The Wee Adventure Film festival is back again next February for its 3rd year. Its vision is to create a place where adventure athletes and the public can come together to socialise, enjoy and be inspired by adventure sports films. Its open to all, and over the last 2 years they have seen films about BASE jumping, kayaking, climbing, biking and most of these films were shot by people like you, out there doing your thing. Films should be no longer the 10 minutes and DVD quality. Check out the website for more details.
We have asked our long suffering Outsider camera guru, Torquil Fleming-Boyd, to jot down 10 insider tips from his 20 years of filming experience and share them with us.
Preparation is key – before your shoot you should:
Make sure all you batteries are fully charged and its always great to bring spares.
Make sure you subjects know where to go and what to do. No point you sitting for hours at an amazing jump, while all the riders are on the other size of the hill. A good idea is to send everyone a plan, known in the industry as a call sheet, the day before the shoot.
If you cannot afford a good dry bag for your camera, a handy tip is to use cling film and an umbrella to keep the camera dry.
On a similar note, make sure you have lots of warm and waterproof clothing with you, and don’t forget your sun protection. When you are filming you get to stand around a lot, and you will feel the cold or indeed get sun burned a lot quicker then the participants you are filming.
10 tips for your shoot:
- It sounds obvious, but always make sure that your lens is free of water and dirt. Using a soft dry cloth will prevent scratches, I find Buffs are perfect.
- If you a shooting something like mountain biking or snowboarding, position yourself at the bottom of the run and set the lens to widest shot the camera will allow.
- Use a tripod, rock or some other solid surface to stabilise yourself and the camera, this will help prevent any unwanted camera shake.
- Tell your subjects to wait before starting on their run so as to give yourself time to start recording and get your eye adjusted to the view finder or monitor.
- Let your subjects come to you. Do not move the camera, just let them pass through the frame. This allows your viewers to see all the action and participants clearly. Don’t worry if you miss some of the action you can either reposition the camera and ask your subjects to do it again. There is always “Take Two”
- The best way to edit an action sequence is to have 3 basic shots: a wide shot of the event, a medium shot and a close up shot. When edited together the viewer gets a really good sense of what’s happening.
- One of the hardest things to do in film making or photography is to tell a story that viewers will understand. Always start with a wide shot of the area that the event will take place in and hold that shot longer then you think you need to..This is called an establishing shot, and you can always shorten it when you edit the footage.
- Panning shots are a great way of showing this but are some of the hardest to get right. A large landscape may looks more dramatic when the camera is panned. For a panning shot its best to put the camera on a tripod, remembering to keep the horizon level, and slowly start panning the camera from right to left or visa versa. When you think you have enough of the shot slowly come to a stop….don’t move the camera at the end or it will be confusing to viewer. Always practice a few times until you are ready to record.
- Close up shots allow us to see the action in detail but again are hard to get right. If no tripod is available then get yourself in comfortable steady position. Pick a person to feature and only follow them. Otherwise you can end up with confused panning around shots that don’t show us anything. Remember if the shot is zoomed in too much it can look very shaky so simply widen it out a little. These are great shots to make an action sequence pacey and dramatic.
- My last and most important tip for telling a visual story is keep it simple and make sure the camera is recording at least 10 seconds of action otherwise you might find you don’t have enough material to edit your piece.
Cameras and Kit.
This is a huge area and we are only touching on it here.
One of the things you will hear mention of these days is the term HD, or High definition. Most new cameras record in High Definition (HD), and this is the best. High Definition refers to the resolution or the amount of pixels on the screen, so full HD is 1920 by 1080. This means that each frame is 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels high. Standard definition has less pixels, so so therefore has less detail, but has the advantage of taking up less broadband if you are posting to the internet and also needs less space on your storage device so you can shoot more. However don’t worry if your camera records SD. This looks great too and often used by the professionals.
Panasonic, Sony and JVC are the main domestic manufactures and they are all good. We like the Panasonic cameras, and use the Panasonic HVX200 which is a 3 chip (professional) camera and the really lovely little HDC-SD10, which is a HD camcorder.
HDC-SD10 / HDC -TM10
The HDC-SD10 records straight to a SD memory card, and has a nice touch screen Focus Tracking feature, with lets you focus on your subject, even if they are moving very quickly. It is also currently the worlds lightest full HD camcorder (230 g) and has high-powered 16x optical zoom. RRP €679
Go Pro Hero Cam.
The HeroCam is a very small waterproof, shock and dust resistant minicam that can be mounted just about anywhere on your subject.. Its great for getting another point of view to edit in with the footage from your main camera. RRP €239 Available from Great Outdoors and 53 Degrees North. Check out the cool videos on the Go Pro website
I got the Gopro HD Hero 960 and it is amazing.
Love it.
hello, i am fromkarakorum and just started adventure filming, most high alititude filming, i have sony HD 200x. my first filming was very successful at 6400m, what you think is it good for higher altitude 7000m and on 8000m?
thank you
An attention-grabbing dialogue is worth a comment. I think that you must write more on this topic, it might not be a taboo subject however usually people are not brave enough to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers