(gentle rhythmic guitar music)
- Hello,
and welcome to the director's commentary of the cloud video.
You ever wondered what's up in the clouds?
Now, this was a lot of fun to do.
What does it look like?
Can we catch it?
This sort of video requires quite a lot of planning
and it's quite different
to what's been done on the channel before,
in that a lot of my videos I'm just up in the air,
and I video some stuff, and then I bring it home,
and I try and make it into something instructional.
With this one, I was trying to create a story
that would have more appeal beyond the paragliding scene.
Our videos are quite a small niche,
and I'm trying to reach more people with the channel
to try and share the joy of free flight
with a bigger audience,
so that more people are kinda drawn into paragliding,
and find out about it,
and maybe get interested and go to a school or something
and start flying.
(gentle rhythmic guitar music continues)
So this sort of story requires a bit of set-up.
You have to plan it beforehand.
You know, I had to go off and get the bag,
and kind of work out what sort of shots I wanted,
and have some kind of a script before I came to the hill.
So when I came to the hill, I knew what I was doing
and I could actually do that introductory little chat
which helps draw you into the story.
(parachute unfolding)
It's setting up sort of what I'm going to do
and then going out and doing it,
and you can kind of follow along in the story.
It seems very simple when you analyse it that way,
but when you're actually on the slope,
I find there was a voice in my head
just telling me that I was just wasting my time.
I mean, you know, it was late in the day,
and what's sort of chance did I have
of getting up to the clouds,
and was it really gonna work?
And, you know, you're doing a lot of filming
for something that has actually been completed yet,
so it's quite difficult to believe
that it's going to actually work
and it's all going to form part of the story
that'll make sense in the end.
You just have to have faith,
and go ahead with your idea,
and put in a lot of the time and work
on the introductory scenes
before you know that you've got the cloud in the back.
So here, I really was going down
and the condition switched off completely.
And for those of you that know the Devil's Dyke,
when the wind comes over from the sea,
it's usually the end of flying.
And it did here, it came over strongly from the seaside.
I ended up pointing towards Brighton with my wing
and ground handling in 25 kilometres an hour of wind.
And at that point, I thought,
"Look, this is totally not gonna happen.
I'm gonna have to use the footage for something else."
But kind of, there was a part of me
that also didn't want to give up.
And I still held the idea of getting up to the cloud
and doing the video.
So this is now in the sea breeze convergence.
I've lobbed off when the wind switched again,
and I managed to get inland enough
that I could ride the sea breeze convergence up
and come back
and have a second chance at doing this cloud shot.
So this is quite tricky flying here.
The 360 camera's helping me a lot here
because I can just stuff it into various positions
in my harness,
and this footage stabilises itself in the software in post.
So, I don't have to worry about holding onto the camera.
Now these shots, I'm using the GoPro
with a little fluffy microphone, external microphone,
and it's just to get more emotion
and closer into the action.
But that camera is more tricky to operate
'cause I'm having to kind of steady it on the riser here,
I'm hand holding it,
and it's quite tricky to keep a handheld camera
from shaking.
So I switch between,
this is the 360 camera and the handheld camera.
I'm gonna catch you!
I picked up shots from both angles at various moments
as I'm going up to cloud base.
I'm trying to remember, "Alright, I need a shot here.
I need a shot there."
And switching on the camera for a few seconds,
and then switching it off again, carrying on thermally.
(gentle rhythmic guitar music)
This did take me ages to get up.
And as usual with these small clouds,
you can see they're not very tall,
so the lift isn't actually enough
to get me up to cloud base.
I just can't get the last little bit!
And took me this about an hour (Greg laughing happily)
to get up here,
and I was legitimately pretty cold up here.
(Greg giggling happily)
We're up in the cloud here!
This is a sea breeze convergence again.
You can see the cloud forming in a step.
It's actually well below the cumulous cloud bases
this wispy curtain of cloud.
And that allows me to kind of just dip in and out
while still maintaining pretty good visual on all sides.
(plastic crunching)
So when I open the bag here,
I'm trying to remember to keep it in the shot
of where the little GoPro's pointing.
