Steve Crow
Forum Replies Created
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Yeah Bret I see what you are thinking…still I have in mind a pretty strong impression of a moving “line” – maybe it’s some kind of border effect applied to one of the clips along with the crop adjustment….hmmm
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Steve, it seems like a wipe transition would not show the entire clip being adjusted – just during the period of the transition (the end of one clip and the start of the second clip) so I don’t think that’s it.
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Oh and then when you’re REALLY good check out the remote controlled helicopters (one popular model is called the Parrot) that are designed to carry small video cameras – then you can chase the riders, hover in a dramatic spot or fly parallel to the action – just don’t crash into any of the riders – that will be the end of your sweet production deal! ha ha
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Remember that advice from photographers doesn’t always apply directly to video – a high shutter speed is great for a still shot when you want to freeze the action – but for video ….errrr…..not so good. Keep it at 1/50th if you film at 24-26 frames per second and then don’t touch it! 🙂
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Yeah, I watched the first video you linked to…it looks like you don’t have to tell the story of the entire race and just show highlights which is great for you. I don’t film action sports so keep that in mind but here are my thoughts:
I think your next step is to mix in interview footage and more closeups of the bikes while they are being prepared for the race and also in the pit stop (if that’s the right word!) For both of these shallow depth of field and for the interviews good audio will really spice up your presentation.
You had one section (around 2:11) where you were able to position yourself in a nice spot to capture the riders getting some good air….for that particular spot you might try getting a tad closer and, again, going for the shallow depth of field. Combined with the slow motion effect you’ve already learned to do – that will make for some dramatic footage.
By the way I firmly agree with the earlier comment about sound and the fact of how 80-90 percent of the story is really brought out through editing….of course you need the raw footage to work with.
When you have the budget for it – check out the “sliders” they really can add a lot of drama to your shots in the right circumstances.
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Keep the shutter speed at twice the frame rate…if you go higher the video will start to look more staccato (like the super old fashioned hand cranked movie cameras used during the Charlie Chaplin era) and if you go lower it will get blurrier. You might try a few shots just to see the effect but you won’t end up using the footage more than likely.
You don’t have the skill or experience yet to bother with trying to maintain focus on moving subjects – that’s something experts camera operators can do with lots of practice…so keep your iris in in the high numbers – in other words smaller aperture holes letting LESS light in. I don’t think you will have any lighting problems since its daytime but you can raise your ISO to compensate for the high aperture, try to stay below ISO 400 or max 800 which should be very doable in your situation.
There’s also an exposure compensation function where you can raise or lower your exposure by 4 stops I believe without changing the ISO. (think of it like “Gain”)
Getting new lenses shouldn’t be necessary….I’d stay as wide as possible to begin with…remember that with the cheaper kit lenses as you zoom in….your picture will actually get darker…that’s because they don’t keep what’s called a constant aperture….the aperture changes as you zoom in and out. Therefore I’d set the lens up at a wide-ish setting and just leave it there….that will be good enough for filming racers going around the track. Invest in the best tripod you can afford…one with a fluid head – that’s going to make a major difference to the look and professionalism of your final video. Shaky handheld footage can be okay for a shot here and there but when everything is rocking and rolling like your camera is at filming from a boat in rough seas – that’s when audiences start to get nausea. 🙂
As you start to film B-roll of cars that are stationary, things around the track, people and so on – then you can try out the shallow depth of field look by moving your aperture down to the smallest numbers your lens can handle. Be aware that on a sunny day you may be limited to how large an aperture you can film at before overexposing your image…you may have your ISO set at 100 for instance, your shutter speed somewhere around 1/50th and the image will be way too bright…that’s where attaching Neutral Density filters come in…basically they cut down the light so that you can get that shallow depth of field look without blowing out/overexposing your image.
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Dude, I’m sorry to tell you that the .thm files merely hold the meta information about your clip, not the clip itself. So no you can’t go from the .thm to the .mov
However….SOME of the .mov files you deleted may actually still be on your father’s computer. Unless you did some sort of special “secure delete” normal deleting only sets a flag that removes the file from you searches, it’s actually still there on the hard drive UNTIL another file overwrites it because it needs the space.
Search the Web for Un-Delete software and you may be able to recover some of your movies back, a lot depends upon how many new files your father has put on the machine in the meantime and how much data was actually overwritten.
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Oh I did some tests at home and it does definitely look like there was something about that environment I was filming it that caused the mic fading in and out and the noisy signal….next time I will try scanning for a clear frequency, funny that didn’t occur to me in the heat of production.
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Thanks everyone, this has been very helpful! 🙂
Steve -
I think it may be worth auditioning some of the free to try data recovery programs designed for recovering corrupted photographs – they may do video too