Super slide video

[AJ Aguirre]

A friend and I made this video this past week. It's gotten a lot of attention the past couple of days and I would really like to hear what advice you guys have. We understand that not everything was done correctly or to its full potential of the epic but that is something we want to improve on.

One huge issue we had was with the sweeping shot at 00:45. When editing, it was either have the guy standing on the left have a horrible stutter or the guy going off the slide have a horrible stutter when time remapping the speed. I chalked it up to our shutter speed being too high but i'm not for sure. Everything was so fast paced that day that we used the shutter speed for 80% of our exposure adjustments.

I appreciate any feedback, i'd love to hear what you hated and what you liked. I just graduated and really want to do this right.

 

[Zeb B]

2.7 Million views in 3 days . . . yeah . . . you're doing it right

 

[AJ Aguirre]

Well yeah the content and filming was good enough for the general public. But I want to build my craft as best I can, i've already gotten crap on a lot of things but not much actual advice. I know you guys actually know what you're talking about so advice that I can learn from would be awesome.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Listen, haters gunna hate. This spot is great, I'm not sure what else to tell you.

That "studder" at :45 could have been a sharp shutter angle, sure. You can experiment with different shutter speeds, see what works best for speed ramps like that. Problem with shooting at 120 fps, is your shutter speed (at 180) is 1/240...which is very sharp. When you SPEED up the slow-mo to a more "normal" frame rate like 48fps or 24fps, sometimes that faster shutter speed can look "wrong". So, perhaps that's that was happening there...perhaps.

In terms of the look/grade, I thought it was awesome. Fun, colorful, sunny. You could debate this forever, but you're getting millions of hits, which means you nailed the most important thing - TONE, and STORY.

That slide looks sick. And you made it FUN.

Boom.

In terms of other stuff to consider, I'd say maybe some extra "details" - closeups, small inserts, feet walking, more intimate looks to camera on Epic (as opposed to gopro). Maybe some macros. But these are tiny things. Edits generally benefit from as many diverse framings as possible - you had tons of fantastic wides and mediums, and maybe those could have been elevated with additional closeups/details? But to be fair, when your focus is a massive slide that like, mediums and wides are sort of your language. So...kudos.

Just keep shooting. And asking questions (humbly). You'll do great.

Congrats.

 

[Craig Parkes]

From an Aesthetic viewpoint the footage was a little washed out/raised in the blacks for my personal tastes - but that's really a personal call.

From a professional standpoint, the only potential issue I see with these sorts of videos is whether or not the people featured in them have signed releases or agree to be filmed as part of the event, and whether clearance has been given for the music use. Not because it detracts from any particular video, but because dealing with the boring/financial issues is an important aspect of a production teams skillset.

Not saying this is a specific issue in your spot, but the youtube/viral video production side of production is often incredibly fast and loose in this arena.

 

[AJ Aguirre]

Nick, I'm going to look into the the shuttle speed thing more because I was under the impression that as long as I hovered around double the frame rate I would be fine but maybe not? Also, I didn't even think about close ups... need to get those.

Craig, as far as releases, we didn't worry about any of that actually... We just let the cable park take care of those which I hope that was good enough to cover ourselves. They had put out an ad for people to show up on that Monday because we were going to be there filming and then of course people have to sign releases on day of.

Just today though I came to an agreement with the songs publishing company for $2200 for rights in perpetuity on the video. I have no idea whether that is a good price or not. And still waiting on the invoice which we now don't think will arrive until Monday. The publishing company will continue to earn the ad revenue over the weekend which we don't think is fair but we don't know what else to do.

 

[Chris Henze]

I agree with the other comments, my only nit pick is that the water looks horrible. I wouldn't want to swim there. Sorry.

 

[Christian Schmitt]

Just today though I came to an agreement with the songs publishing company for $2200 for rights in perpetuity on the video. I have no idea whether that is a good price or not. And still waiting on the invoice which we now don't think will arrive until Monday. The publishing company will continue to earn the ad revenue over the weekend which we don't think is fair but we don't know what else to do.

Get a lawyer...?
Or clear musical rights before releasing a video (sorry if this sounds to smartass, but this is kind of obvious isn't it?)
OTOH $2200 doesn't sound to bad for rights in perpetuity, if you can estimate how much you will earn with the video.

Anyways, great video and I guess the "cliff jump" video earned enough to go shopping at RED - good for you