It's tied on my riser.
Woo-hoo!
I was expecting to have more mist in the bag,
but it's due to the physics of it of course,
as soon as you out of the cloud,
you descending and the temperature is rising.
Cloud from Brighton, whoo!
And I was already at the transition
between the air turning into cloud.
So when I came back down, it just switched back.
Ah, that was so much fun! (Greg laughing ecstatically)
We've got it.
(Greg giggles happily) It was good fun
in trying to puzzle out way to seal it.
Now I'm gonna fly back.
There's only so much I can do while I'm flying,
and I definitely couldn't do that vapour lock seal
along the top of the bag with cold hands.
But luckily, the chest strap
has come to the rescue there too, strap it in.
You can see the 360 camera pole on the far side.
That's quite useful, it's a very convenient position.
I've got a little loop on my shoulder strap
and that just keeps it in a place
where I can use quite easily.
Put it in the fridge, and see if we get our cloud back.
So I'm also having to charge these cameras as I'm going
because it's cold, the batteries are going flat.
So I was charging the 360 camera in between each clip.
I've got a USB pack and a little cable.
And the GoPro, likewise, also went flat.
I had to swap the batteries out on the way down
on the glide.
So I've got all of those things spare in a pocket,
available to keep things alive
because there's nothing worse
than setting this whole thing up
and then losing a couple of shots that you need
to link the story together.
♪ You gotta let the sun shine in the day ♪
So in a couple of those shots, there's my fluffy mic
and my GoPro on the riser.
That's just a cheap, bendy tripod.
It's not secured in any way,
I just bent it on around the the riser,
and almost lost the camera actually
trying to reset the angle.
It popped off the top of the tripod
and I almost dropped it from 3000 foot.
(Greg laughing relievedly)
Luckily, I kept the camera and we've got all the footage.
(gentle rhythmic guitar music)
Ah, this is just such a lovely sight, Devil's Dyke.
We are so spoiled, it is just wonderful.
There's a pub just outta shot on the right,
you park your car just over there by the trees,
and grassy and good for cross-country when it's on.
I got my cloud here.
So yeah, it's a good place
to have these sort of fun adventures.
I think that's because the air pressure is higher down here.
So I'm just doing a little bit of science here
just to make it a little bit more interesting,
just talking through aspects of it
rather than it just being about the flying.
My idea here was just to use flying as a vehicle
to do some kind of story.
And this is a sneaky shot.
I've just left my camera set up in the back of my car
and kept it running just in case something would happen,
and it did.
Thanks, Candy. (Greg laughing warmly)
Nice to get some interaction as well, you know?
And that's part of the appeal of the story
is to try and, you know, involve other people
and involve other elements to make it more interesting,
rather than just a flying video.
Now this is a 360 camera again,
it's just fantastic for some shots.
You know, you can stick it out
and it'll stabilise that footage,
and that's a big part of what makes it so viewable
is that the horizon isn't wobbling around
all over the place.
(rhythmic music)
This is the GoPro in the fridge.
Of course, I had to take everything outta the fridge
to get this damn bag in there.
So yeah, some things in the door, but...
This took a long time.
I hadn't really appreciated that cloud base
was probably close to zero degrees,
and the fridge doesn't really get to zero.
So to get the air back to cloud temperature,
(Greg laughs happily) it took the whole night.
Okay, this is the next morning,
that's why you can see my clothing's actually changed.
That's the cloud.
And then, you know, I got the cloud back.
I hadn't really thought the story through beyond that
because I thought, you know,
and then I'd get the cloud back in the fridge.
There wasn't really a sort of a finishing point.
So I kind of adlibbed this a bit,
and took it outside, and got some condensation.
People have told me that's pure chem trail.
(Greg laughs abruptly)
But that was just a fun way to end it.
I could have maybe worked a bit more on the punchline
and come up with a stronger closing moment.
But hey, there you go, there's the cloud video.
It was a lot of fun to do.
I'm gonna try and do more stories like that
for the future of the channel.
Thanks so much to our patrons and supporters
who've made this and so much more possible.
See you next time! Cheers.