Filming the trip

[baluchiman]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me here. My overland trips were in 1995 and 2007. I am now an old b@$t@rd, 59 tomorrow actually. I'm planning a 'last' big expedition, hopefully from England to Cape Town in the next 12 months. I'm an avid youtube watcher when it comes to travel vlogs. The quality in my opinion matches anything the television travel show, 'Wish you were bl00dy here' produced, many years ago. Anyway, my question is, what is the best way to film a trip? Is it with a good quality mobile phone, or, as I often hear about, a Go-Pro? Please understand, that I never was the sharpest knife in the box, hence, it would need to be simple to use. If I wanted to record a trip, what should I buy?

[backofbeyond]

59 and planning your 'last' big trip !!! Give it another 20yrs and see how you feel then

'How do I film my trip' must be the second most contentious question asked after what oil should I use. Everybody has their own favourite approach / equipment / editing method etc, but one thing you will notice is that equipment has moved on since 2007.

A lot of people - me included - use GoPros as they're relatively inexpensive, produce ok results, they record onto cards so you don't run out of storage space (unlike some phones) and there's a raft of accessories around for them so you'll be able to mount them pretty much anywhere you want. On the down side they can be awkward to use, the options menus are confusing, the battery life is pretty short and they have a very wide-angle view (which is not always what you want). But if you're willing to spend some time learning them and putting the effort in on the road (it's very rarely switch it on and leave it run) they're probably the best bet - in my opinion. They do have the advantage over phones that if one falls off and gets run over you haven't lost your phone. There are loads of very cheap GoPro clones on the market. I've used three of them over the years and they've been universally rubbish.

[Alanymarce]

We've used a GoPro for videos while travelling however at the moment we're using an iPhone for occasional videos. We have the GoPro however have chosen not to mount it. Now, we don't try to record every km, just occasional videos of particular sections of road or scenery. If you want a continuous video of your trip then a GoPro makes more sense.

PS: if you're old at 59 I suppose I'm ancient...

[backofbeyond]

Part 2.

Loading up your bike with GoPros is only the start if you want to produce anything like Long Way Anywhere or even making something of YouTube std. There's a technique to film making that these days goes beyond filming a 20 min section of pretty scenery and slapping some pirated rock music over the top in iMovie.

In fact to produce anything decent changes what you're doing from filming a bike trip to riding a bike between locations on a film shoot. You'll be riding the same section of pre scripted road half a dozen times to film everything from different angles, your fellow travellers will have to become unpaid actors / extras (and that, in my experience, is really hard - they want to get to a destination, not spend half the day p*ssing about with cameras) and you'll have to get used to doing warm and friendly speeches to camera (a phone may be better for this) to link the riding sections together. All of this is why people filming their trips 'properly' seem to take three times as long to get anywhere as you and I just riding normally.

And then there's sound. Unless you're planning a silent movie the microphones on GoPros and most phones are terrible. It's as important (at least) as the visuals and almost everybody (me included) overlooks it. Have a look at this for a run down of add ons for phone filming -

https://www.dpreview.com/news/723449...r-vlogging-rig

And check out some of Jan Krijtenburg's videos here and on YouTube to see how he does on bike filming. Here's a link to his YT stuff -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7o...KqR3SyQiVy6ehw

[JMPCUT]

No idea what’s in this, but it’s specific to what you’re asking. Noraly does the YouTube jumpcut thing that’s ubiquitous now and drives me buggy, but she does nice, natural work. If you do try the Itchy Boots Academy, come back and let us know:
https://www.itchyboots.com/academy

[Surfy]

I always do ask myself, why those vloggers do use cheap equipement. No manual image stabilisation, no gimbal - most semi professional drone is better equiped today.



Probably there is a reason, but personally I would use something like this. But that is not for the bike ;-)

To use the filmed material later for compiling a movie - that is the hard step, need time, need skills. You have to cut, to mix sound, to speak (with a decent mic), it is not just the "filming", the processing is the harder part.

