Lesson 05: Distributing and Sharing Your Immersive Work Online
A key part of working with emerging media storytelling is understanding how to bring it to your audiences. By their nature emerging mediums are not widely adopted by the general public and viewing habits are not established. That means that immersive journalists need to think through both how they intend to get their stories to their planned audience and how to walk the audience through experiencing a piece in a new medium. Immersive stories present a few unique questions: Do you go for a wider audience by choosing a more accessible technology OR do you want to push the technology forward with tools that present new capabilities but aren’t as easy for an audience to use? Do you set up your story for online distribution AND/OR do you want to connect and share with people in person so that you walk them through how to interact with the piece and learn from how the audience responds?
Learning Outcomes
-
Assess audience experience in trying a new medium
-
Formulate a process for successfully onboarding viewers
-
Describe variety of viewing devices and platforms
Lesson Outline
Onboarding and bringing people into a new medium
Desktop, smartphone and headset distribution
Social platforms – YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook
Smartphone – apps
Web Browser – Web XR, A Frame
Headsets – Oculus TV, Steam
In-person
Here’s a Medium post that collects a lot of VR film festivals: https://vrfilmreview.ru/vr-film-festivals-2020-e809a6a3d633
Online
Also, Columbia Digital Storytelling Digital Lab links
Promoting your work and finding an audience – Facebook groups
Women in VR/AR (open to everyone)
360 VR Camera Users Community (Samsung Gear 360, Ricoh Theta, Kodak SP360)
Readings
Artists Will Create the New Models of Distribution in Immersive Media
Building It as We Go | Immerse
Distributing Immersive Stories at Virtual Festivals
Newton, K., & Soukup, K. (2016). The storyteller’s guide to the virtual reality audience | The Stanford D. School.
Discussion Topics
What are some of the ways you can deliver an immersive story?
What are the benefits of each mode of delivery?
Which stories work best with some of the modes of delivery
Discuss the benefits and shortcomings of delivering an immersive story on your phone, desktop or headset
End of lesson feedback
3-2-1 (3 takeaways, 2 questions, 1 thing they enjoyed)