How to make great Electric Skateboard Videos | GEAR GUIDE

You might want to avoid shooting video vertically. It is generally frowned upon and by many -including myself- considered a breach of good etiquette.

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I use Adobe Creative Cloud…mostly Premiere and Magic Bullet. Actually I had someone ask me if it’s a wheelie or a manual. From my understanding if you throttle into the wheelie, let throttle go and balance while coasting, that’s technically a manual which is what we did. Not sure if this specific to hub motors because of the coasting ability. Maybe someone else can weigh in on this.

creative cloud rules! Mine was done rather quickly in Premier CC outputting through Encoder, but i’ve used After Effects extensively for other things like the music video i finally finished late last year. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Magic Bullet suite though. But i’m wondering how much of its polish can also be done with standard premier tools and gradient overlays.

maybe i should step up my game a little next time and see what i can get out of it :smile:

What blows my mind these days is what you can get out of a phone camera and what CC can do with it.

Yup Magic Bullet is good for quick and dirty color grades. A lot of the looks in there could definitely be duplicated with the Lumetri tools in Premiere but I find that applying an extreme look and dialing back is more intuitive to me than starting at a neutral point. Outside of narrative or commercial projects, I go pretty heavy on filters with everything else. Speaking of phone cams, I just got this sweet 18mm Z-Prime lens for my iPhone 6 which should be awesome to test out on the next ride. Kill two birds…

i noticed you posted something about that on instagram. I got some cheap crappy lenses from geek.com super cheap a while back and plan on playing with those, but i’m definitely interested in getting some decent ones like what you got. The 6+ shoots crazy good video for what it is, but good lensing can really make a mood.

Absolutely, I’d also highly recommend a handheld gimbal, like an Ikan Fly X-3, it does a lot for smoothing out the shots and combined with the iPhone’s internal stabilization, makes it buttery smooth.

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On the subject of iPhone lenses, I got one of those Optrix Waterproof cases recently, it comes with a 4-lense kit and I added another fisheye for skate shots. It can be mounted on a monopod/handle for action photography. A totally decent piece of kit.

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@trbt555 @longhairedboy also recently picked up one of these…basically a painter’s pole adapter with a 1/4-20 thread. Painter poles are super cheap at Home Depot and can extend super far for some really interesting action/booming shots. We have may to split this thread into DIY video techniques next lol

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221850126641

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one cool thing about using iphones as cameras other than the excellent video they take that is always handily available in your pocket is the fact that their lenses are entirely on one side of the device. And small.

That means you can do things like duct/gaffer tape them to sticks, microphone booms, tree branches, road signs, just about anything without obstructing the lens.

several of the shots in my video were taken while my wallet-case was being used to drape the phone over a 15mph speed limit sign, fiber optic pole, tree branch, and a few other dirty tricky things i used in the field since i didn’t think to bring a tripod.

i don’t see why this thread can’t be used to talk about our video techniques as well as our videos we’re posting, but i’m not the only mod so maybe there are other ideas about that within other mod’s brains.

did i mention my lens was cracked? it produces the most brilliant lens flares now that i don’t think I could reproduce otherwise, but it does make golden-hour shots a little trickier when the sun is off to one side and not behind the lens.

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I am really interested in this topic at the moment… I personally think that to achieve a mainstream status for the self-built electric skateboard movement it will all come down to amazing videos of us riding. Communication through video is very powerful.

So how can a beginner make a really awesome video with a limited budget.?

I think our resident filmmakers @Moja @RunPlayBack are the guys with the most experience to help answer these questions.

What is the absolute minimum hardware/software/technique to achieve a quality video, one with stable footage. Something that people want to watch & share?

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The answer to stable footage is powered Gimbals, you can stick a DSLR on a DJI Ronin or go smaller and get the DJI Osmo which is the smallest gimbal camera to date. Gopro on a stick with a foot head for video is great too.

Quality video comes from understanding sequences, composing nice shots, constructing stories and communicating a feeling. The technical side relies on good lenses, large sensors, good codecs, precision composition and stable motion.

I’d say get an Osmo with an extended stick, the mic attachment and an Iphone 6. And make sure you are getting all kinds of different angles, movements and locations in your footage. Good editing is about having lots of content to play with to construct your video. Also pick a nice track, nothing worse than great footage to a horrible track. And dont forget to beat match to the music, its as easy as laying markers on the track in the timeline.

Get one and go shred!

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Just to add on a cheap option, 80% of my most recent eboard video (with my wood arbor and pocket rocket) was filmed with a gen1 Garmin virb on a go pole…

The virb is a gopro competitor by Garmin (very reputable company abviously) but has a $100 price tag: http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-Action-Camera-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B00EOHUVV8

This thing is totally worth the buy… hell, I have 2 of them, and 1 , the newest version! Color is great, film time is 3+ hours, waterproof, has a LCD display, easy to use… the list goes on an on.

On a side note,

FCP > After Effects :wink:

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@Moja pretty much covered it all, great insight! Just to add to that, the video should evoke an emotion and translate what you were feeling in a visual language. It’s a big reason why I go straight into edit once I get home - to capitalize off the lingering adrenaline rush.

That osmo makes me a bit moist…

Doubt my galaxy note 4 will fit though!

And ouch it’s pricy… might have to settle for one of the Chinese brand gopro handheld motor gimbals things.

I’ve been using the Korean-based Varavon Birdycam Lite religiously. The original Ronin is a beast to carry at 13lbs body only. Smaller gimbals with encoder technology in the motors is where it’s at for action stuff.

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IMO, I think its hard to make a good video these days with out some drone footage in there. :smiley:

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what is the cheapest (without being a piece of shit) one of those?

This is what I use for the GoPro and every flavor of knockoff GoPro.

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I’m waiting for the weather to warm up to use the follow me mode on the Phantom 3. In the meantime I just punch it into the sky:

@RunPlayBack thanks for the link. I was looking for those adapters he showed so I could pole mount the gimbal.

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