Jaunt Uses Sundance to Offer VR Production ‘Field Guide’

Most filmmakers and other content creators didn’t receive an education in shooting content in 360-degree virtual reality. Cinematic VR production company Jaunt is looking to change that.

During the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Jaunt unveiled The Cinematic VR Field Guide: A Guide to Best Practices for Shooting in 360°, a guide that offers creatives all the tips and tricks they might need to shoot VR. And the guide does ask readers to do something difficult: You might need to throw out much of what you already know about cinematography.

“As VR, AR and mixed realities become more prevalent throughout mainstream cinematic entertainment, it is critical to ensure that the production teams behind these projects are equipped with the very latest and greatest guidelines to filmmaking in VR,” said Grant Anderson, executive producer at Jaunt, who developed the guide. “With that in mind, who better than Jaunt to develop and distribute a complete industry set of guidelines?”

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Paired with the release of the document, Jaunt is hosting a series of panel discussions and workshops for creatives at Sundance, where hardcopies of the guide will be distributed. The guide is also available online.

Anderson, who came to Jaunt after a stint as an executive director and stereoscopic supervisor for Sony Pictures, said the guide tackles a number of issues VR creators are confronted with, including camera motion techniques to avoid motion sickness associated with VR, how to direct the action in a 360-degree shoot, and the new lighting and exposure needs of VR, where there’s more chance for lens flare.