Baja Racing Video
 

Hey everyone, my name is Michael and I'm a new member of the community here. I shoot video at desert races, and usually put together a short 2-3 minute video after each event of the highlights. Please rip this video apart, I'm looking to improve my editing and shooting skills.

http://www.desertrides.com/multimedi...anfelipe04.wmv

Shot with my PD-150, and edited with Final Cut Pro 4.

Hi

Nice video. I liked it very much...good pace...

Maybe you could try to play around with speed a little more( not just slowmotion, but also fastmotion) and maybe some splitscreens or another unexpected effect would be fun... Just to add variety to the video...
I liked the titles...

Really good work...


Chr

here's a previous video, I did a little speed increase near the beginning. This one isn't as good, I made too many fast cuts that didn't really go with the music. Thank you for the suggestions, I will take them all into consideration for the next video.

http://www.desertrides.com/multimedi...laughlin04.wmv

That was cool. Wow, so how close are you to those rigs when they fly by? You seem awfully close. Ever catch any rocks? d:-)

As for shooting and editing improvements, how about these for some added variety:

1) vary the perspective of your camera (in other words, tilt the camera so the viewer feels somewhat offbalance, much as the passengers in the car probably feel)

2) vary the movement of your camera (try some hand-held, or tripod tilt-pans)

3) get some tight shots on just a driver's head bouncing around inside, or on a just one wheel spitting dirt, or on just a set of shocks bouncing

4) get some stationary shots of a car entering your field of view and exiting without any camera movement

5) if you're really daring, dig a pit in the road and get an undercarraige shot (JUST KIDDING)

6) maybe haul a ladder out to the race and get some shots from a higher perspective

7) try playing with your zoom on some shots; zoom out fast as a car speeds away; zoom in fast on an approaching car

8) play with some depth of field shots; focus on some brush in front of the lens, and then quickly adjust the focus to an approaching car

9) in editing, try colorizing some of the shots, or solarizing them, or throwing motion blurs on them, or use layer transparency to overlay clips and created a ghosted montage


Hope some of that helps!

I agree with travis. I would mix the kinds of shots you take a bit more, as it is now there are alot of shots with the rigs coming towards as we pan with it, which is a great shot, but gets repetative. i love the way some of the vehicles suspension looks as its skimming the humps in the road, good stuff. this kind of an event is screaming for wide shots as well, go way the hell back, so that the vehicle is a 10th or even 20th the size of the frame and just watch it screaming across the dirt road. you could speed those shots up as well. other things would be on shots when your closer, try getting lower to the ground, like a foot or less, with lots of sky and this crazy rigs tires just pixels away from the bottom 16x9 guide (the pd 150 has them right). any chance at mounting a camera to one of these things? that could be rad. also, try going way out in front of the rig, with a crazy long lens, and get right in the middle of the road, with a long lens you should have no trouble getting out of the way in time for it to pass by. also, any chance at gettig a ride in a vehicle that can cruise along side one? even if your 50-100 feet away with a stable lens you can get some good stuff that way.

Also, definitly try some work in post, i find the easiest and most effect things to do for video are to increase the contrast, tint it a bit, and add some sort of grad across the top. if you can put a graduated nd on your camera that would be better.

anway, that jusy my 2cents. good stuff man, i dig the desert, i take my jeep out every so often and cruise around on the rocks.

The suspension on those things are enormous. Wow. I liked the
video pretty much! Nice job. The slow motion parts where well
used (ie, not overused) I thought. I also liked the ending shot!

YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!
I want one of those trucks...

ANyway, I found the second video you posted (Laughlin) much better than the first (San Felipe). Why? It seemed that it had a much bigger variety of shots than the San Felipe one did, which looked like 80% of your footage was the same 3 shots over and over.

Travis did a good job of covering everything else you really need. I have nothing more to add, except for his #9, which I think would make it a little tacky.

nice job! especially from the viewpoint of a shooter, as near as i can tell from the quality of web video, your shots look like they were done well... that is by far the most important factor.

the thing to remember about niche video like this is that the target market can sit there watching that same head-on shot over and over and over and over and... i know this, because i give 'em the same thing on the drag strip :-) and they love it!

they want to see their cars, the competition's cars, the cars that run in the class they want to run in, etc.... so shoot the little guys as well, they'll buy product too... for this market, spending a bunch of time in the edit bay will not sell more product.

i made a sand duning video in the mid-90's... multiple locations, onboard camera, etc... offroad stuff like that is brutal work, and it's murder on equipment... score is the worst-case scenario!

Thank you all for the comments and suggestions, positive and critical. At some point I have done most of the things you all have suggested, including the onboard camera footage. I'm working on a full length desert racing video, action/documentary format, and am really trying to put something out that doesn't seem amatuerish (despite the fact I am an amatuer).

Dan- what was the name of your video? I may have heard of it.

For those of you who thought this was interesting material, here's a few more videos that I've done in the past that might be worth a look. The first one I spent some time trying to give the 'film look'.

http://www.desertrides.com/video/mis...or_testing.wmv

http://www.desertrides.com/multimedi...rker425_04.wmv

http://www.desertrides.com/multimedi...primm03_lo.wmv

On the first one, what exactly did you do to attempt a film look?

Also, what was that tune? Was that System of a Down?? It was great music for the video, it really matched the pace of the car.

The shot on the first one came out unintentionally overexposed (I had the ND filter set to 2 on my PD-150, but it still wasn't enough). Little did I know this would be beneficial for that type of look... to be honest, it was sorta accidental. I adjusted the contrast to bring out the black color a bit more, and increased the saturation level a bit. Tried to find a nice balance. In encoding, it was de-interlaced, and set at 30fps.

The music is System of a Down, the song title is "Snowblind".

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Flores :
Dan- what was the name of your video? I may have heard of it.
-->>>

it's called "sand mania":

http://www.oceanstreetvideo.com/sand/sand.html

i shot it onto hi-8 with a canon L2... you can still download the old .asf and mpeg(!) clips to check it out, including an onboard camera clip.

years ago i remember that there was a crew that was shooting score/baja 1000(?) series stuff for espn or speedvision(?)... it got regular airplay, they used helicopters, multiple shooters, the whole 9 yards.

i don't recall seeing much offroading stuff on t.v. these days?? yet they show stuff like lawnmower racing.

Just watched the video so I'll throw in my $.02. I'm not your target audience so you can take this for what it's worth.

I liked the opening. The music fit the subject perfectly and that first shot of the car coming over the hill was really cool. It gets a little repetitive after that. I would like to see a little more story in the video. Maybe even just a couple of shots of drivers talking about their cars(or other people's cars) interspersed into the action shots.

I don't know how these events work. It may be out of the scope of what you can do at these races, but I think that it would be interesting to follow a crew around throughout the day and record them. But not really being into these races, that's just what I would like to see.