Surfy

[JMPCUT]

80% of everything is crap. You’re looking at the wrong ones.

(Ok, maybe 90.)

[AnTyx]

Originally Posted by baluchiman

Anyway, my question is, what is the best way to film a trip? Is it with a good quality mobile phone, or, as I often hear about, a Go-Pro?

The best way to film a trip is with a professional film crew, following you in a separate vehicle, with a director, a soundman, and a drone operator.

There are a handful of people who travel solo and make excellent videos about it on YouTube, but for them, it is their literal full-time job. And a lot of them - people like Lyndon Poskitt or the MotoGeo guy - almost certainly have dedicated editors, that is to say, they make and upload the footage, then someone else cuts it into something watchable while they're on their next leg.

Take a minute and think about what Itchy Boots' days are like. She'll ride for a few hundred kilometers or less, see one or two interesting things, arrive at her hotel for the night (and she needs a nice hotel with good wifi and electricity every night, with the cost and flexibility limitations there), then she'll spend the rest of her evening editing the footage and uploading the episode.

Or think of Ed March. He'll spend a few weeks travelling, and then a month literally doing nothing else but cutting together a single hour-long episode. AND a lot of his riding involves setting up a tripod, riding past it, then coming back to pack it up on the bike before moving on!

That's fine for them - they've built up a lot of skill and experience at it, and this is literally what they do for a living - but if you're not already an accomplished video editor, I suggest you don't try to start.

Filming your trip with the intention of making a video from it will almost inevitably fail OR ruin your experience. The way to produce a memory of your trip is to write a book about it - after you return.

---

Now, this is all not to say that you shouldn't invest in some equipment to take great photos and videos where it makes sense. So, a few technical bits of advice follow.

1) The best camera is the one you have in your hand when you need it. Therefore, get a phone with the best camera you can afford. I've recently switched to the iPhone 13 Mini, but I would recommend getting one of the newer Android phones, because for the same money you will get both a wide-angle AND a telephoto lens in your device. I own a nice Sony DSLR with multiple lenses, but 99.9% of the time, my smartphone takes photos that are good enough for my purposes. A good optical zoom is the only thing I truly miss, especially now that phones are also very good at night shots.

3) If you can afford a GoPro, get one, and get the newest one. Their stabilization, video quality, extra features, and convenience of use get better with every generation. Get a bunch of extra mounts for it - they're cheap - and set them up all over your bike, so that you can change the gopro's placement around for diverse shots.

The downside of a GoPro is that its batteries never last as long as you want them to, which leads me to...

4) Consider installing a permanent dashcam on your bike. I've got a Viofo MT1 with front and back cameras that feed into the central recording unit, others are available, some of them even do 4K filming. The quality will not be as good as a GoPro, but the absolute unassailable advantage is that you are always filming whenever your ignition is on - you don't have to remember to start the cameras, you don't have to remember to charge them in the evening, and you can do fun bits like timelapse.

And finally, if you ramble on inside your helmet and want to provide a running commentary:

5) A helmet speaker system with a camera built in, like the Sena 50C. There are very faffy ways to rig an external microphone separately in your helmet going to your GoPro, or to a sound recorder and then add your voice to the video in post-production, but only the 50C-type of setups will record your helmet audio onto the footage you make right away, without additional unreliable bullshit.

[Surfy]

Originally Posted by AnTyx

Filming your trip with the intention of making a video from it will almost inevitably fail OR ruin your experience. The way to produce a memory of your trip is to write a book about it - after you return.

Very wise word!

Just one has to be added / corrected.

As long you are not called "the brain" - you should write your notes each day. Or you will miss all the details, the nuances, the stuff who is required to wrote about.

On my transafrica I did write any evening, what did happens during the day. Later I did add pictures, when I was in a capital with good wifi uplink.

