This week with my mentor I mainly focused on how to take videos that I would be able to work with. Knowing how to take videos is the most important part of editing videos. After all, without them, you wouldn’t have anything to work with because you can only use so many of other people’s videos before you either run out or get a copyright claim against you.

My mentor is experienced mostly in animation, not live-action so we spent the first 30 minutes of the meeting watching popular mountain biking videos on YouTube and paying attention to the types of shots that they used. We found that one of the most frequently re-occurring shots was from a drone which I don’t have access to so we weren’t able to use that. She then showed me how I would be able to get a similar angle to a drone shot by putting a GoPro on a tree and I can say that I’ve tried it and it looks great. When I tried it was very snowy and icy plus my wrist is still bothering me so I was cautious and only managed to get the camera around ten feet high in the tree but in the summer when it’s dry it will look amazing.

Here’s a link to one of the shots I took from a tree: https://sd43bcca-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/125-rdickson_sd43_bc_ca/EVuV-PSQCqdPp2tmdnD7NWkBsB5Y5xUbDo4_XJ8kx560dA?e=Xrw4cS

There was a feature in one of the videos that she showed me that was a big wooden feature shot from a drone and that immediately made me think of this one and that I could put my camera on that tree except I was planning on putting it higher. Once I made the connection I told her about it and we talked about how I could get the angle right to make it look cool by getting the roll-down in the view, the run-up, and some scenery.

Other than the drone shots there were three other common angles. The first one was a POV shot from either a chest mount or a helmet mount which I already have some experience in using, someone filming the rider using a wide shot, and finally, a follow-cam from behind the rider and my mentor even suggested that it could look good if you put a chest mound on your back so that you can see the rider behind you but for now I’m not going to be able to do any follow cams because of my wrist.

After that, we talked more about making a story out of your video. You should start your videos with some shots that aren’t on your bike for example putting on your helmet or outing your feet on the pedals. I asked “what if I started off the video on the bike but not going down the hill for example climbing shots or doing a wheelie in the parking lot. In my next video, I’m going to try and start the video off with a climb and I have a specific idea to get some scenery and a specific sign in a shot.

Because my mentor doesn’t have too much experience making mountain biking videos there were a few things that she suggested that I didn’t completely agree with. One of them was in a video we watched, and the man had set up a GoPro on the chainstay of his bike (basically the part of the frame under the chain) and it was looking at the back of his leg and his pedal but you could also see the trail. It wasn’t a bad angle, to be honest, but I don’t think it would work for these reasons; GoPro mounts are very expensive, it would be super easy to knock the GoPro off the bike, low to the ground so it could be hit and finally, I wouldn’t trust a GoPro mount sideways on such a small part of the bike. I didn’t want to disagree so I thought of a few scenarios where it might work out and these include; if my legs were ripped, I made enough videos to make it worthwhile, I had GoPro + in case it got damaged, and finally if I had the money to use amount there instead of somewhere else that would look better and I could use it more often. I brought up why it might not work for me and the scenarios where it could work and we agreed that it wasn’t the best idea for me to use that angle in my videos.

Before my second meeting, I made a video with music in the background using the videos I had back from Sun Peaks a couple of months ago.

Here’s the link for that: https://youtu.be/u4ivnSLiiIA

In this video, I used a faster-paced song than in the mountain biking video I made a while back like she told me to, and I made it so that the order of the videos made sense rather than how I just threw in videos wherever in the previous video. Another issue that she had with the mountain biking video was that it was too repetitive and some of the clips that I used didn’t fit so I made this video less repetitive even though I used two very similar videos it didn’t feel repetitive. Her exact words were “the video is great except for the portrait shots; it wasn’t too repetitive, and the clips all fit in”. A portrait shot is when you’re filming with your phone straight up instead of filming wide which is how you always should be. The videos were older and I hadn’t planned on making a video so that is why they were portrait but she showed me how I could make a portrait shot look much better however it still doesn’t compete with a wide-angle.

