videos:tips

Lights - Camera - Action

Lights - Camera - Action

As the number of cameras available to strap to our boats increases, this is a place to collect tips and record things that do and do not work.

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General ideas

Hold the camera in landscape (i.e. long side horizontal). It may feel odd, but most TV's are this way around.
Keep filming. It is easier to cut out the swimming, than recreate the footage of a spectacular save.

Handheld video from a rib

Move the rib, rather than using the zoom feature on the camera. Very few digital cameras in video mode can handle the zoom (i.e. mostly digital not optical zoom) and it makes it all much more bouncy. If you are using an SLR with Digi mode then the shaking is the limiting factor.
Wherever possible try to stop the rib and get boats sailing by (this may be Cherub specific).
Try to get the camera person next to the driver or better near the engine(i.e. not at the bow as it is more bouncy).
If possible train the rib driver to avoid camera moving accross the bow. In gerneral this requires the driver to think carefully about the path he drives to avoid him or boat getting into shot (i.e. plan route to always turn to stbd if camera is on stbd).
Be careful about getting the way of racing!!!

Getting close with a rib

Three key points.

Ensure the boat you are filming are happy with you getting close.
Ensure the rib driver and yourself have a good communication method (handsignals are best as they result in a usable soundtrack)
Do not crash into the boat you are filming.

A 6ft long carbon pole (tiller extension) with a Go-pro on the end delivered some specacular clips in Santander. After some practise Maf Kiddle appeared to master the “hit and hope” method (no screen preview).

Cameras on Cherubs

Be careful about fiddling getting the way of racing, getting sailing is priority 1.
The key to a camera position working is not letting ropes lassoo it.

Some things that appear to work well

Cockpit cam

For this we mounted the camera near the shroud point as possible. Kites sheets ripping the camera off precluded other placing. Aiming the camera is made far easier if you can get your hands on a Go-Pro LCD screen. Failing that a micro SD card and a non-iphone with a micro SD reader (android…) can be easier than lugging a desktop about. The end of the video shows some of the footage where we forgot to check where the temple Vang was!

Sprit cam

Mounting the camera behind the tack line seems like a recipe for tangles, this shot used a 2ft extension bar.

Boom cam

Again better with long extension. The practicalities of sailing with 6ft of tube out of the back of the boom are suprisingly not as limiting on a start line as one may at first consider.

Editing software

Following on from Santander we now have some video editing software on a Laptop that can do Go-Pro with no additional processing. This makes it possible to edit the video from your saal in the bar aftwards (or in bed). If you are looking at software it is worth testing it to check it does not need to “import” and recompile the data from your camera first. If you are a pro editor, have a super cumputer and bags of time this may not be applicable.

The Santander movie and Evo launch were put together in Power Director, this does appear to offer processing free editing and is very simple to use.

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