360 Film Making... but without the 360...

I recently purchased a 360 camera, the Xiaomi Mijia Mi Sphere 360, and have been testing out the filmmaking possibilities I could use it for.

My main inspiration in purchasing a 360 camera, is not to have the audience look around in a 360 space, but to provide the option for super wide imagery with the option to animate the camera and its field of view in post production. This technique is called over-capture.

GoPro demonstrate this technique very well in their promo for their 360 camera, the GoPro Fusion.

Despite the impressive quality of the GoPro Fusion, I do not need such a high quality camera to make the 360 content. I myself am not a "pixel counter" director, and find myself caring a lot more about the content of the image, rather than the camera quality.
In addition, the GoPro Fusion requires a blend of two SD cards to function as well as multiple camera accessories that add to the turn around process being inconvenient.

To avoid the £600 price tag, I checked out a load of options from LIFE in 360, who gave great comparisons between multiple cameras. As stand in the beginning of 2018, the Mi Sphere 360 seemed like the best option.

Using GoPro's Adobe plugins allows easy editing of 360 footage, and with plenty of experience working with key frames, the process allowed for smooth camera movement to get a result like this:

In the end the effect looks super smooth and I'm looking forward to experimenting with this super wide effect!

In addition to the 4K video, the camera also supports 6.5K photos that look great!

... although you have to be careful what angle you choose in post... result vary...