How to film your mountain biking! | Tips and Tricks | How to make a MTB video: Part 2

Oh hey guys, Jimmy from Mountain Bike Travel Review here, and welcome to part two of my three-part series on how to make a mountain bike video. If you haven't seen part one, make sure you slap the link below. Part one's all about the gear that I use to make the mountain bike videos, some tips and tricks on that. This is part two, so we're going to get out in my local trail system. I'm going to show you some tips and tricks on how to film different angles, how to approach the videos to make them a little more exciting, and a little more interesting from start to finish. All right guys, so we're out in my local trail system. The first thing I want to discuss when it comes to your videos is having a plan of attack. Any video, you need an overall idea of what you want to do. Some people just want to film a shred it, some people want to get out there and explore certain parts of a trail system, or some people are just trying to reflect on a really good product. Either way, have a general idea, know what you're looking for, and know what key points you want to film when you're out there, or you're going to end up with hours and hours of film that you don't need. That being said, one thing I always like to think about before I get out there is what I'm going to do for my intro and my outro and my video. A lot of videos, guys, just jump in, you're in first person, they're riding down the trail. It's not very exciting. So you can do a slow-mo intro, you can do you rolling into the woods, you can do quick clips of something super exciting, but understand what you want to do in the beginning and then how you want to end your video to make it one fluid piece. Another thing to think about when you're out there filming is the time of the day. So whenever you do a video, a lot of the videos you're going to see with the best quality, you're going to be in a nice gloomy day when there's not a ton of direct sunlight. As you see right now, it's about eight o'clock Eastern time, so it's a little brighter than I'd liked, which gives you a lot of this contrast in the background. So now I have to make sure that my face isn't too bright or too dark, it just adds an extra depth. The best time to film is always first thing in the morning or at dusk, right before the sun goes down. In the middle of the day, the light's too bright, it's directly above, it's just really hard to get good quality film. And one pro tip when you're out there filming is what I like to call the rule of thirds. Whenever you're filming a shot and trying to set up your camera and your angle, always think of your screen as thirds and try to put the rider in either the left or the right third. So when I square up this shot here, I'm going to make sure that I'm in the right third of the shot for most of the frame, and then I'll blow by the other side. But keeping the rider in one third of the frame makes it a little more exciting of an angle to look at. Now another tip when you're out there filming is knowing where the sun is. My general rule is to keep the sun behind the camera, so keep the sun pointed on the subject that you're filming. It makes me nice and bright, it makes it easier for the camera to capture me with more clarity. As you'll see, if I spin around and the sun's behind me, it's going to be a lot harder for the camera to focus on me because all that light is beaming directly into the lens. Now before we get too far out on the trails, let's talk about what's going to take up most of your film and usually most of your video, and that's the first person view from your chest mount. One of the biggest factors when you're out there filming, especially chest mounted, is going to be your settings. I'm going to leave my settings up on the camera here. This video is not to go into GoPro settings, so I'm going to keep it super simple. The one setting I will talk about on the GoPro is the color setting. For all of my videos, I set my GoPro color to flat as opposed to GoPro color. GoPro color is going to make your colors pop a lot more, but it's also going to bring a lot of contrast to your videos, and I like to add my contrast after filming when I'm in the editing room. Whenever I'm filming on my chest mount, the biggest thing for me is making sure that you're in the widest angle possible on whatever camera you have. So in the GoPro that's going to be super view, it allows me to catch a really nice view below the bars, above the bars, just gives you a good angle of what's happening from behind the handlebars on the bike. Now when it comes to first person, it took me a while to learn this, but you have to realize any video that you make, if it's 10, 15, 20 minutes long, a lot of your viewers aren't going to stick around for that. So what I've learned when it comes to the first person, is stick to the most exciting parts of the trail. We've all seen the video where the rider's out there and it's literally 10 minutes of him just poking along at mediocre speed on a flat trail, getting to the good stuff. Skip all that, just get to the good stuff. All of my videos in general, I try to keep under five, six minutes long. Two to three minutes is even better. And of course, one thing to remember that we talked about a little in my first video on gear is the angle of your camera. Whenever I'm filming from first person, I'm not using a gimbal anymore. I'm using the internal stabilization of the GoPro Hero 8 to keep my video smooth. But when I'm in attack mode on the bike, you want to make sure that that camera is going to be focused down trail and not flat on your chest pointing on the ground. Now, one of the most important things to me, and one of the biggest factors when I'm out there filming is third person filming. First person film is great seeing what you're riding in front of you, but adding third person elements to your film can really help take them to the next level. This is where the Joby tripod comes into play and the other cameras that I have. Sometimes if I just want to bring one camera, I'll take my GoPro right off my chest mount, throw it on a Joby tripod, find a really cool feature I want to focus on and just do some filming from different angles and see what I can do. One thing to keep in mind when you are filming third person, the wider the angle is and the more distorted the angle is, the smaller the obstacle is going to look. So if you've ever heard of GoPro effect before, that's what I'm talking about. It could be the biggest roller and 20 feet tall, but if you film it at a super wide angle from below, it's going to look like a pretty small rock roller, which is unfortunate, but just something you have to get used to for those angles. So let's set up some cameras here. This is a cool little rock drop on my local trails, set up some different angles and see what we can do. Check it out. Now, the last thing I want to talk about when you're out there filming is using some really nice slow motion shots in your film to make it that much more exciting. We all know that when you're mountain biking, we move at some pretty quick speeds, so it can be hard to really enjoy a feature in a film. Boom, it's over like that. But if you mix in a little slow motion, you can make it a little more exciting. You can spend a little more time on a feature. You can even practice and film your own technique to see how your form looks when you play it back. Now, most of my videos are filmed in 30 frames per second. 24 or 30 frames per second are kind of the standard rate for film, for movie style film. When you're filming in slow motion, there's always one rule to remember. If the base of your film is 30 frames per second, you want to take a clip and slow it down by half. You want to double your frames per second. For example, if I wanted to slow my film down to 25% of its original speed, 25% is one quarter of a hundred. So I would take my 30 frames per second and I would multiply it by four. That's 120 frames per second to avoid there being any chatter in the film. If you don't have enough frames per second, it's going to look choppy. The more frames per second, the smoother it's going to be as you slow it down more and more. If you want more information on slow-mo, there are a million other videos out there. But again, let's try some slow-mo shots. I'll show you some different angles and see how it changes the footage and makes features look a lot cooler. Even something like this, just a small log hop. All right guys, well that pretty much wraps it up for part two of my three-part series on how to make a mountain bike video. I hope you guys enjoyed the video and were able to pull some tips and tricks for your next time out filming. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, feel free to leave them in the box below. If you haven't checked out part one on the gear you need to film or part three on editing your film, please do go check those out. If you like the channel, make sure you like, subscribe, and remember most importantly guys, just get out there and have fun. Don't overthink it all too much. Just get out there, ride with your buddies, do some filming, throw it together, see what comes out, and share it with the world. I'll see you next time guys.