Film language analysis in society news-A case study of The New York Times

Abstract

As the virtual reality is famous with its immersion, it makes journalism a promising application of 360 videos. However, the key factors of VR videos, such as interaction, framing, stitching, etc., differ greatly from that of what they used to be, it appears that storytelling is getting much more difficult than before. To deal with the problem, we analyze the New York Times 360 videos, a pioneer in immersive journalism, and want to find the film language in the 360 video. After analyzing, we concluded there were 6 key factors: surrounding, subtitles, perspective, shot size, guidance, and angle of the 360 video. In addition, we did the user study to confirm the result of ours. Finally, we provide a guideline for 360 video director to shot a 360 videos with immersion and understanding.