(gentle music)
(groaning)
- Tryin' to learn how to do a 360
cause the floors are really slippery.
But I have a challenge for you today.
If you like videos, and you like YouTube
and you make videos and you like B Roll,
today, we're doin' the B Roll Challenge.
(rock music)
Okay, the B Roll Challenge,
I think you guys are gonna like this.
I do it myself when I'm by myself
because it helps me get better.
It helps flex that creative muscle
because sometimes you gotta push yourself to get better.
So, I get asked all the time,
on Twitter, on email, "How do you shoot B Roll?"
And I usually refer everyone to the B roll tutorial
that I did almost a year ago, but it was a long time ago.
A couple weeks ago I did a video called the B Roll King,
which was my favorite lens for B Roll,
but I wanted make a video today that was kinda fast, but,
and when I say fast, this could very well be 13 minutes.
I haven't started editing yet,
so we'll just, we'll see about that.
But I love this challenge because it makes me think
really, really hard about every aspect of filmmaking,
so let me properly explain to you what this challenge is.
So this is the challenge.
You find somewhere in the world,
be it that it's the intersection right below where you live,
or maybe it's the park by your house.
Maybe it's your kitchen.
Somewhere slightly uninteresting, and you challenge yourself
to one camera and one lens, and you have to make
a 30 second B Roll sequence in that spot, no matter what.
So if your spot's an alleyway with a dumpster,
make it look good.
30 seconds of B Roll, let's go.
So I'm gonna show you guys that,
we're gonna pick a few different locations
and I'm going to show you my process
and the thought process behind how I capture
the B Roll clips that I capture, no matter where I am.
So, we're gonna go downstairs right now.
We're gonna start at the intersection
and I'm gonna shoot 30 seconds of B Roll
just limited only to that intersection
with the camera and the lens that I have,
no extra help from anybody else.
I want this to be a one on one thing.
If you have a friend that normally helps shoot for you,
get rid of 'em, it's just us,
but before I do that, coffee.
(electronic music)
(glass clinks)
(coffee package thumps)
(coffee filters shuffle)
(coffee beans rattle)
(coffee beans grind)
When I shoot B Roll, I like to shoot both wide and tight.
Some people only like really wide lenses,
some people only like really cropped in lenses,
but I believe that having both of these tools
allows me to show one thing twice,
and what I mean by that, maybe I get some B Roll
of the leaves of a tree but it's wide.
You can see the whole tree,
but then maybe I wanna do a punch in
or a quick zoom kind of transition
to get that leaf really really close up.
That's what I'm gonna use a wide lens for.
So I always keep a wide lens and a tight lens,
not a telephoto, but like and 85 and like a 16.
I always keep those two things in my bag,
just for the versatility of being able
to get that subject captured in two different styles.
So for this experiment, I'm gonna use a 35 mil
and an 85 mil, both prime, fixed focal length lenses.
One more thing before we go outside.
I'm gonna shoot everything at 120 frames per second.
If your camera doesn't shoot 120,
which is that nice (makes slow motion sound), slo-mo.
You can shoot at 60 frames a second.
Now if your camera doesn't have 60 frames a second
and you only have 24, use that to your advantage.
Make your cuts, make your B Roll sequence
a faster paced edit, faster cuts, a little more intense,
so you use what you have to the best of your ability.
With this camera, I'm using 120,
because everything looks so good in slo-mo.
You could also say that that might be
a little bit of a crutch, and yes,
I would admit that as well,
but I have it, I'm gonna use it,
but I'm gonna mix in some 24p with that slow motion.
Okay, let's go.
Here's the thing about shooting outside.
Now I'm hiding under this awning in this little slice
of shade so the light looks decent, but that's exactly it.
The light is like high noon right now.
It's very harsh sunlight, so you have to have
an ND filter if you're shooting B Roll outside.
Now you can see the intersection behind me.
There's not much going on,
it's literally just a boring, straight up intersection.
So the first thing I do when I'm looking
to shoot B Roll, is I find the details.
So I'm gonna turn the mic around,
I'm gonna do one little lap of this intersection,
so that I kinda get some ideas, feel it out,
see what I can shoot, come back, and we'll make a plan.
So let's do that now.
Okay, so you'll notice the first thing
is that flag is just violently flapping in the wind
so I will for sure get that, cause it's good motion,
good representation of this area.
There's lots of flags, so that would be number one
that I see.
Alright, number two, I always like the crossing signs
and the stop lights, getting those switching
from red to green to orange and the cars going by.
