Vimeo has long been a home to experimental creators. In this week’s Staff Pick Premiere from filmmaker and camera inventor, Francois Vogel, we find an inventive approach to a 360 film that uses household items instead of new technology. In “Wrong Path” Vogel documents an escape from civilization using time lapse photography on a camera rig that he built himself. If you look at Vogel’s website, you’ll discover photographic perspectives that you have never seen before. Reason being, the images are captured by one-of-a-kind cameras that Vogel created.
Vogel continues this trend in “Wrong Path” by employing a new homemade camera rig that combines a still camera, plexiglass tube, fishing line, and a Christmas ornament to create an entirely unique 360 perspective that we have never seen before.
With the DIY camera rig attached to his body, Vogel walks across a road to the island Noirmoutier, located in France, that can only be traveled during low tide. As he follows the road, the water begins to rise with the tide forcing Vogel to climb up a safety pole. Atop the pole, he spends hours surrounded by open ocean as he waits for the tide to drop down again. He recounts that “the exercise was an experience but I wouldn’t say that it was satisfying. Staying in the same position for hours and trying to move as little as possible because of the time lapse was pretty uncomfortable.”
Through his pained efforts, we are able to feel what it would be like to be marooned for a day under the sun, in the middle of the ocean on one of these safety poles. The distorted imagery that comes from Vogel’s 360 camera rig gives us both a full vantage of everything he saw, as well as the unnerving feeling that comes with realizing how isolated he was.
Ultimately, Vogel’s film “Wrong Path” shows us that there is no right or wrong way to approach filmmaking. He demonstrates that ingenuity and creativity can beat out expensive camera gear and that sometimes, risky experiments turn into the most interesting results.
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