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Making movies - why are mine crap :(
Was given a Go Pro for my birthday and have recorded a bit of riding and have gone through the journey of mounting positions, the crap formatting stop/start ing issue, and even after al that they look rubbish.
Are there any tips on how to make them a bit interesting besides throwing myself of the edge or trying to do death defying stunts (to add I'm 41 yrs old). Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Post a link to a video you've uploaded and we'll give some constructive criticism.
Go-Pros need lots of light so take your video on a bright sunny day, otherwise it looks muddy. A helmet mount gives smoothest footage but you need to attach is very firmly to the helmet and strap your helmet to your head firmly. Upload to Vimeo or Pinkbike as they have a higher resolution and you don't loose so much in compression. Add some cool music to liven it up. I use the standard Windows Movie Maker, it's all you need.
Get a curly gorillapod thingy and do a bit of trackside filming. Constant POV is boring.
That said, I simply can't be arsed stopping and setting up most of the time. My cams are 95% used as bogan repellant for commuting duties.
Mine is somewhere around awaba from my lat video... Don't suppose anyone has found it?....
I find I like the ones following another rider
A friend mounted a sony camera in a clear plastic enclosure on his fork, down near the axle.
Being closer to the ground it makes the obstacles look larger and conveys speed and motion better than a helmet mount.
I've got so many gigs of footage. Almost all of it is shit.
Unless you're an amazing rider I'm not sure how you can compete with the plethora of clips out there.
If I get bored of watching my own riding after 20 seconds, I'm not sure how somebody else is meant to find it interesting.
My GoPro is now just a camera. It takes pretty amazing pics though.
You will take hours of footage, but you will only ever get 3-5 minutes of good stuff - accept it.
Mount the camera on a number of places i.e.. handlebar (looking away and towards your face), seat post facing backwards;
Get a mate to take pix of you;
Mount it in a tree or near jumps;
Include the drive to the trails, car trip, packing, unpacking etc.
Use a good video editing program - iMovie for apple has great transitions for us plebs.
Hot tip - once you put all your good footage together, choose a song or songs that are the same length of the footage. Easy way to do soundtracks.
Watch the go-pro movie of the week for hot tips.
Great feedback and its a case of putting the camera in different spot as well. I have a gorilla grip and didn't thin about using that which is an awesome idea.
Would like to know the best settings if anyone has some tips on that as I have a feeling I'm currently on a high res setting and draining the stuffing out of my battery.
Im such an amateur
I don't have a GoPro and don't do much videoing myself but thought I‘d direct you to the TrailFlix page which has 40+ trail videos. Grant fro TF knows how to use a camera well (though only just got a gopro) and if you have time it shows if you use many different angles, good music and have short but understandable stints it looks good. I know it takes about 3 times as long to do the ride though when we film and a good day of editing but it's quite enjoyable and looks good.
Here's the GNR video starring myself. Notice the variety of speed, terrain and camera settings. .http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=j4r-WVen-jk&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dj4r-WVen-jk
Hope it's useful
Tristan
that is clear for the viewer.
If its just to document yourself on the trail or street view style documentation for others then let it be so we can see the track and know whats there.
Too many amateur movies are basically music videos of guys in Lycra from different camera angles pumping some pedals.
Figure out what the point is of each segment or scene and also the movie. Most good pro or amateur movies have a point to each shot. Often this is the stunt although a few tell a story of lifestyle. Same with good still photos, they each have a point made and enhance by composition.
A good local amateur video is this
http://vimeo.com/44190109
It tells a story about their lifestyle blended with trailing and race events in central coast. Not sure if he's getting paid now but Google TY Bowmaker, he's shot heaps on pink bike etc. Here is an earlier work and his winner of pink bike video of the day.
Some local vids by others have showcased the experience with scenery artistic shots blended with good riding.
Look at why movies like Lifecycles are so popular. They have a point that captures attention.
Always use the highest resolution possible, even when saving the vid to final movie file.
Make sure you have plenty of memory before you start editing.
Used a lot of the Pan and Zoom tool in editing.
here's one of my favorite from pinkbike.
/
He's using a Go-Pro, you can't zoom a Go-Pro.
I would love an Automatic tracking tripod, would help a lot for those solo shoots
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/SOLOSHOT-AUTOMATIC-TR...
Actually the whole story telling thing gets weary after a while. I don't want to see you loading bikes, driving off, travelling, putting on your helmet bla bla. Boring!!!
Just show me the action!!!
(my $0.02 worth)
The other cliche is to have a down-hiller pushing his bike uphill for exactly a quarter of the video. Check it out, it's true.
Its generally pretty naff unless you're hitting some big speeds or huge jumps.
I tried recently to post links but it would appear that I'm a pleb. So, jump onto Vimeo.com and look at the films done by Andrew Whiteford (he does both MTB and skiing).
'Almost Spring 2011' is a favourite (good choice of music IMO) and so is "Leaf Peeping on Lithium" but you realise the work that went into editing when you understand that many of his bike films are self filmed. In other words, set up the camera on rock, start filming, push bike up, ride down and past camera, stop, return to camera, stop filming, position camera for next section then appreciate that each section only has 1-5 seconds of riding. That and he also uses 3 cameras in one hit.
If you're feeling adventurous, look at his "Hero3 test around JH". Now THAT is a good POV!
That said, if you're keen to have a play around at somewhere like Red Hill (which I think has a lot of potential), I'd be happy to join you and help with the filming (along with a little riding). Two hands, light work, etc.
haha, I was going to include the pushing up hill in my spiel too but obviously didn't.
Chopstir, I don't think that soloshot tilts automatically. It looks like it has manual tilt and auto rotation. I would check before you buy, when you eventually convince the CFO it's a good idea.
ALWAYS shoot in the highest quality .. ALWAYS!
Guys like Anthill and Filme von Draussen have probably graduated film schools and spent their entire lives practicing their art. You can't expect to produce work like that without dedicating 1000s of DAYS honing your directing, filming and editing skills. So be realistic about what you expect to achieve.
When I bought my GoPro I had grand plans of producing awesome MTB videos until I realised how fat, uncoordinated and slow I looked on a MTB. This is why all my video's are POV
I have around 145 trail videos on youtube and their purpose is to document every single metre of a trail so a rider knows what to expect. Nothing flash just headcam shots of the trail.
My feature videos are edits to music where I'm trying to capture the spirit of the adventure I was on. I rarely do planned scenes I just use my GoPro POV footage, but editing these videos takes anywhere from 8-80 hours depending on how pedantic I want to be and when I feel its time to just abandon the project. I largely edit the feature videos for myself and if other people enjoy them thats a bonus.
Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuYri656a9...
So back to my first point .. watch the making of videos for "Trail Notes". That will give you just a taste of how hard it is to shoot good MTB Video.
http://vimeo.com/40075515
http://vimeo.com/40075514
earlier this year and went crazy for about 2 weeks.
Had seen other peoples efforts, particularly the ones where they include their trail dogs and thought "yeah, I wanna do that"
Well after a very short time I realised I was shooting the same thing ride after ride.
The GoPro now lives in a drawer with my Ab roller!
Get a bigger Hard Drive.
Ive just upgraded mine due to helmet cam.
I've been recording at the 900 setting because my computer is to slow to play back in 1080