Meet my new favourite toy.
It's the Insta360 Extended Edition Selfie Stick,
and this thing extends from 39 centimeters,
to three whole meters.
OMG.
And every effect you just saw, was shot
with said selfie stick and my One X2.
So a bit about the stick.
It extends to three meters, but you don't have to fix it
at three meters or at 39 centimeters.
You can fix it at multiple lengths,
in between the two distances.
And yes, you still can call this one
an invisible selfie stick because it doesn't really bend,
it stays quite straight when extended all the way.
Even at three meters, it stays mostly straight,
not a hundred percent.
It will bend in a little bit of wind or under the pressure
of a heavy camera, but for the most part,
this thing is invisible.
The quality of the stick is really good
because it's made of carbon fiber.
It's solid and shouldn't break.
Now, let's have some fun.
I wanna take you through all the shots
from that opening montage and show you one by one,
exactly how I got them with this stick.
First up, is the spinning shot.
Here I extended the selfie stick all the way
to three meters, pressed record on my One X2
and spun around in a circle two or three times,
and that's it.
And to be perfectly honest, at the time, when I was filming,
I didn't even know what the end result would look like.
Fortunately, it ended up extremely good.
So, what I've done is reframed it in the app,
so I'm constantly in the center of the frame.
I guess you could call this, like,
an extended bullet time effect.
But it's not really the same thing,
because I'm constantly facing the camera.
As you'll see, I was constantly moving
as the camera rotated, my feet pivoted me around.
So I guess you could call it a human bullet time,
or another silly name that I'll probably come up with later.
Enter the hyperlapse.
And as you also saw, suddenly this shot
turned into a fast spinning tornado.
In the app, I just sped it up to 16 times,
applied the motion blur effect that you would
traditionally add to hyperlapses, and voila.
I did try reframing this shot at four times the speed
with the motion blur effect, but it wasn't as effective.
I think it's better played back at normal speed,
or at 16 times hyperlapse speed.
So if you're gonna do the 16 times hyperlapse,
you might wanna loop it a few times,
so you will look like a human tornado.
Or you can get extra fancy and do what I did next,
which was repeat the exact same shot
at a different location, which I then transitioned into
from the previous hyperlapse shot.
Then in Adobe Premiere, I adjusted the frames,
so the rotation would roughly match the exact same spot,
when transitioning from the sped up version
to the normal version.
Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
My jokes need work.
But anyway, here's another edit of this exact same shot
outside the Harbour Bridge.
And this time, it's a tiny planet.
How cool does that look?
It's like I'm levitating on the planet,
while everything else is moving except me.
Well, that's not quite true
because as I told you before, my feet were moving.
So moving your feet very precisely is key to this effect.
Next I thought I'd attempt another shot,
where I had no idea what the outcome would be.
But hey, there's no harm in trying stuff.
And this time I fully extended the selfie stick,
held it above my head and simply just rotated
on the spot.
Who knows?
Might be good.
And this was the final result.
It was like an instant pan, I guess.
I didn't have to do any reframing other than just turning
the 360 into a 16:9.
And yeah, it turned out okay.
It wasn't amazing.
But if you turn direction lock off, like I did here,
it will make the planet or 360 video rotate automatically
without having to do any key framing.
Although I'd probably write this one off,
because hypothetically, you could just stand there
in the exact same situation,
and rotate the 360 video yourself later,
on your phone or on your computer.
You don't need to rotate yourself.
Next I used the extremely long selfie stick
to get my camera really close to the water,
directly underneath the Harbour Bridge.
And this is always quite a sight
if you've ever been to Sydney.
The bridge is so big and epic
and it's just really cool being underneath it.
However, it's always been hard to capture in 360.
So I held my camera out against the water.
I knew the effect I was going for straight away,
where the water formed a tunnel around the outside
and the bridge was going from top to bottom
inside the circle.
And there you go.
I give it a 7.5 out of 10.
Next I shot myself a hyperlapse,
and by shooting a hyperlapse, I mean
I extended the selfie stick all the way,
held it above my head and walked along a path
between Circular Quay and the other side
of the Harbour Bridge, which totaled
roughly a seven minute 360 video.
