First there were stage-based plays, then 2D films, then 3D films, and now, with Occulus Rift type viewers, 3D immersive virtual reality worlds that are 360 degrees in scope. What does that mean for story telling?
Good points on 360 degree lighting, sound, etc. Read the entire piece – really an eye opener as to where immersive, full surround 360 degree motion story telling in 3D may be headed.
I reviewed the stats for my own Youtube channel and discovered that 77% of all viewers are between the ages of 13 and 44 and about 60% are between the ages of 13 and 34.
Youtube does not present statistics on those under age 13 (think this is due to Federal laws to protect children) but there are third party reports that suggest the very young also view a lot of Youtube videos. Would be reasonable to add another 10% to 15% in that age group, meaning 90% + or – are below the age of 44.
But merely counting viewers by age does not give us the full story. I suspect that younger viewers also watch more minutes than do older viewers. If we had access to that data, we would probably see that nearly all of our channel views come from a young viewership.
This age skew is why some topics get large viewership, notably:
Those topics appeal to the younger viewers that make up the bulk of Youtube viewers. If you want to attract a big channel audience, you will probably want to target topics that interest young viewers.
This demographic is also very important for advertisers – brand identification starts young. Buying habits start young. And many young people spend a lot of money. Youtube is an advertiser’s dream audience.
More Youtube demographics over on my other blog.
Update: No surprise – Youtube “stars” are better recognized/more famous among teens than are “A-list” movie stars and celebrities.
Researchers have found ways of combining the views of 480 video cameras mounted in a two-story geodesic dome to perform large-scale 3D motion reconstruction, including volleyball games, the swirl of air currents, and even a cascade of confetti.
via How a dome full of cameras captures 3D motion | Futurity.
A method for achieving proper parallax when shooting 3D video: Wim Wenders and the “Natural Depth Method” | 3d.simplecarnival.com.
Flickr’s Explore feature provides users with a quick look at photos that have been selected by Flickr for presentation to a wider audience. Many photographers would like to see their photos selected, obviously, to obtain a wider audience for their work.
How does Explore select photos? The specific details are not disclosed to avoid “gaming” the selection process. But there are hints in a 2006 U.S. Patent filing by Yahoo:
These rankings may be based at least in part on the quantity of user-entered metadata concerning the media object, the number of users who have assigned metadata to the media object, access patterns related to the media object, and/or a lapse of time related to the media object.
via United States Patent Application: 0060242139.
It appears to do with a “scoring” process that evaluates the “tags” assigned to a photo (e.g. “County Fair”, “Cow”), their relevance to the image, an “access pattern” (presumably an association between the searched for keywords that led to viewing the photo, and the tags assigned by the uploader), the number of click thrus and views of the photo, and the relationship of the viewer to the photographer (e.g. “friend”, stranger). There are likely other factors that go into this process (8 years after the patent was filed).