Here are some of the videos that I tried to fix and in my opinion they look much better now than they did with the black backgrounds. https://youtu.be/9tJW1z6ca-w

One issue that I had with my Sun Peaks video was that the video was filmed pretty far back but there was one point where it was close so I couldn’t just crop it. She showed me how I could use the dynamic zoom feature so that I could constantly have the camera focused on the rider/ skier. I tried out dynamic zoom with a couple of videos and I think that it makes a huge difference to the first video and I wish that I knew about it before making the video. In the second video, it didn’t make as big of a difference but it still looks better than before. The second video is also the same feature that I used the tree shot for and that kind of shows how much better an elevated shot such as that one or a drone shot would look, plus the snow makes it look nicer.

Here’s the link for those videos:https://youtu.be/vAMod8gebPc

My mentor said that between the second meeting and the third I should try and use a bunch of the shots that we talked about and looked at in the YouTube videos. I suggested that I make a storyboard and try to do it in one big film day and make a video out of it at the end so that’s what we decided that I would be doing for the next meeting. So as soon as we ended the call I came up with a storyboard, a storyboard is a timeline and I put different features on the timeline, and under each feature, I put down the angles that I would use to film them. I decided that I would film on three of my favorite trails; Manhandler, Three Little Pigs, and Juan Valdez which are all on Eagle Mountain. I called one of my friends and asked him if I could film him for the day and he agreed and even let me use his GoPro and his phone to film so in total I had four cameras to work with.

We decided we would meet on Monday after school. Monday comes around and I’m super excited because I never do this, I’m usually filming myself and sometimes I’ll film someone or someone will record me but never for a full day. Then I get out of bed and it’s dumping snow so we have to call it off. That was very frustrating to me because that hadn’t even been a possibility and I wasn’t just frustrated because I needed the footage, I also hadn’t been riding for over a month and that was going to be the first day. Luckily I and my dad went skiing that night so I got some footage out of that and made a video out of that as well.

Here’s that video: https://youtu.be/eBwiejqeJF0

I was really happy with that video because I incorporated a story into it by adding the chairlift clip as well as the one of me putting my helmet on and to me it makes a big difference to the video. The song also matched the pace of the song which adds a nice flow to it. I got some more practice using keyframing in this video by changing the levels of the audio at a certain point which I also messed up a couple of them so that is something I want to touch on in the next meeting. I also used a bit of keyframing in the video in the form of dynamic zoom which is just a combination of cropping and keyframes. I’m looking forward to showing my mentor the video next week and to see what I can do better next time.

I and my friend decided that we would go out today to film even though it was -10 on the mountain which was refreshing and it felt so good to be mountain biking again. My goal was to get around 50-75 shots today and to try and get a bunch of different angles as well as getting a bunch of shots to make a story out of it. I ended up getting over 90 videos and I’m super stoked with how it turned out.

The cold was a challenge for us but as I mentioned it also felt good and the snow and ice in the background made the videos look very good however it also resulted in a few scary crashed that my friend had. Another challenge we had was because of how cold it was, both of our phones died within an hour which left us with two cameras and that slowed everything down. The tripod we had also frozen and because of that, neither of the GoPro’s fit in it which was an issue because that limited the static shots that I would be able to get. Because we were already slowed down, it started to get dark at the end and 1:30 quickly became 5:30 and it got dark but luckily the footage still works and can blend in with the rest. I haven’t gotten a chance to go through the videos I took yet but I’m excited to get on with the video and I think that they will turn out great!

One thing that I’ve noticed since starting this project is that I’m starting to enjoy making videos more now especially as my knowledge of how to make them is increasing and they are getting better. As for my improvement, I think that the videos speak for themselves. If you look at the last video that I made at Seymour with a limited set of videos compared to the mountain biking compilation I made a couple of months before, the difference is massive, and I can’t wait to keep getting on with this and am looking forward to comparing the videos I’m making now to what they will look like in the end.

