- What's up guys today I'm gonna be chatting through
my top five tips on how you can create
better GoPro travel films.
Now I'm specifying the use of the GoPro
because that's the last travel film I made.
It was our travel film in Greece
which was a hundred percent shot on the GoPro hero 9 Black.
Now, I think sometimes as filmmakers
we can get a little bit lost with the direction.
You go out, you go on an adventure,
you capture really cool content
but then you get back to your editing suite,
and you get back home and you're just pondering.
What do I do with that footage?
So today's video I wanted to just chat through
some of the technique
and some of the thought that goes into my work.
Maybe you've seen that film, maybe you haven't
and or maybe you're not using a GoPro.
Maybe you're just creating a travel film.
And this might just give you some tips to better direct
and better guide your next or upcoming travel film.
Let's get stuck into it.
(upbeat music)
At the top of this, I want to talk about light.
And specifically when it comes to travel films
whenever I watch inspiring travel content,
whenever I'm out shooting,
I try and harness light as best as possible.
And when you're using a camera
that's $499 or $300.
That is your ticket to producing
the best shot possible is light, is lighting,
is thinking about light.
With our Greece film everything we were trying to do
was to chase light was to make sure that
each of the shots that we captured
and the best content that we captured,
was clean, looked good in the GoPro.
It look good in the viewfinder.
When we looked through the camera,
we didn't think about the settings.
We didn't think about, the pro tune settings,
or whether we're shooting GoPro color or flat.
We just looked at the light.
When we shot this film in Greece
we had a number of clips.
But when we looked through them on the timeline,
the biggest decisive moment
and what leads me onto the next talking point was light.
I guess if I was to position this video
as just like how to make a travel film.
Then I would have focused on light.
Because you can go and shoot when it's convenient
and when it's comfortable to you.
But the title of this video is to make better travel films
and anyone can go out
and shoot with their GoPro throughout the day
and capture moments, and then come back and
put them in a timeline
and edit them to create a travel film.
But I'm hoping
that this video is a guide to making your work better.
And I think the first thing that I look at
when I look at really epic travel filmmakers
as opposed to average or beginner travel filmmakers.
Is that every shot that they're putting
in their travel films has epic light.
To be honest, to achieve that you need time,
you need days where it's good light.
You need to look and assess the situation
and go, oh, is it good weather today?
No, okay, well maybe we have to try
and work on something else.
We can't get those shots.
Now a classic example of this was like,
when we created the Greece travel film
and we created all of those sequences of us jumping
off the rock hand-holding and all of that, that first drop
we went to this particular location in Milos
and we went there in the morning and it was overcast.
And we'd shot a few clips the previous day.
And the light was nice and bright and sunny.
And so for us to match some of the shots
and to use that as part of our sequence in our travel film
the only way that we could really address the continuity
of those clips and making sure that we nailed the color
of those clips was to shoot at full sun.
So tip number two is critical editing.
And it leads onto this, this first sort of tip
or this first point and thoughts are about light.
When you go and you shoot your content
you're thinking about getting the
the best possible scenarios in camera.
Now, when you come back to edit your content
you're gonna filter through all of the content,
and you're going to elevate
all of the content that looks the best.
And as a critical editor,
what makes your travel films better
than other travel filmmakers or other GoPro films.
Is if you've chosen that very critical selection
you've gone through and you've looked at your clips,
you've put them side by side and you're going,
okay, this is a gray day.
This is a cloudy overcast day.
This is a beautiful sunny day.
This clip is better.
To elaborate on this idea.
It's not about showing every single clip.
It's not about that.
And so if you don't have the clip, just don't add it in.
Make your videos shorter.
It's something that I was talking to Abe about
in the recent GoPro B roll challenge.
If you haven't seen that video check it out up here.
Was tightening and shortening the clips
and shortening the content.
Because if you don't have the clips
and you're just putting in like these extra clips
because it's filling things out.
