Wide Range of Skills Needed

The production processes and tools are mostly immature, are not yet well integrated, or common; the whole process from capture through to viewing requires a wide range of specialist, professional skills.

This project incorporated the efforts of a wide range of specialists. Between them, the various team members had skills in (at least) reporting, producing, hardware development, software development, system design, workflow design, videography, film direction, art direction, 3D-motion graphic production (which Secret Location calls “motionography”), coding, video-editing, VR-authoring, editorial, business development, project management, and marketing. They also had the ability to learn and conceive of new processes and practices, both technical and narrative, and the ability to collaborate. Many of these skills are not widely held, and the authors believe it’s unrealistic to expect a single person to perform all of these tasks at a high level.

This production model contrasts with other journalistic media. For example, even in documentary production it is practical for one or two people to perform the majority of tasks at high quality—a scenario made possible by filmmaking’s access to relatively cheap, high-performance cameras and software editing suites, which have all been designed to work together.