Filming Skateboarding
 

Ok, i've been filming skateboarding for a year now with the GL2, learned to set the white balance always or footage is throw away, so I bring paper with me. I have the bp-945 batt and I have a .5x fisheye, planning on getting the century .3x mark2 lens.
I use normal movie mode, never tried frame mode for skateboarding.. so far that i've been reading is that frame mode makes the footage look a bit more cinimatic and give a fake 30fps?. also i heard its better when slowed down.
I use AE for slow-mo by time remapping. I use settings for NTSC format video captured with firewire.

I don't know what you guys think on how I should film, so far I think its alright. what do you think on frame mode for filming skateboarding? and anything else that would help my filming out, or make it look better?

yea, i'm starting to film rollerblading with a GL 1, i shoot in frame mode because it gives it a more skate video feel, as far as i know most people film skating in frame mode. heres a little edit that was filmed in frame mode, you could compare it to some your edits shot in normal mode to see if you notice a difference, http://www.rolldc.com/movies/rolldcedit.mov

film and then figure it out later. dont worry about how your gonna film if you havent experienced problems yet. once you get a feel for how you work and were your problems are, then ask for advice on how to fix it. It should be your influence not what someone tells you to do, otherwise you lose your creative control. filming frame shouldnt be a problem, it not like its gonna make your footage look bad it will just have a different feel to it. its hard to say what is better ive seen skate films in both frame, normal, and 24p. you have a good setup, i would worry about as far as filming, is practicing your camera motion in handheld that way your footage doesnt look overtly shakey and practice with the focal limits of the camera that way your not always checking your focus. if your worried about white balance just set the GL2 to auto white outdoors i do that alot myself if im filming a sequence in quick succession. and Frame mode is just filming video 60Fields per second Deinterlaced, makes it look like film. film runs at 24fps, color video at 29.97, black and white video at 30fps.

well i noticed one thing. when they do a couple slowmo's in the vid, it looks a bit sketchy, like jittery , and when in normal its smoother, the only difference i know is its sharper for the slowmo's but a bit jittery.

those are some pretty smooth shots for a handheld. you using a tripod on some of those shots?

thats probably just the the compression of the raw footage since its not being shot on a highspeed camera. i think the best way to get good slo mo on a standard dv camera would be to set your shutter speed really high like 1/800 so that there is little loss in the time remap of the original footage

well, when I put it inot frame mode, the lcd screen is not smooth at all. I always thought of it that was, '' it looks as how the lcd shows it '' and for frame mode, the lcd looks like crap, as same for the viewfinder.
why is it glitchy when put on frame mode?

I didn't actually film any of that, that is the person I bought my Gl1 from, but I'm pretty sure he used a tripod for some of those shots

i dont know man, mine doesnt do that to the LCD. i mean i can visually tell when frame mode is on cause i can see the deinterlace chop, but you might have something wrong your lcd

yea deinterlaced chop. like not smooth like normal
why is it like that

so your saying your seeing that deinterlace chop?

thats normal, thats what frame mode it is. im not sure on the definition but i think its...
normal mode is 60i the image scans the screen in 60fields per second by interlacing the lines. during a scan it scans 30 even lines and 30 odds and puts them together for a smooth image

60 deinterlaced doesnt put them together it just scans the lines 1-60 in a straight row insted of odds and evens. thats what creates that flicker. if its doing that on your LCD its normal otherwise i cant help you.

so its supposed to look like through the lcd when on frame mode correct?

i film mostly sportbike freestyle...its alot like skate footage where you want to hit that slo-mo just right, etc...the only time i do not shoot in the frame mode is when the light levels are just super low...

other than that the frame mode, in addition to some other tweaks will give you some very different looks to your shots...

to get good clean slo-mo with the frame mode, try a shutter speed between 2 and 5 grand, with the auto white set and do some in cam image adjustment...on a really really bright day i have cranked it up to the max 15k shutter speed but i would not recommend it...

when you use the frame mode with a higher shutter speed in good light conditions, do some in cam color adjustments and an overall slight sharpening of the shot it will not look like the lcd presents it...it will look tons better...

i really just worry about the lcd to frame the shot and have enough confidence in my settings that i know the shot will turn out good, kinda hard to do much more than that when you are in a chase vehicle doing 60-70 to do tracking shots on a closed course...

from my understanding of your descriptions yes it should look like that in the LCD.

when looking in the LCD there is a noticable difference between Frame mode and Normal Mode.

In one part of the footage, about 3/4 of the way through - the camera is looking upward with the sun directly shining on the top left of the picture. There is no 'darkening' (or it's very slight) of the other parts of the picture (sky, skater, background).

As a complete novice (having just purchased the same camera) .. I'm just wondering if there was some kind of filter on the camera, or if the camera can be set to compensate for the direct sunlight without darkening the rest of the image so much?