As a viewer we sense that it's like, that's an average shot.
Like that's okay, but it has to have purpose.
So make sure when you are filming your travel films
and when you're critically choosing the clips
that you're wanting to showcase
make them the best choose the best of the best.
And so that might then allude to you having to do
a little bit more work in shooting.
So if you come back after a trip
and you've only got like 10 good clips
then you haven't shot enough, you have to shoot more.
Those two light and critical editing selection
work hand-in-hand to create better GoPro travel films.
You need great clips, great sources
great content to begin with then critical editing.
So cut the fat, find the best of the best
and elevate those clips,
and only use those clips.
Tip number three is knowing your frame rate.
So how do you get the best clips?
Well, you know how to use your camera.
You know at what time to use the higher frame rate
and at what time to use the lower frame rate.
At what time to use Superview, Wide, or Narrow.
I've made a whole video on setting up your gripper here.
Be sure to check that out because I literally
run through scenarios
of when it is the best time to use certain camera angles.
But for us and for this particular travel film in Greece,
the best example I can give you is.
If you're trying to capture something that you know,
you don't really have a lot of time.
It's an action.
It's a dive, it's a backflip.
It's something that is you're going to slow down.
And in our particular instance, it was any cliff diving shot
anything where we were free diving
where we knew that we were gonna be underwater
for maybe 30 seconds to a minute.
We opted to shoot the higher frame rate.
Now each time, depending on that decisive minute
and that decisive moment, I'm never a hundred percent sure
of what the camera angle is.
Maybe it was Wide.
Maybe it was Superview.
I was never a hundred percent sure
but what I would generally opt to default to
would be shooting 120 frames a second
at 2.7K in Superview.
I liked that showcase.
I liked the way that the camera shares everything,
the way that I can dive down deep
and see a lot and maybe it flickered between shooting 4K 60
which is a nice, a higher frame rate.
And, but not as slow
or 2.7 K and getting 120 FPS.
So just knowing those frame rates
knowing that why I would use the 120 over the 60.
or if I don't need slow-mo,
making sure that I either shoot 5K 24, or 5K 25
or 4K 24.
It's getting back to thinking like,
what is the purpose of this shot?
Do I need the higher frame rate or don't I.
Do I have the time right now in this particular instance
in this minute where I'm able to re shoot it twice
or not, and when you're doing a cliff jump,
well sure, you can jump again
but what if that's the best cliff jump ever
and you wanna preserve and lengthen that moment
out in your timeline when you come to edit it.
If you've shot that at 24 frames a second
you don't have the frames to make that super slow-mo.
You need to shoot that in 120 frames a second,
you need to shoot that in 1080 240,
if you want that epic slow-mo.
More often than not.
I choose to shoot in the higher frame rates
when the lighting is good
because I can savor those moments.
And for me, that's super important as an editor.
When I come back and I have these big impactful
bits in my film,
these bits which punch
these bits, which cut through the audience
and it gives them those moments where they stop
at their computer and they're like,
damn, that's a cool shot.
Very clear example is shooting the two shots that we did
with the cliff jump.
We shot one where I literally took a sticky mount
and stuck it to the bottom of a DJI Mavic Pro
and old Mavic Pro and mounted the GoPro on top.
Set the GoPro up,
made sure it was shooting at 120 frames a second
because I wasn't sure of what we were gonna capture
in that particular instance.
Framed up with my eye, set the camera up
Anna and I did the jump
and I matched those two shots.
I knew in that instance, I needed the frames.
The light was good.
It was a clean shot.
I needed the high frame rate to cut between these two shots.
So the next tip
which we can kind of flow on from that last tip
is about mounting,
is knowing how to create interesting mounts.
A lot of the time when we created this Greece travel film
we used sticky mounts,
and this one magnetic swivel mount.
So I put a link to both of these mounts in the description.
