How to make a video on the road?

[chilswelluk]

First of all this question is more about the practicalities of making video on the road, rather than the technical details. I have a good grasp of video making and am relatively proficient with Adobe Premiere. The problem is how do I approach video making on the road? I will mainly be camping, and the idea of sitting for hours in a tent editing video does not fill me with much enthusiasm. The focus of the trip should be the trip, and not the video! Plus it means taking a high spec laptop, which is something else to worry about getting broken, stolen,charged up and something else to lug about.

But on the other hand I would really like to have my own website and regularly upload videos of my trip. These would be for friends, family and a wider audience. Over the years I have seen some really good threads on here of people making videos of their trip. They would often update every few days and it would make really exciting watching. The videos were also well edited, which must have taken a substantial amount of time. How do these people do it? One option is to shoot raw footage and send it to someone back home, who does all the editing. But that is asking a lot of people and to pay someone to do this would be outside my budget.

Plus another consideration is, how do people manage to upload this video, particularly in countries where Internet is very slow? Decent quality 4k video takes up a lot of space, and I can only envisage spending hours in places waiting for my video to upload. Plus I like to go off the beaten track (try to avoid towns / cities) and spend a lot of time in nature (often weeks) and Internet satellite solutions are extremely expensive. I know I could just shoot all my video and edit it once I return home (after 8 months) but that is not making a video on the road, plus going through that much film is likely to be extremely tedious.

So how do people go on? Do I have to face the reality that I will have to spend hours / days editing video in a tent, and lugging around a lot of equipment? How have other people got on who produce decent quality video on the road? I use the word decent, as I have seen many videos over the years which are just terrible. There is often no story line, editing or thought gone into the video and they are extremely boring to anybody but the person making them and their immediate family. This is something I want to avoid and would like an element of professionalism to my videos.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[backofbeyond]

I suspect only you can decide where the balance lies between bike trip and video shoot. If you really want to produce videos with:

. high artistic quality ("would like an element of professionalism to my videos"),
. high technical quality ("Decent quality 4k video")
. using high end software ("I ... am relatively proficient with Adobe Premiere")
. on a regular basis (" I would really like to ... regularly upload videos of my trip")

you're going to have to put in the time as well as carry the equipment. Whether that then impacts on what you were trying to film in the first place is something you're going to be wrestling with constantly - particularly if you're travelling with other people who may not share your passion. Interestingly, when we were asked to judge the best 5 min short at the UK HU event a week or so ago, the winner wasn't the multi camera + drone music video feel trip across the Stans but a one bloke + GoPro on a selfie stick in SE Asia production. What sold it was screen presence rather than post production.

I don't think there's any hidden tricks of the trade, something that only the pros know that would square the circle. I'm pretty much in the "record the essence of the trip and do the post production afterwards" camp, both with video /stills and writing (although I tend to use the visuals as memory jogs for the words) when I travel with others. When I'm on my own I do tend to sway towards a more considered approach towards capture but still not to the point of taking editing hardware + software. Maybe, when I can edit 4K properly on a phone, I'll consider doing something en-route but by then we'll all be shooting 8K. Plus ca change etc.

Others, of course, may have their own opinions

[Karakoram Son]

I believe the story is way more important than camera gear or format. but it is very pleasing to watch a video if it is stable, well edited and with meaningfully composed shots.

Shoot for The Edit
A Huge amount of time can be saved if video clips have been shot keeping in mind about editing. For example shot B-Rolls and Pane out/in transitions of 5-7 Seconds and then trimmed according to your taste later. Put them on Timeline and have your put transition between. Shaky video can be stabilize with Adobe Premier or other video editing tools but Always try to make it stabilize beforehand.
https://youtu.be/cMMmWVMic1Y?t=1m7s

Story Boarding
All the content and scenes in one video should be connected to each other and so each Episode of the video should connect to next (If you produce series of videos for the trip). In my opinion, All should make sense Visually and Sound wise.
The viewer needs to informed if there is new Place, Person or event information of text or sound. The lower third can be used for these purposes.

Sound
You can use your voice as a voice over and some music as well.
It should be acoustically pleasing that even a person with closed eyes can understand whats going on in the video (in case of voice-over).

