Big Surf Video

[Photo-John]

My friend is a serious San Francisco surfer and has been doing some video for a while. He sent me this today and I thought you guys might enjoy it. It's probably a bit different from the type of video you usually look at. Plus, maybe you can offer him some technical advice. The main thing I was thinking is he could maybe use a fluid head for his tripod for smoother pans, and the zooming could be a little slower and smoother. I like the content a lot - a whole lot. But the video itself is a little shaky.

http://homepage.mac.com/sorensenfami...Theater26.html

What do you think? Got any advice for my buddy?

[Skyman]

Hard to tell, as you said a fluid head would be good, although the surf can be a little unpredictable so i am not sure that this would solve the problem. The fact that the footage is continuosly from the same angle gets a little boring. The transitions are smooth although this seems to be more due to the fact that the footage appears to be from a single camera/location. in an ideal world this sort of video would have, i camera in the water, one on the hill and one on the beach (not that a point break has a beach i know) but maybe two land based cameras with one focusing on the closups and the other the wider shots as this gives you more options and saves you from killing an otherwise good sequence with a jerky zoom. I am not sure if the zooming was a limitation of the camera or the operator, but either zoom fast or slow if you must zoom, don't change speeds mid zoom again having another camera helps. add some coever and pick up shots for when you want to hide a mistake or the action gets a little boring... the cliched stuff works well, somebody waxing a board, strapping on leg ropes, the sun from the water, close ups of the fins maybe some rocks or fish etc. be have a clear idea of what you want to do with the video. most surfing vids fail in this one, a report of a big surf should include interviews or at least voice over describing what caused the big swell and some stories of the rides they had etc. an eye candy surfing video will have montages of sequences that are similar rather than showing the whole wave or ride. held my attention barely although i am a want to be surfer - i don't get to the ocean nearly often enough. oh and i noticed some nice speed effects, keep playing with these, they are hard to make work but brilliant for surfing vids, don't be afraid to rewind and freeze frame and let us know when we are watching "normal" speed as sometimes this is difficult to tell.

[MJS]

Hey Skyman,
How did the video playback for you. I had missing frames on or something, it seemed a bit jerky. I agree with almost everything you suggested. I would try and get a swimmer in the water with a camera on a stick or something, Finding a safe spot in the surf would have been difficult from the looks of things, but the video would have looked great.

[Skyman]

played back fine, although i told quicktime to play it based on the fact that i had a 56k modem rather than works broadband so i wouldn't use so much bandwidth and i did get interupted and paused the video several times and came back to it, so the download was completed before i ended up playing the stream.
oh one more thing if your friend does try the underwater camera on a pole technique practice in still and calmer surf first. we wouldn't want to be responsible for a drowning now would we

[MJS]

That would be a problem.

[alecia]

Wow This Is Really Great!