Trans-Africa

Today I can read it and a lot more comes back to my memories, I can smell, feel - I can get a flashback when reading the blog.

It is something we always do for ourself - I guess not more than 30-40 People did really read through the complete trip. Yes, there are
238`778 views till today, but looking to each day pages, the view are around 100, too a lot of searchengine hits.

To write each day helps a lot, helps to save the memorys to the brain, helps to fresh up the memorys if you read it later.

Trips like my 3 months europe trip where I did wrote one article about the whole trip - they are completely lost. Yes I can go through the pictures, but it didnt bring back what is required

https://www.4x4tripping.com/2020/10/...t-dem-4x4.html

Want to say: to be able to write a book you have to write daily about what happens, or you have to write what your imagination/fantasy is able to put in.

I never thought about writing a book As long I can get a good income in my job at home, I would loose cash oportunities with start to write...

If you plan to monetarize your trip, youtube/tiktok/insta are the way to go. But as AnTyx wrote - it will kills your experience.... It is a own business.

Surfy

[tohellnback]

Ive watched Ichy boots and Charley Sinewan I like Charleys videos he gets into some pretty good predicaments when he was on his 850 gsa and he really takes the time to document his misery episodes no no no no!
A overloaded 850gsa what could possible go wrong.
these riders along with Yo Soy Tibu carry a lot of gear and it makes you wonder about the hassles they have to keep there stuff from being stolen
Latin America certainly has it challenges Id guess the pay checks are good otherwise they wouldn't be filming it
I ride a lot of in in Colombia and but having 3- 4 or five cameras filming and a pricey gps hanging off the bike + a drone is not going to happen
I use a cheap GoPro session 4 on my helmet its the smallest one and takes great pictures and short videos it is easy to manipulate
Ed March he has all the time in the world when he gets back to work to make a episode he's a sailer

[Jay_Benson]

Originally Posted by baluchiman

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me here. My overland trips were in 1995 and 2007. I am now a young whippersnapper, 59 tomorrow actually.

Fixed that error for you.

Itchy Boots has got a section on her web site called the Academy which is to help people do their own vlogs. Here is a link.

I have no idea if it is any good - when I do my trip I will be doing some training in photography beforehand for landscapes and for underwater photography, but I will be leaving video well alone - too many toys to buy, too much distraction from the trip (still photography has the potential to be bad enough).

[the free man]

I guess it depends what you want to achieve. Memories for yourself? Attracting a Youtube crowd? Styles are so different. Itchy started her first season on Youtube with 1 GoPro and a selfie stick it seems. She does not attract viewers because of her flawless technique or editing but because of her personality. People like to "hang out" with her.

If I would buy me some equipment these days I would start with 1 GoPro for the rider view, mount it to the helmet, selfie stick for the monologue sections, probably a DJI 3 Mini Drone for the occasional vistas. :-) Start small and improve from there. Nothing is perfect from the start. Find your own style of doing things.

But then I am by no means a movie editor.

[backofbeyond]

Originally Posted by AnTyx

Take a minute and think about what Itchy Boots' days are like. She'll ride for a few hundred kilometers or less, see one or two interesting things, arrive at her hotel for the night (and she needs a nice hotel with good wifi and electricity every night, with the cost and flexibility limitations there), then she'll spend the rest of her evening editing the footage and uploading the episode.

Or think of Ed March. He'll spend a few weeks travelling, and then a month literally doing nothing else but cutting together a single hour-long episode. AND a lot of his riding involves setting up a tripod, riding past it, then coming back to pack it up on the bike before moving on!

That's fine for them - they've built up a lot of skill and experience at it, and this is literally what they do for a living - but if you're not already an accomplished video editor, I suggest you don't try to start.

Filming your trip with the intention of making a video from it will almost inevitably fail OR ruin your experience. The way to produce a memory of your trip is to write a book about it - after you return.

