“Coordinates’ Line Subtitles”: a Spicy Feature in VR360 Videos for Events“ Locations

Abstract

VR360 videos for events locations (venues) and their surrounding areas are capable to provide a sensory and cognitive foretaste of the experience of the events, and at the same time constitute an effective means of inspiration for the creation and implementation of novel cultural and other events to the place where the video was captured. The above have been evaluated via the design and implementation of an innovative “Events’ spatiotemporal map” service for the region of Crete, where VR360 videos of events’ locations have been proved to promote the touristic and cultural experience.The documentation of the VR360 videos has followed narration and subtitling based on three main techniques: a) fictional description of the place and its use, b) the “truthful cinema” approach, i.e. through scenarios about the history and the activities of the place that are spontaneous, active and without mediation, and c) indirectly, through the description of a certain event that is taking place in the filmed location. According to Todorov the typology of the stories in either approach is comprised of three types: omniscient, objective and with point of view (subjective). During our research for the “Events’ spatiotemporal map” we elaborated on another way of VR360 videos documentation, the “coordinates’ line subtitles” which will result in a new type of narration, the one we have defined as “google-tive”. The narration/subtitles will include information from the Google maps service, mainly toponyms and POIs, correlated with “hidden” spatial information to VR360 video scenes.In this paper we set the theoretical bases of the new type of VR360 subtitling and present the implementation of the dataflow assisting the creation of “coordinates’ line subtitles” by use of the Google Places’ API to retrieve Points of Interest around events’ locations.