In October of 2021, I traveled to Namibia
to run the 7 day, 250 km Namib Desert race
which is part of the Racing the Planet 4 Desert Series
and I brought a camera, in fact several cameras with me.
The result was a 9 part series documenting my adventure before, during, and after the race
for a total of more than 2.5 hours of final content published on youtube.
In fact, that series may have been what originally brought you to my channel.
Well it's been a couple of months since the series finale
and from the start of the series I began getting questions about how I produced it
so I thought I would finally answer some of those questions
with an in-depth look at my entire production workflow
everything from how I planned my filming in advance of leaving for Namibia
to the gear that I used throughout the 3 weeks that I was there
as well as my post-production workflow.
I've also got some thoughts around what I'll be doing differently
when I join Racing the Planet again here in the country of Georgia in June.
Long-time channel subscribers have no doubt noticed that
I've been increasingly making my films about more than just the race itself
incorporating as much of the local culture and history as possible.
This is actually something I started really doing with my film last summer
about my race in Quebec, the Quebec Mega Trail 100 miler
where Audrée is from and where my family originally lived
as well after moving to Canada.
I hope that it makes my films feel as much like
travel documentaries as race films.
There's typically a reason that I'm attracted to visiting and racing
in the places that I choose to go to in the first place
aside from just the race
and so I try to incorporate those aspects into my storytelling.
Now this does mean doing quite a bit of research in advance
so that I can plan out some of the key scenes that I want to film
and to make sure that I have enough background research
prepared before I arrive.
In the case of Namibia, I started with a travel guide
where I was able to get a lot of the information that I needed
and in fact I pretty much always start by reading a travel guide
when i'm planning a trip abroad.
I also watched some documentaries on youtube
to get some ideas for locations that I might want to visit
and how I might want to film some of them.
Most of the on-screen dialogue that you heard me say in the video
was scripted well in advance of filming
although some of it I was writing kind of as I went
especially as my plans evolved
but I definitely had all of my key talking points scripted before I rolled camera
and this even includes some of the stuff that I said during the race itself.
I had some of the key information loosely scripted
and planned out for that as well
I knew in advance that I'd be doing an episodic series for this
although I actually wasn't totally sure yet how many episodes
but I did have a pretty good sense that I'd be doing
a separate episode to document my first week in the country
leading up to the race
along with a separate episode for each stage of the race
but I ended up adding a second episode
which documented us arriving at camp before the race began
that I hadn't originally planned for
along with a separate episode about my week of travel after the race
which originally I just anticipated kind of tacking on
to the final episode about the race itself.
I say that I hadn't originally planned on this
but I did make these decisions while I was filming
so I knew pretty early on after arriving at camp for example
that I'd have enough footage from the interviews
that I was already capturing that day to produce that second episode
in lead up to the race.
The last step before I left though for my trip
was to plan my gear which brings us to the production phase.
Everything I carried with me on the trip for filming
fit into a backpack
which I use as my carry-on luggage while I'm traveling.
I spent quite a bit of time building up this kit
during the pandemic in anticipation of a trip just like this.
I'm not going to go into too much technical detail here
because I do have another video that I published last year
for my channel members
where I break down all of this in more detail
and I plan on doing an update to this video for 2022
but this should just give you a sense
of how much gear I had to carry for this trip.
Now this gear might look like a lot
but it's actually really well optimized for this kind of travel
and a lot of this is actually pretty cheap
at least relatively speaking.
I do have access to more professional gear
but sometimes the best gear isn't what you want
because professional grade stuff can be heavier and more cumbersome
to use in a run and gun scenario.
So for example, I use a mirrorless camera with a smaller crop sensor
instead of a full frame camera sensor.
A crop sensor isn't as good in low light conditions
but this camera is just a little bit smaller and lighter
and so are the batteries and most importantly the lenses that go along with it.
And it also would be just that much less of a hit to my wallet
were it to be stolen or broken
not to mention the fact that I was pretty sure
I was going to be getting sand in all of this stuff
so I wouldn't want to take any gear with me that was too expensive anyway.
I brought two lenses, one being a zoom lens along with a wider angle one
and again these aren't the highest quality or sharpest lenses
but I don't think i'd want to take anything more expensive out into the desert.
I use a small shotgun mic with a windsock which is super important
because it can get really windy when filming in uncontrolled conditions
and this was certainly true in Namibia.
I also brought a pair of wireless mics
which I sometimes use with an external lapel mic
but they also have built-in mics
with these really big wind socks that work quite well.
You might notice these clipped on somewhat crudely
in most of the interviews that I shot
and they really helped with the wind
which was a constant battle for me while filming in Namibia.
On a more technical note, I brought a full set of variable ND filters
which helped to cut down on the amount of light coming into the camera
so that I can keep the iris open to give me that shallow depth of field
without having to change my shutter speed
and I used these quite a lot.
I also traveled with a really small tripod.
I prefer to shoot handheld typically instead of using a tripod
but occasionally I will set the camera down on a table
or even on the roof of a car
and while filming the interviews at camp I was able
to balance the camera on my knee using this small tripod
in order to bring the camera up closer to eye level
while the person that I was interviewing and I could have a conversation.
