Last week we looked at top performing genres in 360 VR videos. Building on that and utilizing our dataset of thousands of videos, we decided to add filming techniques as an additional dimension to analyze popular content.

Film techniques

We identified 13 different techniques that were used to create popular 360 videos.

P.O.V. Shot from the perspective of the viewer (i.e. you can see your body or vehicle, or you are participating in the action).

Stereoscopic. Shot in 3D stereoscopic format.

Single Shot. Produced in 1 shot without any cuts/edits (except for small intro/end scene).

Static Camera. Has a scene where the camera does not move.

Moving Camera. Has a scene where the camera is moving.

Reference Frame. Has a moving shot where something is fixed relative to the camera (e.g. window frame or dashboard).

Ground Level. Has a scene where the camera is at ground level (or the height of a person).

Flying. Has a scene where the camera is flying above the ground.

On Water. Has a scene where the camera is on the surface of a body of water.

Under Water. Has a scene where the camera is underwater.

Indoors. Has an indoor scene.

Outdoors. Has an outdoor scene.

Abstract. Has a scene where abstract objects, lights, shapes, etc. are used to create an emotional response.

Tying it all together

The techniques used to create videos are closely related to genre. For example, moving camera scenes may work great for animated 360 videos, but that technique may be too jarring for comedy videos.

We looked at the relationship between these techniques and genre to identify which combinations result in the most popular videos (by total views). We standardized popularity across each genre to determine which techniques are most common per genre.

360 genres and film techniques by popularity (total views)

We noticed several trends — some that confirmed intuition and others that were surprising.

As expected, comedy videos don’t tend to experiment with a variety of film styles. They tend to stick with indoor, static, ground-level shots.

Action videos usually have moving camera shots, but the most popular ones also have static shots.

Almost every popular video across most genres uses a static camera shot.

Most popular videos, except for feature films, are not stereoscopic. This could be because 3D videos are more expensive to produce.

Animation and horror videos experiment the most with a variety of popular film techniques.

Interestingly, P.O.V. was not as popular a style as we expected.

Conclusion

Content creators use different techniques to convey meaning and differentiate their 360 videos. By analyzing popular videos across both genre and film styles, we saw how content creators are experimenting in the immersive video space.

Next time, we’ll look at how viewers actually explore 360 videos.