to feel engulfed by the trees and pond in [the] distance.”
Three people complained about the 360 video:
“I liked being able to see the place in a 360-degree view…However, every time I tried to ‘full screen’ the video, it separated into a grid of pictures, with the sky at the bottom.”
“I am very sensitive to motion sickness, and was a bit nauseous after continuously watching the video and “looking” around so much, lol!”
“It’s really cool…but the video was too short. I was only able to spin part way before the video ended. I had to watch it 3 times.”
Those responses made me realize that I need more practice with producing 360 videos that are stable and effective.
I learned more lessons following up with three people who said the video had not given them an immersive feeling: Heidi Ellis from Tolland, chair of the computer sciences and information technology department at Western New England University; Perne Maynard, a photographer from Tolland, and Sara Kaiser, a nurse from Manchester, Connecticut.
Ellis said she found the 360 technology awkward.
“It felt jerky,” she said. “I found that I used it more as a series of still pictures…And I felt like when I moved, I came out of the experience to think about what I was doing and how I was using the mouse.”
Kaiser said she found the 360 video to be blurry in spots, but it was the winter that kept her from feeling immersed in nature.
“Honestly I think it was the starkness of the view,” she said. “I think if it were in spring or fall, I would have felt differently.”
Maynard said that having to operate the 360 video manually lessened its impact.
“I can see the 360 video lens is a creative tool, but it didn’t give me an emotion of feeling immersed in nature,” he said.
To sum up my lessons learned: some people still find 360 video awkward (and even nausea-inducing), I have to improve my 360 skills and having to move the video with a mouse removes the immersive feeling for some people.
Conclusions
Based on my findings, the Insta360 Nano exceeded my expectations. It was easy to use, compact and lightweight. A major advantage is the automatic stitching. That’s a game-changer from earlier 360 cameras that required time-intensive stitching.
The 360 video was more effective than the 2D video in making people feel immersed in nature, more likely to visit the trails and more likely to share their contact information with the town.
Don DiGenova, chairman of Tolland’s Conservation Commission, said he appreciated my project.
“I’m very pleased that so many people responded,” he said. “Anytime we can have more people learning about the trails and be more user-friendly, that’s a good thing.”
In the future, the 360 camera would be improved if it allowed me to edit myself out of the scene. That would have created an even more immersive view for my target audience. Photojournalists who want to use the camera could make themselves unobtrusive if they had a monopod, a remote control and a place to hide, but they might not bother when news is breaking.
When posting from the Insta360 to YouTube, the videos came out flat, without a 360 capability unless you insert metadata with an app. When I tried to download the metadata injection app at first, my Mac would not run it because it wasn’t approved by Apple. I couldn’t find a comparable app in the Apple Store.
After numerous tries and switching from Safari to Google Chrome, I succeeded in inserting the metadata and getting the video posted to YouTube. It would be a major improvement if the Insta360 could post as easily to YouTube as it does to Facebook, so the manufacturer should find a way to solve that metadata problem. I used the Insta360’s VR viewer to look at my video, but it was pretty clunky, without much of a feeling of being immersed in the scene.
Also, when I used the Insta360 with my iPhone and saved to the phone’s photo library, the 360 videos took up a lot of storage space. I mention this as a warning to anyone who wants to buy the Insta360.
I did not buy the more expensive Insta360 Nano S, which shoots in 4K resolution. Jakub Han recently reported for Cinema5d.com that the Nano S’s 4K capability is much improved over the Nano’s 3K resolution and is critical for VR to be effective. Being able to view the cranberry bog through a more effective VR experience would have been appreciated by some members of my audience.
I do think the younger members of my audience, including parents who like to get outdoors with their kids, will embrace the 360 technology as a fun way to photograph their families. I can also see a huge global market with tourists who would want to use a 360 camera to capture the Grand Canyon or the Colosseum in Rome in a unique way.
I predict that within two years, this technology will be in the hands of many journalists who want to give their audience an immersive view of a story. Readers will gain a sense of presence through this technology if reporters use it to show hurricane damage, Olympic events, a protest on the National Mall or even a view of life in a war zone.
I think citizen journalists will embrace it to livestream 360 views from protests or rallies for causes such as women’s rights, #Black Lives Matter or gun control.
The Insta360 Nano proved effective in my modest field test, and I predict it will soon become an every-day tool for reporters, photographers and TV stations. As the technology improves and becomes compatible with VR headsets, I foresee even more storytellers turning to it to reach global audiences who want a “you are there” experience of a big news story. I don’t see it entirely replacing 2D news videos, but the potential is limitless.
Sources:
Personal interviews with Bob Rubino, Kevin Berger, Don DiGenova, Peter Marteka, Heidi Ellis, Perne Maynard and Sara Kaiser, March 2018
Assistance from Amanda Farrish; Jodie Mozdzer Gil, an assistant professor of journalism at Southern Connecticut State University; Steven G. Smith, associated professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, March 2018
Low, Aloysius. (May 26, 2017). “Insta360 Nano is a cute and affordable 360-degree camera.” CNET.com. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/products/insta360-nano/preview/
Smith, David. (Undated) “Yes, Virtual Reality and 360 Video Are Relevant. Here’s Why.” Mediashift.org. Retrieved from http://mediashift.org/2017/01/yes-virtual-reality-360-video-relevant-heres/
Open Space Hiking Trails, retrieved from https://www.tolland.org/open-space-hiking-trails
Knofla Conservation Area/Town of Tolland, retrieved from https://www.tolland.org/open-space-hiking-trails/pages/knofla-conservation-area
Han, Jakub. (Jan. 8, 2018). “Insta360 Nano S – Shoot 4K VR Content with Your iPhone.” Cinema5d.com. Retrieved from https://www.cinema5d.com/insta360-nano-s-shoot-4k-vr-content-with-your-iphone/
Kate Farrish, journalist 