today i want to show you how i use footage from the mavic 3 and other cameras to create and
tell a story through video this quote has been a driving force in my life people often ask me how
i approach filming in alaska as a solo creator beyond using good gear like the mavic 3 or the
sony a74 i'm constantly pushing and challenging myself to find angles and perspectives that are
different i'm looking for that one shot that will grab people's attention and tell a story
that means taking risks but not in the way you might think
you might think the biggest risks i take are just getting to some of these epic places to film
walking on a glacier flying in a small plane or in a helicopter to get to some incredible location
but the truth is i really don't risk as much as you think yes there's risk involved in flying
an aircraft there's risk walking on a glacier but the biggest risk i take day after day is the risk
of failure i risk coming back with a hundred terrible photos or a drive full of unusable or
mediocre shots the biggest risk i take day after day is trying going out trying something new
pushing myself and my equipment to its limits to try and capture a shot that will tell the story
the reality is failure isn't the result of risk risking failure is the only path to success
hey my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go so i test and review
lots of drones cameras lenses other filmmaking equipment here in alaska and i give you tips and
tutorials on how to use them if that's something interests you consider subscribing today i want
to break down for you why i picked the shots that i picked from all the different cameras i used in
order to tell the story that you just watched i'll be doing more videos about this in the future like
actually taking you with me on the journey of going to film one of these things and like when
i'm on location how i look for the shots that i know i want to capture and how i capture them
but for today we're going to break down the edit process between all these different cameras
which brings me to the sponsor of today's video which is film convert who produces cinematic and
the nitrate plugin for davinci resolve premiere pro and final cut pro which is my editor of choice
the cool thing is that they just released a plug-in pack or an upgrade to the existing
plugins that include the mavic 3 the a74 even the red comodo and a few other things so that
you can match those cameras up to other cameras that they have already in their plug-in packs
which is fantastic for this particular story not only that i've been using
cinematic for pretty much all of my color grading lately because it's a really powerful plugin
and a really powerful color grading tool to be able to match up different cameras even if
they're not listed in their particular database of sensor level matching that they have now telling a
story through video really doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it a lot a story is
basically three parts beginning middle and an end it's a journey through a process to a conflict at
a resolution where we learn something new and our lives are transformed and that's really kind of i
mean it's super simple breaking it down that way but the beginning is the setup it's what
starts us on this journey it's what takes us uh to a point where we're gonna walk down this path
which leads us to the middle which is the kind of build up toward this conflict this big climax this
this thing that we have to overcome and wrestle through in order to be changed and transformed
which brings us to the end the resolution of all of that where we are now walking away with a new
skill something we didn't know before where we've been changed and transformed as a person and so
this story being about risk i wanted to challenge everybody all of you myself included to go and
take risks because we are a very risk adverse society because of our fear of failure but really
risk is the only way we can learn and grow as creative people and so using all of the risks that
i take is a creative person here in alaska between flying in helicopters and hiking to these places
and all this i wanted to talk to you or tell you the story about taking risk and how it's essential
so i came up with this narration and this script i won't talk a lot about that and obviously i
had some music ready to go building the story on this narration was starting with this quote
this quote i really do like this quote because it does challenge me regularly to remember to go out
and risk risk failure and then i wanted to start off and this is all the setup obviously i'm not
in my studio i'm out in a location that looks crazy or pretty amazing hopefully all of these
shots here are building on the different things that the narrator is saying talk about the
different types of equipment i use here at alaska and then talking about the risks that i take
because i get lots of comments about the risks i take so all of these shots i selected because
they reinforce and they build visually what the narrator is saying what the narration is saying
and it helps to add impact and power to the words and so that's an easy way there that you can start
building a story if you're using something like a narration or titles on the screen or something
like that is using your visuals using your your video that you shot with a drone with ground
camera whatever to reinforce and to build visually what the story what the narration is talking about
as we build this story up and talking about you know flying in small aircraft and stuff like that
and here is where i did something a little different and i transitioned to
talking about uh how we need to take risks in order to learn and to grow and this is where i
kind of jump into the story about this lady experiencing ice climbing on a glacier for the
first time in her life and one of the things that you can use when you're storytelling is
starting really close to stuff and keeping it very tight very close shot so you don't reveal a lot
of information if you notice i did this twice i did this in the beginning where it's really
tight on my face and you just see a reflection of the location in my sunglasses and then i do
it again here where i show crampons being put on the boots and they're drilling in the anchors into
the ice and so all of this is hopefully causing you to wonder what they're doing and this story
is all building up toward what i was talking about earlier in the story or earlier in the narration
about a hero shot capturing a hero shot and how it takes a lot of risk to be able to go out and try
and capture a whole story in one shot so all these shots are hopefully causing people to want to know
what's going on it hooks you it causes you to want to go on this journey and to see what's going on
so we're showing all this roping up getting harnessed in and then learning about trusting