These mounts are just perfect accessories
and must haves that GoPro filmmakers
I think should have in that camera kit.
This particular swivel mount,
we use use in a number of shots.
That first opening montage,
where we were traveling
and we're going from Paris to Greece and we caught a plane.
And then from one plane, we got on a train.
And then from the train we got on a ferry,
that whole travel sequence
was mostly captured with this one mount.
So because it's magnetic, I was able to stick it.
As soon as we got to the airport, I could stick it
to the airport ticket till and get a shot of us.
It was sort of low light
so I'm choosing to shoot in 24 frames a second,
shooting 4K,
knowing that I'm gonna get the best quality content
from that shot, whether I use it or not.
I don't know, but I need it.
I need all these shots in my timeline.
When I come to do my critical editing selection.
Another super valuable reason
for this kind of magnetic swivel mount
was the shot where we were sitting on the train.
I just mounted this to the top of the train and was like,
what's another interesting perspective
that I can add in here to continue to engage my audience
and show them something different.
So that was just sticking them out
up on the top of the train
and then sitting next to Anna.
And I was like this could be a really cool shot.
It's just, it's thinking, not just one shot
but I was always thinking two or three angles
and perspectives of the same sequence.
And the way you approach that is through mounting
is thinking where can this camera be,
that it hasn't already been?
Where can I put the camera
that's gonna provide someone with another perspective
from this same moment to give them another
sort of another touch point to be like,
oh cool, this thing's moving, but seamlessly moving.
You're just immersed in the film.
Tip number five,
and I think I've left this tip to the very end because it
in a lot of ways supersedes everything that I've spoken
in the lead up to sharing this.
And that's write a fricking story.
Like you can't, when you come to edit,
when you come to critical select,
when you come to light,
every part of this process that I've spoken about
in this video comes down to story.
Now we did not set off on this adventure to Greece
without having a story in mind.
We wrote this story the day before we left.
We said, what are we telling here?
What are we trying to showcase?
What are we trying to share?
What experience?
And as we started discussing it and talking about it,
we started to write the story.
And when I say write it, we physically wrote it
in a note on our phone.
When we're in the moment
in that present moment, shooting the film
we're constantly relaying back to our story.
Everything that we're doing
across the Island of Milos and Santorini
was dictated by story.
Okay, have we shot that next piece to camera?
Has everything we've done in between now,
and then led to that next piece to camera?
Even when we got back and we were like, okay cool.
We've got all of our travel content,
but how can we improve our story?
How can we develop the story in the edit?
One of the things that we added in at the end
was to use the 5K feature
of the GoPro Hero 9.
And to just pull back the camera
whilst we were looking at a clip,
that's something you can do in post.
We didn't write that in,
but that's where you can be playful.
But the story was there.
The story was written.
Each of those pieces to camera, we can't re shoot.
So start if you're starting your travel film
if you're starting to create,
any production, think about what tale you wanna tell?
What message are you trying to share?
And it doesn't have to be pieces to camera.
You can be a visual storyteller
but you have to know if you're going to Milos
which parts of your story do you need to shoot?
Do you need to put yourself in good light
so that you can add them to your travel film?
If you guys are keen to learn more
about filmmaking or photography.
The topic of this YouTube description
has our (indistinct) free workshops.
Now, every month we host a free Zoom workshop
to a small group of no more than 10.
If you wanna participate in one of those workshops,
as I said they're completely free
but you have to register and then we'll correspond
and we'll email them.
We'll let you know what time they're on.
So make sure you jump in
sign up to that workshop email list.
And hopefully I'll see you guys in the next,
(indistinct) workshop
or you're checking out some more of my YouTube videos.
As always I love making these videos.
I hope you guys respond to make some epic travel films
over the Christmas period
or whenever travel resumes in your world and your country.
If you've enjoyed this video
punch the thumbs up button, subscribe to my channel.
I'll see you guys next upload, cheers, peace.
(upbeat music)