Abstract:

The global pandemic, triggered by the COVID-19 virus, drove millions of higher education post-grad students into a spiral of challenges that, according to their scientific field of studies and focus, could even differ among students from the same program and course. This paper presents the deconstruction, presentation, and analysis of the almost iterative reviewing and rescheduling of research conducted by a student in the Digital Audiovisual branch of the Multimedia in Communication master program, the University of Aveiro in Portugal. The goal is to produce a set of 360º videos of the Church of Jesus in the City of Aveiro and further research its usefulness and attractiveness for former or potential user virtual tours. According to the circumstances presented by the pandemic and the nationwide confinement constraints determined by law between March and May 2020, the work methodically outlined was redesigned to adjust the research to these new conditions and guarantee that scientific rigour was met. It should be pointed out that the overview presented is given according to the supervisor’s point of view and may contribute to similar challenges presented to other master student supervisors. The student was able to implement a condensed yet interesting pre-production, production, and post-production plan due to the impossibility of capturing additional on-site footage. The work’s literature review was further developed, online tools were developed to collect data regarding user experience when viewing and interacting with the 360º audiovisual content, and a set of communication and collaborative work strategies was also developed and adopted. The results attained two of the work’s primary goals: handing in the dissertation and finishing the post-grad program. It also shed some light on good contingency plans suitable for audiovisual research projects confronted with constraints deriving from confinement contexts, social distancing concerns, and overall lack of what may be considered normal in this research field. Unfortunately, the present state of affairs leads us to admit that this may be the norm for the foreseeable future.

Keywords:

Audiovisual Production, 360º videos, museums, COVID19.