News organizations like The New York Times and The Guardian have experimented with fast-paced, serial production schedules for 360 videos, hoping to prove out the medium. While 360 videos offer viewers with more freedom to explore scenes in a story, that freedom also poses an added challenge to directors and creators. Because users can be looking anywhere at any time, they might be looking in the wrong direction while important events or actions in a story take place, outside the user’s field of view. By contrast, Virtual Reality environments can address this problem by controlling the animation of objects, perhaps having a scene pause or loop until the user is looking in the right direction. With her Magic Grant, Computer Scientist Sean Liu will consider how to adapt these strategies to 360 videos, providing better storytelling without compromising the immersive feeling of these videos.