Proxy Workflows for 4K
I still prefer 1080p with 24fps (Film Look) with color graded. but 4K can be edited much less painfully with proxy workflow videos on Slower computers.
You can use LUTS (some are free) for cine look.

Please see the following link for more information on a proxy.

https://blogs.adobe.com/creativeclou...emiere-pro-cc/

This is my First ever post on HUBB and I am not native English speaker. But still, I hope it will help.
Cheers!

[ta-rider]

You can also make a Video after your trip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkClxaL0Qn4

There is hardly fast enouth internet available to upload videos while travelling specially in the interesding countrys. Not talking about spending hours on the cumputer for sorting and cutting. I usuarly write something like a diary on paper and only update my webpage if i spend some weeks at some nice beaches:

http://afrikamotorrad.de/index.php?report=en_westkueste

Same as with bikes at the end its not about expensive 4k equipment but about a interesding story...

[Temporaryescapee]

I bought a cheap Asus netbook for £200, loaded moviemaker and saved some music tracks in advance.

On the road i spent 30 mins or so each day editing footage into shorts (aim was 90 secs max) and uploaded every few days when i had adequate wifi (generally 4 to 6 am was best!). I shot at low res (720) to manage file size.

When home i then put together a trip summary from the shorts.

Good luck!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Grant Johnson]

Great post Karakoram Son and welcome to HU! And your English is just fine, don't worry about it AT ALL

[vstromrider]

If you have an iphone you can download the 'Splice' app for free and easily make movies on your phone. I find that the iphone is actually a really good video camera with good stabilisation and it's super easy to use. No messing around with settings etc. You just point and shoot and that gives you opportunities for shots that you would probably miss with more complicated cameras. You can also trim your clips easily using the edit feature before putting them together with the Splice app. There is also a library of free music that you can use with the app. In my opinion, you don't need 4K. 1080 HD is clear enough and it's also much quicker to work with.

If you have a PC and you would rather edit on that, just open the 'Photos' app, hit the 'create' button, and use the movie maker installed with that. It's also very easy to use, you can trim your clips, move clips around, add filters, add photos, and any music of your choice. It's dead easy and if you're not interested in carrying loads of equipment with you you can easily make great movies using just your phone or a Go Pro.

If you're travelling by motorcycle and you want to keep it simple but make still make great movies you won't go far wrong using this stuff. I hope that helps.

John

[chilswelluk]

Originally Posted by vstromrider

If you're travelling by motorcycle and you want to keep it simple but make still make great movies you won't go far wrong using this stuff. I hope that helps.

Thanks for your thoughts, and that's great if it works for you, but I don't think it would work for me. Actually I don't even own a smart phone! I like to shoot with at least 2 cameras (action cam and DSLR), and multiple lenses. For the DSLR I love having manual camera control, and don't do anything on auto. I then edit my footage in Premiere Pro and do colour correction in Davinci Resolve. I fear that if I just used a phone, I would not be happy with the quality of my work. I do enjoy the artistic side of video making, but I will have to find a balance in terms of the trip and my time.

[Fern]

Our Grand Idea videos are made on power director, on a moto 4 android phone, and uploaded on guesthouse wifi, in Peru, and Morocco..

https://www.youtube.com/user/FerdinandEsq/playlists

[vstromrider]

Originally Posted by chilswelluk

....I will mainly be camping, and the idea of sitting for hours in a tent editing video does not fill me with much enthusiasm. The focus of the trip should be the trip, and not the video! Plus it means taking a high spec laptop, which is something else to worry about getting broken, stolen,charged up and something else to lug about.

....So how do people go on? Do I have to face the reality that I will have to spend hours / days editing video in a tent, and lugging around a lot of equipment? How have other people got on who produce decent quality video on the road? ...

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Sorry, but in your first post it looked like you wanted to keep it simple but it seems that you actually want to lug a lot of equipment with you and use high end editing tools so you'll need to carry a high spec laptop as well. It's your choice but you'll probably end up spend a lot of time fiddling with gear. There are plenty of great videos online made with smartphones and Go Pros. If you really need 4K the Go Pro 6 will do everything you want. If you need a power zoom you could look at the Lumix TZ90 which records in 4K and has a 30x optical zoom. It's very small and fits in your pocket and yet it produces really good video with great stabilisation even at full zoom.

