- The sun is setting, so now it's time to go exploring.
(upbeat rock music)
- Even though I've never been to Nashville before
and I know very little about the city,
I'm quite knowledgeable about its history and its landmarks.
This is a pedestrian bridge,
I'm gonna go pedestrian across it.
(upbeat rock music)
This is Nashville's famed Purple Arch,
rumor has it that it actually completes
a complete circle under the river,
which then also acts as a checkpoint
for fish and things, when they do like underwater races.
This river was created by the Great Flood of 1997,
when Mexico refused to allow any more water
into their country
and over here is the Nissan Stadium,
where fusion vehicles battle to the death.
(upbeat Southern rock)
♪ And I cannot hear a single sound ♪
♪ Baby, nobody see me care ♪
♪ Sweet melody, you know that I've had my share ♪
♪ Now wait a minute. ♪
- if you just watched that opening montage
or you've seen any of the videos that I've posted lately,
you might notice that I've become a little bit obsessed
with using slow-motion footage.
Today I wanted to dive into the how and why
behind slow-motion footage,
I wanna explain why I've been using it, how I do it
and then also some of the cons, that come with it as well.
So the first thing,
if you've never shot anything with slow-motion before,
what you might think is that you just film your shots,
put it in your editing software
and then just slow it down
and that's gonna give you slow-motion video.
Unfortunately, that's just not how it works,
because the way video is filmed
is usually you're filming at 24 or 30 frames per second,
so for every second of footage,
there are 24 or 30 still images
and so for example, if you're filming at 24 frames a second,
which is what I normally film at
and you put that footage in your editing software
and then slow it down to like half speed,
you're not actually creating any new images.,
you're just doubling up every frame,
so the result is that your slow-motion footage
is actually gonna look a little bit blurry and choppy,
it's not gonna be very smooth,
it's gonna look something like this.
(plodding electric guitar)
What you probably noticed was it was definitely slow-motion,
but it wasn't smooth, it was kind of like choppy
and the motion wasn't very fluid.
In order to make the motion fluid and smooth,
you need to add more frames per second
and the good news is that most cameras and phones
nowadays offer high-frame rate filming,
for example, most IPhones and cell phones
can do at least 120 frames per second
at full 1080, some can go up to 240,
the camera that I use mostly to film all of these videos
is the Sony RX100 Mark five,
that can shoot 240 frames a second,
which is ten times slower than normal,
it can shoot 480 frames a second
and it can also go up all the way to 960 frames per second,
which is kind of insane
and so the difference is pretty huge.
Here are a few examples.
(upbeat pop music)
So hopefully that helps illustrate the difference
between just slowing down regular footage
and actually shooting at a high frame rate.
Now, filming slow-motion
is a whole process in and of itself,
you can't just usually go film like you normally would,
because every second of your footage,
you're taking in more and more frames,
so sometimes it can actually be difficult
to use your camera or phone
to capture the exact moment that you want.
For example, if you're filming a wedding
and you wanna capture the kiss
between the bride and groom in slow-motion,
which would look fantastic,
but you're the only shooter at that wedding,
I would definitely not recommend shooting in slow-motion,
because there's a really good chance
you're gonna miss that exact moment
and you're almost guaranteed to miss
the moments around it, even if you do capture it.
If you have a second camera, or a second shooter,
then absolutely, you have the insurance
to try to capture that moment.
So slow-motion really requires a lot of planning,
often a lot of re-shooting, there's a bit of risk involved,
because you might miss specific moments,
but the payoff can be really great.
One of the big issues,
when filming with slow-motion is light,
because since your camera shutter is going so fast,
it's hard for light to actually get into your camera,
what that means is that you might notice
slow-motion footage ends up being darker than normal
and even noisier and grainier,
than you would normally like it.
If you look at this video,
you'll notice there's an opening sequence,
where I'm getting ready and like packing my bag
and putting my shoes on, that's all shot in slow-motion,
that was filmed in a hotel room at like five a.m.
and there just wasn't much light,
that footage came out way noisier, than I would ever like,
but I just really like the way it edited together,
so I kept it, because I loved the overall sequence,
but the footage is really noisy.
But really this isn't usually a big deal,
it just means that you need to be aware
of your lighting conditions and when possible,
try shooting slow-motion footage with a lot light,
like outdoors during the day
and finally, the biggest con to shooting in slow-motion
is your video resolution.
For example, all of my videos are in 4K,
but most cameras and phones
can't do slow-motion at full 4K resolution,
this means that they end up decreasing the resolution,
when you film in slow-motion.
On this camera, the Sony RX100,
when I film slow-motion,
it actually goes from 4K all the way down to 720P,
which isn't even full high definition
and if you're watching on a phone or tablet
or even a laptop, you probably won't see the difference,
but if you're watching a TV
or you're just, you're someone like me
and you're sort of picky
and you kind of know what to look for,
you can totally tell the difference,
but I'm willing to sacrifice that resolution
to be able to use really smooth slow-motion,
because I just love the style, that it gives so much
and hopefully in the future,
as cameras and technology continue to develop,
it will become more possible to do
high frame rates at higher resolutions,
the technology is just not there yet,
at least, affordably.
Also, you may notice in some slow-motion shots,
lights tend to flicker,
this has to do with like the wattage of the lights
and the way that they're cycling
versus the way the camera shutter is going
and if they don't sync up properly,
then you see the flicker of the electricity and lights.
There are ways to counteract it,
I'm still kind of playing around
trying to figure it out myself,
for the most part I tend to try
to avoid shooting in situations,
where there's gonna be lights that flicker,
but the montage at the start of this video
was in downtown Nashville,
it's bright and fluorescent and lighty
and you can't really avoid it,
but I didn't wanna not have any of that footage,
so, kind of like the noise, that I mentioned earlier,
having that flicker was sort of a quality sacrifice,
that I had to make
because I wanted the overall footage to exist.
So it kind of feels like I've been saying
all of the problems that come with shooting slow-motion,
so why on earth would you wanna do it?
And the answer is
that it's a really great story-telling tool.
I've been really enjoying the way,
that it's changing my editing style,
that it's forcing me to look at things different,
that it helps tell stories differently
and then finding ways to incorporate it
into other techniques is really interesting too,
I've done videos where I'm trying to do
slow-motion mixed with time lapses,
which is almost like the opposite of slow-motion
and trying to edit those two things together cohesively
is kind of a challenge and it's really fun
to figure out how to make that work
or see if it doesn't work and to just learn more,
so I highly recommend playing around with it,
even on your phone, if you have a slow-motion option,
which most phones do,
it's fun just to see things a little bit differently
by using slow-motion.
So really that's it.
You may even have a camera that shoots great slow-motion,
that you've never used yet,
you should really dive into the menus
and take a look at it,
I'm happy to answer any questions
you might have about slow-motion,
I'm happy to do any more videos or info about slow-motion
or other techniques in the future.
So hopefully that kind of sheds some light on it,
maybe even explains why you've seen
so much slow-motion in my videos lately
and probably will continue to do so,
as I figure out how to use it
as a really effective story-telling tool.
For somebody from the desert, this is freezing.
Super worth it, 'cause this is pretty darn gorgeous.