The Creator Lab goes international as YouTube’s VR180 bootcamp makes its way to London.
This week the YouTube Creator Lab closed its doors in London, England, officially wrapping an intense, three-day VR180 bootcamp that included some of YouTube’s best and brightest European and Middle Eastern creators. Eleven teams gathered at YouTube Space London to learn the ins-and-outs of producing VR180 content in an effort to expand the possibilities of this exciting new immersive format.
“VR is an incredible medium for taking storytelling to a new level capturing people’s emotions with immersive visual experiences,” spoke Marc Joynes, YouTube Space London Operations Manager, in regards to the educational program. “Sessions like this at the YouTube Space in London are an opportunity for creators on YouTube to learn new technology that will provide them with innovative content that will engage their audiences.”
Let’s take a closer look at the influential creators involved and their motivations for embracing YouTube’s revolutionary VR180 format:
Amaury La Burthe
“Change is about imagination and creativity. It tells the story of Noah, a retired successful entrepreneur that suddenly discovers black holes and spots on his walls. This irrational event defies his understanding and logical vision. As he tries to understand this mystery, Noah will explore his childhood memories and will eventually understand why this happens. Through his journey, he will reconnect with his creative aspirations and will learn again how to let imagination and surprise enter his life.”
“In recent years, we’ve been focusing our work mostly on interactive and/or immersive real-time and CGI projects. The 180 Creator lab is a wonderful opportunity for us to explore this new evolution of immersive storytelling mixed with live-action shooting. Discovering/exploring the 180 format is definitely exciting. Brainstorming with everybody in the lab is also a great endeavor. Creative/narrative projects always benefit from various feedback, especially when you have such a diverse group coming from very different backgrounds.”
Andra Gogan
“We are doing a horror project because 180 is an impressive way of scaring people. We love horror movies in general and we see this as a challenge and a very innovative concept to bring to Romania. Our team is super excited about 180 because we want to learn more about this technology and curios how Youtube will integrate it to their platform. We are also interested to see how our audience will react as we hope to make them very excited about this. Our team has learned so much from these workshops and connected with creators from all over europe who all have the same objective of creating 180 content.”
Baff Akoto
“Our project is about being in intimate spaces that don’t usually get a lot of air time and certainly not in VR or 180. We want to talk about spaces and communities that are part of my everyday but I don’t necessarily see represented. When the creator lab came up as a possibility, I knew this would suit the project since it’s about the atmospheric place and being immersed in an environment. We are avant garde experimental filmmakers so its is really exciting to get into this medium and discover the creative process.”
Chi Thai
“Together we are using VR to tell an intimate portrait of a couple who are going through infertility. About a year ago when we started working on this we discussed how 180 would actually be perfect tool for our project so it really feels like a conviction of our beliefs that we find ourselves here at the VR Creator Lab. The VR Lab has given us the great nuts and bolts training in the specifics of making 180 VR and given us the time to focus sharply on storytelling but with the extra jolt of a very fast turnaround. So we are flying at the seat of our pants at the moment!”
Delicious Recipes
“We have been sharing recipe videos on YouTube since 2011. We took the lead in video format in our country and inspired many YouTube channels after us. That is why we are quite excited to be working on this project and have a chance to break a new ground, again. VR180 video has never been done for traditional Turkish cuisine. This magical combination of modern technology with a thousand-year-old Turkish cuisine sounds fascinating! We also want to strengthen the beautiful synergy we have with our followers. It is a great chance to be working with such great mentors, they are all amazing and we are so happy to be here.“
Footroll
“Footroll is a youtube channel and web portal dedicated to football. Even though football is everything for us we try to show people that it’s still only football. We try to comment most important football events, discuss biggest news, go to matches, show stadium etc. We also created our very own football game, so we’re also playing football on our videos. We think that there is a big potential in videos dedicated to football sector that VR technology can awake.”
“VR180 creator lab is the first step into this beautiful world of virtual reality and it will definitely raise our content to another level. We will definitely go for it and develop in our productions on YT on regular basis. The most important thing was to see how it works and what advantage can it give to our viewers. We learned a lot about pre- and post production for this kind of videos. Moreover, we could talk with professionals from different sectors of production and also hear what they have to say about ideas. There’s only one thing we would change… we would stay here more than just three days!”
Fremantle Media
“As part of the Digital and Social media team at Fremantle, we see the 180 creator lab as a great opportunity to learn and expand our content ideas on the YouTube channels for Got Talent, X factor and Idols. The experience has been very informative, it has made me think in a new way, I love the idea of being able to immerse our audience in the performance and provide them with a view they may not of experienced before. I’ve been most excited about learning how the new cameras work, having hands on experience has been great and how to edit this type of content.”
Kate Aidley
“I am a filmmaker and transformative coach with a passion for storytelling through metaphors. 180 is the perfect form for my project, Wonderland X, as the viewer will be completely immersed in a wonderland. They’ll discover how reality is made and experience how deep the rabbit hole really goes. The creator lab is an amazing opportunity to get to play with new kit and ideas and to be in touch will all the mentors you need to create such an ambitious project.”
Nathie
“The reason why creator lab is exciting is because you get the opportunity to innovate for VR in general and for Youtube as a platform. For us the most important thing is to push the VR industry forward on an entertainment level with 180.”
Philipp Schaeffer
“Our documentary project Eggs, Rocks, Human Beings tells the stories of young Inuit in the Canadian Arctic. The title, Eggs, Rocks, Human Beings VR, refers to an ancient Inuit saying, according to which we can raise our children to become fragile like eggs or hardened like rocks – and we can raise them to become true human beings. In a time of great change for the Canadian Arctic, the series centres on this theme of identity, with each part approaching the topic through a different individual story.”
“Shooting this series in VR 180 allows us to bring together some of the strengths of traditional observational documentary filmmaking and of immersive media. We found the Creators Lab an exciting opportunity to imagine what a future for cinematic documentary filmmaking could look like – it seems that the personalised 3D IMAX-like quality of VR180 is definitely one exciting area for growth and exploration.”
Shmee150
“The VR180 project is connected to the introduction of VR180 onto our channel and network. Shmee150 wants as the number 1 in the worldwide automotive influencer space to create content that allows our audience to experience new ways of viewing content. We believe that the VR technique is an important tool for the future. We intend to introduce VR180 as an extra offering next to the ongoing stream of content we release in the direction of our audience. We hope it offers the audience a new engaging angle into experiencing our world of living the supercar dream.”
Image Credit: Youtube Creator Lab