Blog Post #2

This week I had my first meeting with my mentor, in the meeting we talked about; organization, what makes a good video, camera angles, crossing axis’s, audio, and finally, she taught me how to use the software better. 

The first thing that I asked her was “what is a common mistake that a lot of people make when they are starting out?” She told me that the most important thing you can do is to stay super organized. I can relate to that from experience because back in grade 7, all my files were messy, I had thirty documents named document and one or two folders. At the end of the year, we got a lesson on staying organized and since then I’ve had all my documents named and in folders inside of folders. But from what she taught me, I’m still not organized enough, she showed me her files and they were labelled with the media type first and then what the file is. Here’s an example of the last project that I worked on thanks to what she taught me. 

 Next, we talked about what made a good video specifically for mountain biking. She told me that the most important thing in a good video is that it has a good flow to it. If the video is going to be a fast-paced video then it must stay a fast-paced video, you can’t switch to a slow-video.  Again, I agreed with her because if I was watching a high-speed jump trail video on YouTube and it switched to a slow video of a green trail then I would probably click off the video because there’s a time and a place where I would want to watch a slower video and if I clicked on faster video then the chances are, I didn’t want to see a slower video. She said that you should also try to avoid using jump cuts, but mountain biking videos can be a little more forgiving with them. A jump cut is when the video seems to go forward into time for example, if I’m mountain biking in one place and then suddenly, I’m in another place. Finally, she told me that the video should seem flawless which can be achieved by using those strategies as well as having proper transitions between clips, camera angles and other things that we didn’t talk about in our meeting. 

The next thing that we talked about was, what camera angles I should use while filming. She said that the more camera angles I can get the better. She told me that my safe shot would always be a wide angle shot which I could get by setting up a camera at the bottom of a feature or else someone holds the camera. Another common angle in mountain biking and skiing is a POV shot which I can get by mounting a GoPro to my helmet or my chest. Because getting five or six different shots from different places can be hard to get with one camera, she said that I should do the feature multiple times and get different angle each time for example, a tripod on the ground, POV, follow cam, one beside the wheel and one from the handlebar looking back at the rider. 

The next thing that I asked her about was crossing axis’s which is where you show the same video twice in a row but from different angles which is the only time we disagreed. I only asked her about it because I’ve seen it look good before and I had a few places in mind to try crossing axis’s. She told me that it wasn’t a very good idea to do that unless you could pull it off like Quentin Terantino does, which I obviously can’t but I’d seen it look good many times before on YouTube. We came to an agreement that it would be able to work for certain features if I did it properly so that’s something that I want to try and play with on a certain feature on Eagle Mountain once I am able to ride again. 

After that, I asked about the audio for a video. She said that what audio you choose for would depend on the speed of the video but that something like Green Day might work nicely. Again, in the past I’ve noticed that a lot of bike park edits have rock music somewhat similar to Green Day and it adds a really nice touch to the video especially in the fast-paced videos. She gave me a tip about putting clips behind music and it was to put the clips in the video in frames of eight because most song are usually going by eight beats so you can have one frame for each beat, and it works out to super clean transitions. She said that was mostly used for animations which she specializes in, but it could also be applicable to live-action videos. 

Finally, she taught me about audio key framing which is a feature in the software that lets you turn up the sound or lower the volume where you want. It’s a fairly simple process to do but it can actually make a big difference to a video and something that I had never heard of. An example she gave me was that you make the audio louder when the biker is spraying dirt around a corner which is also something that appears in a lot of good edits. I tried audio key framing on a video that I took of my friend spraying dirt around a corner in Squamish a few months ago and I think that it turned out pretty good. 