I also brought a couple of GoPros with me and a bunch of batteries
as well as the Insta360 ONE X2.
I filmed most of the race footage on a GoPro Hero 10
but I had a Hero 9 as a backup just in case
along with a bunch of spare memory cards
for the action cameras and my mirrorless camera.
And lastly, I brought a drone which I wasn't actually sure i'd get much use out of
but in the end proved to be really useful while at camp.
You do need special permission to use a drone in most places in Namibia
and you're going to want to register it with the government in advance
to avoid issues at the border
but fortunately I was able to work within the blanket permission
that the race organizers had received
being effectively part of their media team.
Now the drone I really only used while at camp after I was done running for the day.
The rest of the drone footage that you saw was filmed
by the official photographer Thiago
and by Francois who was their local manager of the event.
Normally these races the organizers would have actually had
their own dedicated video person on the ground filming additional footage
which I would have been able to get access to
but I was happy to have at least gotten access to this drone footage.
It's safe to say that the series would not have been nearly as engaging without it.
So this is probably a good time to address
how I actually carried all of this gear with me throughout the week of the race.
When I first began discussing with Racing the Planet
the possibility of my joining them and filming at the Namib Desert race
the idea was always that I would be there first and foremost to race
but that I'd also be kind of acting as an embedded reporter of sorts
in order to document my experience.
This meant that they would help me by carrying this production bag
with all of my camera gear from camp to camp each day
so that I could focus on running
and I'd only be required to carry my mandatory race kit just like any other racer
along with a GoPro on a little handle and a couple of extra batteries.
The GoPro definitely did add a little bit of weight
but there's obviously just no way that I could have carried
all of the rest of that camera gear myself and still raced
and the film would have been nothing by comparison
had I tried to only film it with just a GoPro.
Now having said that, filming while racing did add other complications for me.
For one, it made the week surprisingly busy.
I really didn't have much spare time between racing and then resting a little
before doing more filming all while trying to prepare for the next day
and to get enough rest.
In the mornings I had to get up a little bit earlier
and I was always a little bit rushed to get my gear prepped
and to take care of everything else that I had to do
while also gathering footage before the race each day.
Even just filming that pre-race briefing each morning was a distraction
because that was time that I could have used to do all my own final preparations
and generally just try to focus on the race itself.
The interviews also proved to be way more of a challenge than I had anticipated
especially when trying to work around the wind.
I really only had a small window each day after the race
before the wind would pick up in the afternoon
and so in the end I had to wait until the rest day following the long stage
to film the bulk of the interviews that I had planned
and even then the wind was way too strong for most of the day.
So I only had a window of about a few hours to grab these.
Now you might notice that Gabriella's interview is quite short
and that's because we actually filmed that one in a hurry
the morning of the final stage.
And I filmed the interview with Sam, the race director, at the finish line
after finishing the race which actually worked out pretty well in terms of the story
but that definitely was not planned.
But believe it or not, there just wasn't a good time for us to connect
to do that at any other time during the week.
Now you'll notice a second camera angle with most of the interviews
which was filmed on a GoPro.
That was kind of a last-minute decision that I made
but it really helped me in post-production.
So in the end, filming turned what is normally a really relaxing week for racers
into a very busy and somewhat stressful week for me.
But I love what I do and it also made the week that much more fun and exciting.
So I wouldn't have it any other way.
When I got home, the first task at hand
was to ingest back up and organize all of my footage.
I also had to spend a fair bit of time cleaning out all of my camera gear
because there were sand in everything.
I debated sending some of it away to get professionally cleaned
but I think I managed to get it back to an acceptable level myself.
I had a ton of footage just hours and hours and gigs and gigs.
I organized all of my footage into folders by day
with subfolders for each of the different cameras that I used.
My 360 camera footage then had to be processed and rendered as well
which took some time
and I brought all of this into my editing software
and began to roughly assemble the footage from each day.
I also rough cut the interviews.
For Vladimi's interview, I had had him give me his answers in both english and portuguese.
So I roughly edited his responses based on the english responses he'd given me
and then sent these off to be transcribed and translated to english.
I used the translations to then further refine the edit
and then was able to use this for the subtitles as well.
I had a pretty good idea of how I was going to use some of the interviews
but mixing these into the sequences was actually one of the last things that I did.
I also had a pretty good sense of how I was going to structure the scenes
that i'd filmed for before and after the race
but again here I left some of the final decisions until the end.
For me, editing tends to be a process of reducing the footage
and chipping away at it slowly.
Kind of like sculpting a statue from a big marble slab.
You might have a pretty good idea of the form that you're hoping for it to take
but you have to kind of let it reveal itself over time.
So I always start with what I know
and that meant editing the individual scenes into smaller stories
and editing each stage of the race into its own narrative as well.
I could then start to mix and match the stages with the interviews
and start to rearrange some of the scenes and chipping away further as needed.
As soon as I've got the bones in place
I like to then start diving into refining some of the individual scenes
to better establish a pace and tone for the rest.
Again, this is as much about discovery as intent.
