Following on last year’s beautiful animated short “Duet,” Google just pushed out a sweet little short from Justin Lin, best known as the director of several films from the Fast and Furious franchise.




“Help” is a 360 video is available through the Google Spotlight Stories app, a project of the Advanced Technologies and Projects (ATAP) group. Originally a Moto X exclusive, Spotlight Stories is gradually now rolling out to additional handsets. It works on my Nexus 5, but not on my LG G4. (The video comes in just under 1GB, so beware, you’re going to be waiting for a while. In fact, at the time of publication, it’s not even really downloading.)

So in other words we haven’t had the chance to watch “Help” yet. Previously, all of the spotlight material has been animated, and this time around it’s a live action short.


To shoot the the 360 video, Lin’s production team used a rig composed of 4 Red Epic Dragon cameras with fisheye lenses. (Despite Steven Levy’s claims, this isn’t the first time something like this has been done. In fact, similar rigs are used to shoot 360 live action pornography.)



Of course, the future of this kind of 360 video is very much up in the air. Lots of companies are developing the production technologies to make 360 interactive video, and a few platforms, including Oculus, are battling to be the center of the puzzle. Once we can actually see it, we’ll let you know what we think.

