To explore methods that are currently used by professional virtual reality (VR) filmmakers to tell their stories and guide users, we analyze how end-users view 360 • video in the presence of directional cues and evaluate if they are able to follow the actual story of narrative 360 • films. In this context, we first collected data from five professional VR filmmakers. The data contains eight 360 • videos, the directors cut, which is the intended viewing direction of the director, plot points and directional cues used for user guidance. Then, we performed a subjective experiment with 20 test subjects viewing the videos while their head orientation was recorded. Finally, we present and discuss the experimental results and show, among others, that visual discomfort and disorientation on part of the viewer not only lessen the immersive quality of the films but also cause difficulties in the viewer gaining a full understanding of the narrative that the director wished them to view.

The usage of film cuts, or transitions, is a powerful technique in interactive storytelling to express the film story by leading the viewers attention. To explore how existing transition techniques are currently being used by professional 360 • filmmakers, this paper investigates the impact of transitions and additional graphical elements from a storytelling perspective. We base this on the recently published Director's Cut dataset [1] which contains professional 360 • films with the directors' intending viewing direction (i.e., director's cut) and test subjects' scan-paths. Our objective is to examine widely used transition techniques in professional 360 • film, and with our finding guide filmmakers in the storytelling and editing process. To the authors knowledge, this is the first study to analyze professionally prepared VR film cuts concerning the distance of viewers' scan-paths and director's cut. We observed that the intended viewing direction is required for the viewer to understand the story best and not miss the director's plot points. The transition is a point where the viewers are presented with a new scene and are required to orientate themselves within it. Thus if there is a considerable distance mismatch between the intended and actual viewing, the viewer is not in the best position to understand the scene properly. Our results show that the use of simple graphics can serve as a reference for viewers as the transition happens and they are presented with a new immersive environment.

Methods of storytelling in cinema have well established conventions that have been built over the course of its history and the development of the format. In 360 • film many of the techniques that have formed part of this cinematic language or visual narrative are not easily applied or are not applicable due to the nature of the format i.e. not contained the border of the screen. In this paper, we analyze how end-users view 360 • video in the presence of directional cues and evaluate if they are able to follow the actual story of narrative 360 • films. We first let filmmakers create an intended scan-path, the so called director's cut, by setting position markers in the equirectangular representation of the omnidirectional content for eight short 360 • films.

Portraying traditional cinematic narratives in virtual reality (VR) is an emerging practice where often the methods normally associated with cinematic storytelling need to be adapted to the 360 format. In this paper we investigates some proposed cinematic practices for narrative storytelling in a cinematic VR film set in late 9th century Ireland that follows the perilous journey young Celt as he evades being captured by Viking raiders. From this we will analyze the fidelity of those practices with results collected from YouTube Analytics.

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