the ropes and again still i'm keeping these shots fairly fairly tight but still revealing
more and more information to the audience uh so here like they're leaning back on the rope
learning to trust the rope this was shot the mavic 3 tele camera which i absolutely love by the way
uh right here until she goes to actually take her first steps over the side which to most people
feels like a giant just massive risk to trust all of your body weight on that rope that you
just drilled into the ice and then step over where if you fail you're going to end up
very wet in an extremely cold pool of blue water but she did and then learning to use the ice axes
the ice picks to climb back up the side all that all that leading up to where i had coordinated
with this helicopter pilot to fly overhead uh or nearby so that i could capture the entire
story in one shot obviously the climax here is that we pull back and we reveal the entire story
and then boom that's the hero shot that i talked about earlier in the story capturing this shot
here where it told the entire story in one photo and then we come to the resolution which is kind
of re reiterating what we learned what how we were changed how we were transformed through
this process she learned how to trust the rope how to anchor herself off in the ice and how to
use ice picks and crampons to climb a vertical wall of ice and she certainly had success which
actually i love this shot because they're high fiving and definitely shows the level of like yeah
we did this we accomplished this all while this the narration here is reiterating the fact that
risk doesn't result in failure but if we don't take risks we will never succeed so in a sense we
will fail without risk guaranteed even though we think it's the other way around and that's where
city match and nitrate came in invaluable on this because i had to shoot it on so many different
cameras because everything is moving fast fast paced i'm using drones i'm using or i'm using a
mavic 3 i'm using a7 gopro pretty much everything i can to capture this process as it's happening
in real time city match became a really valuable tool and has become a really valuable tool there
are links in the description with a discount code and stuff like that for you if you want to uh
get it yourself but essentially drag and drop the cinematic plugin on there open up the controls
pull this over here so you can see it and because they just released their
mavic 3 sensor level matching and a mavic 3 pack for nitrate it made
it really easy to match all these cameras up essentially i tell the software this is a dji
mavic 3 and i shot it in d log and i want to match it to a sony a74 which is right there and i shot
all my a74 stuff in s gamut.cine slog3 now here so here it already kind of matches up a little bit
but here's where you can apply a 709 transform which essentially applies a lut that grades the
image to where it looks pretty much like it was shot on you know that camera we take that off
that's what it looks like without but obviously i wanted to match everything to the a74 so grab this
change that there and it changes and transforms the image but that's not all i want to do because
i do want to color grade this obviously you can see my waveforms here are not quite where i want
and if i want to change the white balance which is really crucial if you want to match cameras
getting the same white balance on everything becomes a really big part of that you can
click or tap there you basically grab this little dropper tool here and you select an area somewhere
on the screen that's pure white which is one of the reasons i always carry a white balance
card with me is i can use that there and it automatically adjusts the temperature and the tint
if you want to check your false colors to see what's actually white white should stay white
when you turn that on and off and then you can mess with all your hue and saturation luma curves
which i did do to kind of match up some of the reds in other cameras like the gopro and the a74
and then here you have this really great secondary color corrections
you can adjust your highlights you can change your saturation or the hue of your highlights
you can adjust your colors you can turn your saturation up or down if you want to
just reset that and then i always like to throw in just a tiny little bit of an s
curve on this just because i feel like it just it makes the footage look
the way i want it to look so that right there actually i'm going to desaturate this just a touch
that is essentially how i exactly how i want this camera to look so the a74 footage here
which you know uh looks the way it looks and then we've got the mavic 3 footage here mavic 3 footage
that might be a little contrasty i think i'll pull the shadows up just a hair and maybe pull the
midtones up just to touch so it gets a little bit brighter here on the subjects and this is where
nitrate came in because i filmed this on the mavic 3 normal lens or the the telephoto camera which
has no log profile no flat profile or anything like that getting it to match with the other i
used cinematic for a little bit of color grading um i'd pull the mid tones way up and then adjust
the white balance just a tiny bit this is where i use the nitrate plug-in from film convert to
just give it a little bit more of an organic feel and nitrate essentially is a film emulation tool
so it adds grain and it adds some other different things that were inherent in the properties of
film so because they just released the camera pack i picked dji mavic 3 and it's a normal profile
and then i just kind of went through all these different film packs that they've got
and picked i like this one the best i just like the little bit of subtle
stuff that this particular film emulation did to it now i didn't i didn't like both of these at 100
i liked it like more 60 something and uh yeah 60 65 was really nice you can get a lot more
grain if you wanted to um and then to you can also decide if you want it to be like eight millimeter
film or uh 16 millimeter film or super 16 but 35 millimeter full frame is what i wanted so if you
want to soften something up you can do that by using this different film size emulation here
obviously it gets a little bit softer a little more grainy if that's something you like but i
really liked what this plug-in in particular did for this particular shot and a couple of other
shots in this hopefully that helps you understand a little bit more about my thought process
approaching putting together a video using drone footage other camera footage if you want to learn
more about this you can click or tap right here put together a playlist i'll see you in one of
those videos as always if you have questions ask me in the comments below or join my live stream
on wednesday nights 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers