Coachella is one of the worlds biggest music festivals. For the last few years, Google has been famously streaming the event live online for those who can’t make it. The videos are done really well with edits between clips lasting around 10 seconds to keep things interesting.
There’s no word on the hardware used to record the 360 degree video, but one would imagine a Google street view style camera or cameras. By now we’ve all used, hell I’ve created, the 360 degree viewers for still images, but doing this in video and giving the viewer the director controls is an incredibly interesting prospect.
There are already smart phones that have a spherical camera positioned at the top for capturing everything around the photographer, so expect a lot more of this in the future. This works best in an immersive environment with things happening all around you, most events today are configured for action to occur at one location, usually a stage, so maybe its time to consider surround events and watch it all back later.
There’s two 360 videos to choose from right now, Until Sunset and After Dark, both are pretty spectacular and will probably require multiple views to fully consume.
Check it out for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/coachella