That's obviously something I'll also do.
It's just hard because the light gets shadowed here,
and then it's super harsh here,
so your exposure is changing completely.
You can see as the car goes by now, it's completely dark.
And then it's completely bright,
so that'll be a bit of a challenge,
but again, and we have ND filters on,
and we're going to shoot probably that with an 85
to compress that background a bit,
but we got the hand sign, the stop lights,
and the cars going by here.
Let's cross.
Across the street, I really like the leading lines here,
so maybe like a little slider shot past this tree
as the traffic goes might look good,
and if you notice, looking at this you can see the sun
just peeking through the trees here,
I love capturing that kind of stuff in slow motion.
It looks so good.
So this would be detail number two.
So we've got the flag, and we've got the tree
and we've got the cross signs, movin' on.
Alright, so just standing here waiting
for these cars to pass, I notice all the paint
that's kind of peeling where they would stop,
the bicycle logo, the different textures
from this crosswalk to the road.
So I might probably get closeups
of tires going over all of these different textures
like that, but really, really close.
Like these cracks in the road here,
I'd probably get down nice and low like this,
zoom in and wait for a tire to go by.
That with an 85 would look really nice.
So that's probably what I would do with this corner.
Okay, right away I notice my reflection in the mirror.
So that could be cool to work with.
The clouds look really dope, so maybe some kind
of slow movement with this reflection,
which is actually that building.
That looks good.
I really like how this pole looks,
looking straight up to it, that looks really cool.
So if we did a spinning shot in slo-mo,
along with this building and this old architecture,
I think that mixed in would look cool.
So, I think we're good, we're about to cross the street
and go back to where we started.
(electronic music)
Okay, so now that we have a little bit of a plan,
what we're gonna do with each corner,
I'm gonna go shoot that stuff wide now,
and then we're gonna go shoot it close up
and we'll mash them together and see what we get.
So, let's go do that.
(electronic music)
Okay, so we are done shooting B Roll now with 35 mil.
I'm gonna put the 85 on and shoot a lot of the same clips
and get some in camera transitions,
and I talked to you guys that here,
link above, wherever it got.
I never know what side it's on.
It's here. (laughs)
So 85 goes on, we're gonna get the same style B roll shots,
show you what that looks like very compressed.
Then we're gonna mash them together
and see what they look like as one whole sequence.
So, 85
So that was the 85.
That's what those shots looked like nice and close,
so now we've shot our B Roll sequence
both in wide and tight, so now it's time
to put them both together.
But before we do that, I like to shoot
what's called in between clips,
clips that I can use in between the wides and the tights.
You just nicely tie everything together.
Those are pan left and right, pan up and down,
pan of my flag, down a flag pole,
kind of in camera transitions.
I like to shoot that stuff and make sure I have
both wide, tight, in between.
Now, with all of those things together,
I can smash them into one B Roll section,
with some audio sound effects,
and it looks something like this.
I also wanna mention that B Roll segments
don't have to be 30 seconds, one minute long.
They can be as long as you want,
but sometimes you only use B Roll clips
to just take you from point A to point B.
If I'm going from the office to my truck,
I don't need a whole minute's worth of segment,
of slo-mo segment, to transition me to that truck.
It could just be three clips or five clips,
and grouping your clips in threes and fives
is always better than doing stuff
like two clips or seven clips,
like you always wanna kinda stick
with three or five or a full segment.
So, if you guys watch my vlogs
and are familiar with my filmmaking,
you'll know that I either do really long sequences
or something just really, really fast,
to transition to the next scene,
instead of just like a hard cut.
So, all of this to say,
this isn't the definitive guide to B Roll.
I could probably make five to ten tutorials
on B Roll alone.
But this is more of a challenge for you
so that you can understand that you don't need
to be in the most interesting places to get great footage.
It's all about finding the details,
looking for the little things wherever you are,
and how you can tie them together
to create a sequence that tells a story.
That's more so, with this exercise
and what this whole video is about.
That's why I made it for you guys.
So with that being said, I challenge you guys
to go find a really boring area
close to where you live.
Just go by yourself and see what you can come up with
with the B Roll Challenge and #PMBRollChallenge.
I'd love to see what you guys come up with.
That's part of the fun.
Look beyond what everyone else sees
and look for those unique things
that can tell your story, the way you wanna tell it.
So, with that being said, hit that Like button
if you like this video, smash it
if that's somethin' that you're into, 2018 style,
subscribe if you aren't already, and,
and I will see you guys in the next videos.
Peace.
(electronic music)