Capture Reality, Make Art with Insta360: Q&A with VFX Artist Greg Joblove

What makes tech industry growth so fascinating is how it develops in unforeseen ways. In only the past few years, reality capture has gone from being an interesting gimmick to being at the forefront of many industries, such as construction management and development.

But recently, Insta360 cameras like Insta360 X4 have been finding a strong foothold in a totally different realm: professional filmmaking. By taking a camera designed for action and using it as a "piggyback" camera instead, visual effects (VFX) processes that once took hundreds of hours are streamlined into something that can be done in minutes and for a fraction of the price.

To find out more we spoke with VFX artist Greg Joblove and discovered how Insta360 cameras are changing the game:

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I’m Greg Joblove, I’m 19 years old, and at this point in my life I’m going down the VFX rabbit hole. I’m a Junior at Wesleyan University studying Film, and I do a lot of VFX work on the side.

What interests you the most about VFX?

I’ve been into filmmaking since I was super young. Just the whole process of making movies at first, but always gravitated towards editing. I’ve always loved the technical side of art in general. I also tended to be pretty detail-oriented, and so VFX was kind of the culmination of my technical and detail driven interests in the film world. About six years ago I taught myself After Effects, and it’s been just a lot of learning and saying yes to all sorts of opportunities since then.

How did you first discover 360° cameras?

I first heard about 360° cameras in reference to cobbled-together rigs of action-cams to get sort of abstract shots for music videos (Kendrick Lamar’s HUMBLE was the first video I had really seen something like that I think.) Didn’t think a whole lot about them to be honest until learning about ways to use them to shoot HDRIs quickly.

There's a general belief that 360° cameras are useful only for their speed and convenience. Is that true?

I’d say that while 360° cameras are certainly both quick and convenient, they also have a form factor that allows for some of their use cases (particularly in the VFX world) that would otherwise be impossible. The 360° tracking that Josh [from the Make.Art.Now YouTube channel] and I experimented with, for example, would be impossible in the way we pulled it off, without a 360° camera. And even if a witness camera is mounted just for reference, it has to be small and rather inconspicuous, so a camera that is small but can also capture all directions allows for an incredible amount of reference for anyone involved in the post-production world.

Can you give us a breakdown of what exactly a "piggyback" camera is, and how it's helpful for filmmakers?

A “piggyback” camera or witness camera is just referring to a secondary camera that is used on set to capture additional information about the scene--specifically a “piggyback” camera is one that is mounted to the main camera. Sometimes it isn’t for anything super technical, it can just be to give VFX artists, colorists, or sometimes even just editorial teams extra context about what is being shot that the primary camera isn’t picking up. In this case though, we used the X4 mounted to our primary camera as a witness camera for the purpose of matchmoving a virtual camera. This can be super helpful in allowing a DP to film a shot how they want to, on whatever lens they choose with whatever style they’d like, without needing to consider how a shot may later need to be treated by a VFX team. 

What other uses for 360° cameras in VFX do you think have potential?

Tracking with 360° cameras is something that Josh and I kind of came up with. The primary use case for 360° cameras up until now in a VFX pipeline is to capture HDRIs [High Dynamic Range Images], which can recreate a scene’s lighting for the purposes of accurately lighting integrated CG elements. In terms of other, potentially unexplored use cases, I’d have to give some more thought to that. Generally, I’d say that having a 360° camera around set allows for situations to pop up where it kind of presents itself as an unconventional solution—this is basically how I came up with using it for the tracking solution.

Are there any other examples of consumer goods having a large impact on professional filmmaking?

This is a good question! Clothespins (C47s) are the original consumer good used in filmmaking! I also always tend to think of early action cameras being used in Hollywood productions as crash cams in films from the 2010s. Of course, there is The Creator (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2023) which was shot almost exclusively on consumer cameras and gimbals, which allowed them to be much more run-and-gun. I’m having a hard time thinking of other examples, but the common thread I think is that if a consumer technology company is able to create products that are high quality and reliable enough to work under the stress of larger, more professional productions, they will tend to be used in creative and unexpected ways.

What improvements do you expect from the next generation of Insta360 cameras?

The next steps seem to probably be new and clever ways of managing large amounts of data. 360° cameras have quite the uphill battle in terms of data management because of how much information they aim to record. In terms of how they might integrate with a professional workflow, timecode jamming would be huge. Both for tracking, and for opening doors for things like virtual production possibilities. Maybe even based off of something like that, a witness camera “mode” where it starts and stops recording in sync with an A-cam, while syncing frame rate and other settings. And in terms of color, having a color space that fits in with an ACES [Academy Color Encoding System] workflow? This is more of a wishlist rather than expectations, I have no idea of what’s possible in terms of real product development.

As Greg says, not only is the versatility and technology within Insta360 cameras invaluable to modern-day filmmakers, this is only the beginning—and their application within the industry is set to grow and grow. If you want to see Insta360 X4 in action, watch this behind-the-scenes video from MAKE.ART.NOW, and to pick one up yourself, check out our official store.