UKC

I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination when it comes to film and photography, however one or two professionals and gifted a matures lurk this site.

Would any of you be willing to share any filming tips to help me create epic movies with my two teeny tiny action cams?

In reply to The Lemming:

be creative where you place 'em. pure helmet/chest shots are actually rather boring. and also, try to get some "normal" cam material as well.

In reply to The Lemming:
The rule of threes:

every story has a beginning, a middle and an end, usually in that order. (Think of the typical news programme - tell 'em what you are going to tell 'em; tell 'em; tell 'em what you've told 'em. )

Get three different angles of things: a wide shot; a medium shot and a close up. Mix these up in editing.

Use a tripod or some sort of support even if it's just perching the camera on a rock.

Don't follow the action around, it makes you look like some sort of paparazzi, let the action come in and out of shot.

Think about continuity: if person A is looking to the left talking to person B then the shots of person B should have them facing right, that sort of thing.

Get additional material, things like eating grub in the cafe; driving to the crag; gearing up.

When editing keep each shot fairly short, 3 - 5 seconds unless the scene really does deserve more. That doesn't mean you just shoot 5 second clips but that you edit them that way. Cut between shots on the beat of the music or every other beat. Mix them up so change on one-two-one-two beats. Don't use cheesy transitions between shots: either a straight cut or fade to black/white.

Keep the whole thing as short as possible, maybe the length of one music track - I got the three days of mountain biking in to six minutes.

In reply to Bob:

Some really good tips there.

Cheers.

In reply to Bob:

Some good tips - don't underestimate the level of editing - I learned video editing years ago at university and the rule of thumb was it takes one hour to put together a minute of final footage. It's a bit quicker now with digital though.

Even if you're not using GoPro, use the GoPro editing suite since it will ingest any .mov or .mp4 files and you can use their in built templates to throw something together really quickly.

Shameless plug here but the videos below were filmed on a combination of Garmin Virb, a Qumox and an iPhone and I managed to put the finished version together each time in around an hour using the GoPro software.

vimeo.com/125617810
vimeo.com/120044433

It limits your choice of music but not bad for something rough and ready. It reinforces the principle that you lay down the narrative and cuts to the music/audio, and then lay the video over the top. Much easier than trying the other way around.

In reply to The Lemming:

Anybody any tips or ideas on how I can do slow mo?

I'm struggling and think that I'm doing too much at the editing stage while fumbling around.

Here's my first attempt at slow mo. The end result is ok'ish but it took me ages to fumble around using the gopro free software. Fookin buggy software that keeps crashing.

Any ideas how I could do this in Premier elements?

youtube.com/watch?v=aH1eUvXPpKc&

In reply to The Lemming:
I assume you've followed a set of tips like - http://blog.queensland.com/2013/07/05/how-to-create-stunning-gopro-slow-mot... and http://projectgo.pro/gopro-slow-motion/ ?

Not had the GoPro software crash myself.

In reply to The Lemming:

Not sure if its my cheapo tablet, but that didn't run very well there was a big jump in the middlle.

Firstly shoot in the highest frame rate you can. I try to go with 120fps but that requires good light to get a decent result.

On premier elements under the tools menu there are 2 options

Time stretch - allows basic slow motion by altering the overall length of a clip just experiment with the numbers a bit. This allows you to get slow motion sounds if you want them.

Time remapping - opens a tool that allows you to slowdown or speed up sections of a clip including accelerating/decelerating the clip going in and out of slowmo sections which gives very good results, but it doesn't effect the sound so if you slow part of the clip sound will go out of sync and finish before the video.

Hth

In reply to balmybaldwin:


Its not your tablet, rather my clumsy attempt at freezing the action before Bailey jumps out of the frame.

In reply to The Lemming:
I thought you had Adobe Premier ?

Just shoot everything in 60fps then use Premier to slow the frame rate to whatever you want ?

just right click the clip > modify > interpret footage then set framerate, simples, if elements lets you do that that is !

In reply to Dark-Cloud:


I have Premier Elements, and I'm still learning how to use it. I've got a new toy that allows me to capture up to 240 frames a second, but I don't have a scooby how to go about converting all this data.

However I have quickly learnt that playing a file created by my action cam at 120 frames a second makes the computer cry home to mama. Even my dedicated graphics card can't keep up.

Its a learning curve.

In reply to The Lemming:

If you drop to 720p you won't loose much (and lets face it most action cam vids are played at lower resolutions via youtube etc) and it might make your machine happier.

Also try a selective start up with unecessary services turned off to help.

See instructions above for using premier elements for slow mo.

Here's a vid I've done, at the end are a series of slowmos using these tools. I'm not happy with the blend to freeze frame at the end... it needs to stop more slowly

vimeo.com/129823412