Here’s the links for the before and after video but the quality turned to garbage when I put them on this website sadly.

https://mygleneagle.sd43.bc.ca/ronand2020/files/2021/01/Video_MTB-Corner-Before.mov

https://mygleneagle.sd43.bc.ca/ronand2020/files/2021/01/Video_MTB-Corner-After.mov

How to be a REAL success

Relationships:

The relationship rule that I will focus on how to add value to people is to follow the golden rule. The golden rule is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. What this means is that you treat other people how you would like to be treated. An example of the golden rule is that if you want people to respect you or to keep respecting you then you should respect them. I chose to apply this rule to my life mainly just because I’ll be able to use it when I’m teaching at my Taekwondo to make it more enjoyable for me and for the kids that I am teaching. Like in my first example, I need the students to respect me so that they will listen to me and do what I ask right away. A better example of the golden rule that I can use is rather than just teaching them the boring curriculum, I can try to have fun with them and try and make it easier for them to remember things by giving them tricks that I used to remember everything because that’s for the most part how I was taught when I was younger and for sure how I would have wanted to be taught. I know that if I use this rule when I’m teaching it will make me a better more respected leader in Taekwondo and once I’ve gotten good at using it in Taekwondo then I’ll be able to use it outside of it as well.

Equipping:

The equipping aspect that I’m choosing to work on is, not doing everything by myself. What this means is that I try to work with a team more often, ask questions more often and that I need to ask for help when I need it instead of spending a long time trying to figure it out on my own. For example, if there’s a project where you have the option of working with a partner but you have to do twice as much work then usually I’d work on my own because I think it’s easier but I could get my project done better if I work with a partner because we’d be able to check over each other’s work whenever and we would also be able to help each other. John Maxwell kept saying that you cannot be successful on your own, you need a team. So working in a team for projects and asking for help when I need it could first of all help me get better marks on the project but secondly it will be good practice to apply to life later when I’m trying to become successful. The first way that I will do this is by not being afraid to ask my parents or peers for help when I’m stuck on homework. The second thing I will do is, next few times that we have an assignment where we are allowed to work with a partner, I will take that option and work with someone else.

Attitude:

The attitude rule that I will be working on is responding to excessive demands on my time and my energy with a positive attitude. This means that when someone is telling you to do something that uses some of your free time and your energy to do you don’t think of how hard it’s going to be, why you shouldn’t have to be doing this, or that you can’t do this. You have to think of what you’re going to get out of it, maybe you get stronger, maybe you’re going to get paid, maybe the person who told you to do the task will respect you more or maybe you’ll just get experience but the point is whatever you’re doing there will be a positive takeaway from it unless you say that it’s too hard or something like that and don’t do it. I want to use this rule in my life because I think that it will improve my overall attitude and it will m make life in general easier once I’m used to using this rule because whenever I’m working I think of what good I’m going to be getting from it so I’ll have more motivation to complete the task and probably do a better job at it than someone else who’s doing it without motivation. I will apply this to my daily life by finding one good thing that I can get out of the task that I’m doing until eventually, I’m used to finding something positive from the work that I’m doing

Leadership:

The aspect of leadership that I will write about is challenging the process. Challenging the process means that you are trying to find problems in a process and trying to find methods that don’t work then you’re trying to fix the problems in the process. Challenging the process means that you must take risks by asking questions about the process to find the problems with it and you need to experiment with solutions to fix the problems. For example, at school, if there’s a math formula that the teacher is showing you and is saying that is the best way to solve the problem but you know there is a faster more effective way of doing it then you ask the teacher about why they teach that way and they are most likely right but say they’ve never heard of it then you can try that formula out a few times and show it to the teacher and they might switch the way of doing that question. In that example you’re not happy with the process so you question it, then you experiment with it and then you fix the problem. I want to apply this to my life because it is good practice stepping up and it could definitely help improve my confidence and my leadership abilities because I’m taking charge when I’m questioning a process and fixing it. This is going to be a bit harder for me to use in real life because I’m going to have to constantly look for issues mainly with things that are being taught to me when I’m at school and Taekwondo or if I’m doing anything else where I’m being taught.