So pretty early on I'll begin to also incorporate music.
I would have already started making playlists at this point
for possible tracks on the music licensing website that I use called epidemicsound.com.
I was excited to see that there was a lot of what I hoped anyway
would be appropriate music
if not maybe a little stereotypical of what as a westerner
I imagined african music to be
but it's really more about the emotion that music conveys
and how it helps to progress the story
and I did feel that the music I found really did help
to convey the sense of grandeur that I'd had experienced
in the landscapes in Namibia.
The first track I knew I really needed was for the introduction.
I'd always planned on doing a television style recurring intro
and that I would use the same thing for the trailer.
This would really need to set the stage for the entire series
so I knew that I needed to get it right.
Now that I had an intro along with rough assemblies for each of the episodes
I started to work on the fine cuts
which included scripting the voiceovers.
I think I worked through the first 3 or 4 episodes
before I started to feel pretty confident that I could then commit to a publication schedule.
So it was now time to begin coordinating with the organizers at Racing the Planet
so that they could help me to promote it to their audience as well.
This would have been late-November, early-December
which left me with 4 to 5 weeks before I would begin publishing.
So I now had a deadline.
As I began to finalize each episode
there are a number of steps that I would take.
The first is to record the final voiceovers
which I do in my walk-in closet.
I've actually got a separate video that I recorded for channel members a while back
that explains how I do this in more detail.
I then do a sound mix
where I adjust the levels between the wild sound recorded in camera
along with the music and voice over.
I do a lot of what's referred to as audio ducking
to bring the music down whenever there's dialogue or voice over
and this is something that I do manually.
I also add in some sound effects for things like wind and water
and other ambient sounds
because sometimes what you capture in camera just doesn't sound as good
especially when it comes to wind.
It's always just too distorted.
Then it was time to finalize the color correction.
This is actually a really in-depth process for me
because I film everything in a flat color profile
to give me as much control as possible later on.
So on the GoPro, it means filming in what they call Protune
and on my mirrorless camera I use a custom color profile
which is similar to S-log.
I use a series of nodes in DavincI Resolve to do my grading
and fortunately I have a controller that really helps to speed up the process.
Most of the graphics I then created in Adobe After Effects.
And this actually took a lot of time.
The maps I first generate using Google Earth Studio
and then I add the animations manually in After Effects.
Even the lower thirds I had to create from scratch
for each of the people that I featured in the film.
Animation always takes me longer than I anticipate
and if I'm honest it's the least enjoyable part of the production process for me.
So over the Christmas holidays
I really focused on finalizing those first few episodes
to make sure that I was ready to begin publishing in early January.
And I had most of them at least roughly cut
but I don't think at this point I had even started the last episode
because that one just wasn't coming together naturally for me.
So I was kind of saving it at that point.
So as I was publishing those first few episodes
I was then going on to finish the next few.
And the last couple of episodes really only got done
just in time for their own scheduled publication date.
And it was a bit of a staged race in itself just to get the series completed in time.
So there are a few things that I plan on doing a little differently this next time around.
First of all, the feedback from all of you seems to be
that you really enjoyed the interviews with my fellow racers.
So I'm going to try to incorporate more of those in this next series in Georgia.
I anticipate it being easier to film the interviews there
since it shouldn't be nearly as windy
and I won't be dealing with all of that sand that I had in the desert in Namibia.
And with those interviews, I hope to feature more of the women's field as well.
As I mentioned, it was a challenge just getting the interviews
that I had managed to capture in Namibia
and of course I was at least able to film footage of the other lead male runners
while I was running alongside of them
but there really wouldn't have been much of a way
for me to capture any more of the women's field than what I showed.
But fortunately, the organizers will have a camera person
dedicated to filming on the ground in Georgia.
So I anticipate being able to get some of this footage of the lead women
to help tell their story as well.
I would love to have Audrée join me in the future at one of these events
to help with this perspective
but unfortunately it just wasn't meant to be for Georgia.
I think that now I'll also have a better sense of
how I plan on structuring the episodes in advance.
I'll likely also make them just a little bit longer in length
although I may reduce the number of episodes
so that there's only 1 episode before the race
and then maybe an episode for each of the 6 stages.
Gear wise though, I don't think I'll do anything differently for Namibia.
I had wished that I'd brought a telephoto lens
for filming the animals in Etosha National Park
but I hadn't actually planned on visiting Etosha
since I'd already spent a week on safarI while in East Africa years ago.
So I plan instead on traveling south.
But this is a good example of how your plans can change
when you're on the ground in a country
and actually get a chance to speak to people who know better.
So there you go.
If you have any questions though that I didn't address
then feel free to leave those in the comments below.
And while I'm filming in Georgia
I will try to grab some actual behind-the-scenes footage of me working
particularly from the interviews so you can see how I staged these as well.
Because doing this making up video really was an afterthought.
I almost feel like I could record a director's commentary
on the series though one of these days as well.
So let me know if that's something that might interest you.
And I just want to say thank you all again for all of the support
and all the positive feedback about the series.
It does really mean a lot and I feel like it's just the start of what's to come for this channel.