Kennedy Slain on Dallas Street: A 360 Tour of Dealey Plaza (2021)
Director: GREG SUCHAREW
Cinematography and Editing: GREG SUCHAREW
Producer: SAMEER BUTT
Starring: ROBERT J. GRODEN, ROBIN BROWN
Project Overview
In late 2019 Sameer Butt (Producer) and I travelled to Dallas, TX to begin production on a documentary project we had been bouncing around about Dealey Plaza the site of that tragic day in November 1963. Dealey Plaza is a strange plaza, one of those places that you can meet all types of people, sometimes even having a circus atmosphere.
I decided it would be the perfect place to try shooting an immersive documentary since it is one of those places people may want to look around for themselves, at their own leisure.
Shooting in 360 presents unique challenges. First off, I shot the film using the GoPro Fusion. Not wanting and since I did not want to end viewer to look down and see an a massive tripod or stand, I chose to mount the camera on a small Lowel light-stand. This was to ensure I was able to capture as much information beneath the camera as possible, the Lowel stand being small with a thin profile. I needed to be able to take a frame from the video and clone stamp the stand out in the post process.
Camera placement was very important not only for narrative reasons, but also because I needed to place the camera on a surface I could easily clone in photo shop. Too much detail or too intricate of a pattern would have made the cloning process time prohibitive and frankly not as seamless. It was also import to keep an eye on the shadows that the rig cast in the frame, so as to be able to clone that away too.
This film, as the pictures above hint at, had a lot of post-processing, and because it is in 360, requiring the graphics application to stitch it together to be viewed, it was important that I pre-render out my composite during each step in the process. Otherwise playback would have been way to slow to work with making quality checks impossible.
For the opening of the film I wanted the viewer to see a bit of historical context and then be transported into Dealey Plaza. I felt this was best achieved by using various archival images of key people all blending and fading into each other and wrapping around the viewer, giving way to a black and white image, then eventually fading to color. I used a custom watercolor transition to create this effects.
I wanted the graphics to add some context to the location so that the dialogue could stay focused on presenting the narrative. Adding graphics to spherical video presented a challenge in as far as it was difficult to place them where I wanted them with precision.
To create the illusion of depth I had to rotoscope various parts of the image, layer them, and add the graphics in between. This was most important, and most difficult to accomplish, in regards to moving vehicles passing over or in front of graphical elements. To achieve this I first used After Effects built in Roto Brush Tool, however, as that proceeded to take forever, and required a lot of manual touch up anyway, I switched to using Mocha AE which sped the process considerably.
For the color grade I wanted the film to be reminiscent of the films stocks available in the 60s. I reviewed photographs from the day in order to approximate a sort of faded Kodachrome look, and I think i was close to achieving that.
As far as the narrative itself I conducted interviews with multiple subjects over the course of the month I spent in Dallas. I used excerpts from those interviews to set the context, provide exposition, and tie it together emotionally.
All in all I think the project turned out well and am happy with it. I would like to push it more on the next 360 project I create.
I hope you enjoyed it, and got something out of the description of my process.