Just my two pence worth...

[JMo (& piglet)]

Originally Posted by chilswelluk

Thanks for your thoughts, and that's great if it works for you, but I don't think it would work for me. Actually I don't even own a smart phone! I like to shoot with at least 2 cameras (action cam and DSLR), and multiple lenses. For the DSLR I love having manual camera control, and don't do anything on auto. I then edit my footage in Premiere Pro and do colour correction in Davinci Resolve. I fear that if I just used a phone, I would not be happy with the quality of my work. I do enjoy the artistic side of video making, but I will have to find a balance in terms of the trip and my time.

I tend to agree with Vstromrider here - I think what you're actually afraid of is that an iPhone/GoPro and iMovie in an iPad would show just how redundant all that expensive gear and 'manual' control is - particularly when trying to travel-logue from the road.

I appreciate quality photography and editing is essential to making a video watchable (so is length of course), but fundamentally it's content that dictates the story.

Ed March made a commercial/broadcast quality film using just a handheld Panasonic pocket camera around five years ago now - yes it took extensive editing back home, but that, as I know you're already aware, is what it takes to make something that is genuinely professional quality - time.

Modern 'automatic' compact cameras and smartphones are really very good these days - commercial movies have been shot on iPhones - basically you can trust the camera to do the tech stuff, and just get on with actually pointing it at the content and telling the story - which already is a huge time saving.

If you are specifically looking to assemble and upload content on a regular basis while you are actually travelling - then you could do worse than use the templates in something like iMovie and/or GoPros own online assembly packages.

Then you can always put a 'full-length' version together once the trip is over (to present at Horizons, or upload to YouTube or your own website etc.) as Temporaryescapee suggests earlier?

Hope that is something to consider...

Jenny x

ps. I always wondered how Lyndon Poskitt was able to transfer hours of high quality footage from abroad back to his editing team in the UK... turns out he just posts them the SD card and buys another.

[PaulD]

This is a film I made with just a GoPro & a Canon 7D & edited in Final Cut !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7lnlhFyMYg

Cheers
Paul

[Lovetheworld]

I will check the video later.

Right now we are making short 720p clips using Gopro Quik (which is not professional at all) but people already like it very much (also because of the drone shots)
And it already takes long enough to upload.

Sometimes it works better to buy a sim card with data to upload then using wifi of some guesthouse.

4K is nice but not that practical for a lot of people to watch it in 4K.
However shooting in 4K allows for much video editing afterwards, even when result is 1080p.

[chilswelluk]

Originally Posted by JMo (& piglet)

I think what you're actually afraid of is that an iPhone/GoPro and iMovie in an iPad would show just how redundant all that expensive gear and 'manual' control is

I suppose everyone has a different perspective, but I do like the flexibility and quality of my multiple lens DSLR setup and would be reluctant to compromise. Over the years I have tried a number of compacts, but have been disappointed with the results. earlier in the year I was given a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II as a present, but ended up selling it, as I was not happy with the results. But I do remain open minded, so if anyone has any other suggestions I will look at them.

As for the ipad suggestion, I did look into that, but it's just too restrictive for me. It seems Apple really locks you down and restricts pretty much everything. There is no native root access (without stupid hacks) and it does not even support basic things like usb drives (only a few proprietary solutions which are quite restrictive) . I know you can get wireless hard drives for travel, but again you have to use some stupid app, or rely on cloud solutions. call me old fashioned but I like to just plug a drive into a device and get instant / fast read and write capabilities for any file I choose! I hate to have everything sandboxed. Also I know you can get the ipad camera connection kit, but again it restricts you on what files you can work with. At the moment I am using a MSI GS65 Stealth, and it runs everything I throw at it (Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve, Blender, Fusion, Maya) It has a 6 core cpu with a GTX 1070 graphics card. It runs windows and Linux and does everything I want. Since getting it I have opened it up and applied liquid metal and it runs lovely and cool. In my opinion it is head and shoulders above an ipad, but I do appreciate everyone will have a different perspective.

[chilswelluk]

Originally Posted by PaulD

This is a film I made with just a GoPro & a Canon 7D & edited in Final Cut !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7lnlhFyMYg

Cheers
Paul

Thanks for sharing, I have watch a bit of it but will watch all later. Did you take a drone at all?