When you do this in public by the way,
it's really embarrassing.
You got to hide your head or try to look really official,
like you're a government photographer capturing
the local landscape.
So after seven minutes of hiding my head,
I ended up with one clip that gave me three effects
from the opening montage.
Again, I had no idea what I'd end up with.
I just filmed and hoped for the best.
So the first edit that immediately stood out to me
was the Harbour Bridge.
I knew that perspective shift would be really cool
in a hyperlapse, so I reframed the video
so it was constantly pointing at the bridge,
then sped it up to 32 times speed
with the motion blur effect,
and it turned out really well.
The next shot was another hyperlapse,
but this time, I shifted the perspective directly down.
So it was looking at me, and again I took
that same seven minute clip and sped it up 32 times,
meaning I had a 14 second hyperlapse just of me,
but what was cool about this shot is the background
is constantly changing and I love that perspective.
It's so unique, looking down, almost like
it's a birds eye view and this is a clip
that worked in two ways.
One was locked onto me, so I was constantly facing forwards.
And in the second version, I turned direction lock off,
meaning I'm changing directions constantly,
but the background is staying at the same fixed perspective.
And I found this selfie stick's a total winner
in helping me get this shot,
because with enough distance from me,
I was able to get that wide reframe perspective,
which made me seem smaller and blend into the background
a bit more, which made the effect better in the end,
as opposed to if it were here and it's just Ben's head cam.
The final shot I got from this seven minute clip
was the horizon flip.
And this one was ridiculously simple.
All I did, was in the app, chose a 20 second clip,
and I chose a segment where I could see
both the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in one shot.
Then in the Insta360 Shot Lab,
there's an effect called horizon flip,
where it basically does it for you.
You can adjust small parameters, but yeah,
I literally edited that and upload it
to Instagram Stories within 60 seconds of shooting.
So I got three awesome shots from that one single clip.
That's why I love 360 so much.
It is, you can shoot first, point later.
Most of the time when I go out shooting,
I have no idea what the end result is going to be,
and just shoot and hope for the best.
And that was the case with this video.
Everything I shot, I did in a rush,
in maybe an hour and a half, yet a lot of these shots
look like great care and consideration was put into them.
As the sun started going down, I decided I was going to
get some kind of drone shot, spinning shot, hyperlapse shot
of the Opera House, so that's what I did.
I pressed record and I walked from one side
of the front courtyard to the other.
Ended up with the three minute clips,
sped it up 16 times, added the motion blur effect,
and voila and yes.
I know.
I looked very silly.
My final shot was a high up 360 perspective
of the Opera House on the far side at sunset.
So I was able to capture the sun setting
behind the Harbour Bridge, while also getting
a kind of high-ish upshot of the Opera House.
And I think using a selfie stick like this, is good
in situations like this, where you want to focus more
on the background and the environment you're in,
instead of it being a selfie where
you're very prominently in shot.
Okay, some final notes about this selfie stick.
You can use it on a tripod.
It has a one quarter inch tripod thread on the bottom.
However, be careful.
Don't extend it all the way out to three meters,
put it on a tripod, and walk away,
'cause you know it's going to fall over.
However, one exception I see to this,
is shooting at eye level, and the best used case for that,
is in a virtual tour type situation.
This absolutely would be suitable for shooting virtual tours
because, combined with a good tripod and a counterweight,
it will be steady and reliable.
The Insta360 Extended Edition Selfie Stick
is a hundred dollars and that's not cheap.
Is it worth it?
Well, yes.
If you're hoping to get cool shots,
then this is something that will last a long time,
it's good quality, and just being able to get
a wider range of shots, like the ones I got in this video
can really make you stand out.
And I love that it collapses down to such a small size,
so it can easily be fit in a backpack.
It is a toy, an expensive toy,
and an absolutely not necessary toy,
so if you don't want to spend a hundred dollars
on a selfie stick, there are alternatives,
like the previous Insta360 3 meter stick.
It's not as good, but it's cheaper.
And there are other generic brand,
three-ish meter selfie sticks out there.
That's it.
Links to the selfie stick and OneX2 below.
It's been fun.
It's been real peace out and I will see you next time.