---


The best camera is the one you have in your hand when you need it. Therefore, get a phone with the best camera you can afford. I've recently switched to the iPhone 13 Mini, but I would recommend getting one of the newer Android phones, because for the same money you will get both a wide-angle AND a telephoto lens in your device. I own a nice Sony DSLR with multiple lenses, but 99.9% of the time, my smartphone takes photos that are good enough for my purposes. A good optical zoom is the only thing I truly miss, especially now that phones are also very good at night shots.

If you can afford a GoPro, get one, and get the newest one. Their stabilization, video quality, extra features, and convenience of use get better with every generation. Get a bunch of extra mounts for it - they're cheap - and set them up all over your bike, so that you can change the gopro's placement around for diverse shots.

And finally, if you ramble on inside your helmet and want to provide a running commentary:

A helmet speaker system with a camera built in, like the Sena 50C. There are very faffy ways to rig an external microphone separately in your helmet going to your GoPro, or to a sound recorder and then add your voice to the video in post-production, but only the 50C-type of setups will record your helmet audio onto the footage you make right away, without additional unreliable bullshit.

That's pretty much exactly my thoughts as well. To do it well means turning it into a job, and how many creative jobs can you jump in the deep end at and do them right first time. To get a decent video from a trip you'll have a history of terrible videos stretching back behind you. If this is your first one you can be close to certain this won't turn out to be the 'decent' one.

With GoPros, the latest one, the Hero 10 seems to be pretty good, as does the one before last, the Hero 8. The Hero 9 is reputed to be full of software bugs - something you might want to consider if GoPro is going to be your travel cam of choice.

I've not had much luck with phones as action cams. We've tried them a few times and they're great (good enough anyway) for off the bike stuff, but on bike the mounts and the vulnerability are very marginal - nothing like as good as what's around for GoPros. Having said that my experience is all pre Covid so things may have moved on in the last couple of years. What's universally rubbish for bike trip video (or even stills on the move) are 'proper' cameras - DSLRs / mirrorless and the like. I have loads of them (I used to be a pro snapper before I retired) and still try to convince myself they're the things to use, but the reality is that time and technology has moved on. Take one and you'll probably find it's unused at the end of the trip.

Re writing a book afterwards, yes that'll bring it all back but it'll take even longer than editing a video. I've done four now, with a fifth in the works, and I average about one a year (80 to 100,000 words per book, which for a paperback is about an inch thick). Every creative writing course you'll ever do will tell you to take notes - write down everything as soon as possible afterwards and base the book on those notes. Coming from a visual background I use a small camera as my notebook and photograph what I want to remember. For the last book I had 2000 photographs as aide memoires. It works for me but I've had 30yrs of trying to tell stories with still pictures so I can record the essence of a situation easily.

[brclarke]

Or think of Ed March. He'll spend a few weeks travelling, and then a month literally doing nothing else but cutting together a single hour-long episode. AND a lot of his riding involves setting up a tripod, riding past it, then coming back to pack it up on the bike before moving on!

If you've never watched Ed March's videos on Youtube, I highly recommend them - very entertaining, and it's amazing to me where he's gone on his knackered old Cub 90.

[chris]

Before thinking about what video equipment you might want to buy, think about why you're filming said trip. Who is the target audience? How much effort and time acquiring filming skills and especially editing skills do you want to invest? What's wrong with just happy snapping with a camera phone for social media and personal memories as well as a personal diary?

Also, once you've created some clips, if you want more than just a few mates or your grandkids to watch them, you'll spend the rest of your days "marketing" your offerings, which is basically spamming social media, and just making people unfollow or block you, because 98% of YouTube bike travel videos are in my opinion, just not very good. Check HU FB as to the number likes people don't get sharing their videos compared to a nice picture or 2 with an interesting/ personal description.

Being male and 59, you lack certain attributes to become the next viral internet sensation, again only my personal opinion, should you have aspirations in that regard