Waikato - New Zealand
 

Hello im looking to further my skills in the areas of camera work and editing, and am after any feedback and tips/pointers for this scenic montage i filmed.


Just different ways that i could possibly go about getting things and also any tips for editing and colour correction/grading and even titles and stuff.

I used the Canon 60D with the 18-55mm kit lense
Edited in Adobe Premiere CS6

Any feedbuck would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Re: Waikato - New Zealand
 

Part of me thinks it might be missing a bit of story perhaps ? like more of a human element ?
Maybe there is too much nature stuff ?

And ive never really found out how to do grading properly, Generally its just me adding a few effects and moving the sliders up and down, ive never really found a place that explains the correct process of it.

Re: Waikato - New Zealand
 

its difficult soliciting feedback on these forums anymore, which is too bad.

Video by its nature is very subjective so any critique of your work is simply my opinion and doesn't mean much. The best way to improve is by practicing, shooting more and sharing it with friends and online to get their reaction.

You kept the camera still and you were in focus, you'd be surprised how many people don't even do that. Your exposure was pretty good, you lost some detail in some of the cloud highlights and it could certainly benefit from color correction. There are a lot of plug-ins available for creating "looks" but if you want to learn color correction I'd recommend checking out Apples Color or DaVinci's Resolve.

There are "rules of thumb" that all photographers and cinematographers should at least consider, when shooting landscapes it helps to use the rule of thirds, choose which elements are more important, sky or foreground for example, and then place the horizon line on either the upper or lower third. Many of yours were in the middle which tends to look a little flat or uninteresting.

Also try to compose your shots so that they frame the scene with the object you want the audience to pay attention to on one of the intersecting third lines, since we [English] read left to right its generally better on the right to lead the audience to your point of interest.

Somethings just end up in the middle of the frame but generally it looks more interesting if there's a flow of leading the viewers attention into and out of shots.

Here's something that I shot where I tried to use this concept as much as possible.

Sorry for the basic feedback. You certainly have a lot to work with, your also in one of the most photogenic places on Earth so keep up the good work.

Re: Waikato - New Zealand
 

I thought your video was great , a mate of mine travelled to Kenya and Tanzania at the start of the year and taught in a school for a few weeks.

I think i need to bring a bit of a story to my videos like the human element that you had in yours as opposed to a series of scenic shots that i had in mine.

Will try and use the rule of thirds advice a bit more too, especially the horizontal lines which i always forget about.

Thanks for the great feedback, will post a video once i have it.

Re: Waikato - New Zealand
 

I know everyone says it all about the story and I'm not arguing against that, but I'm pretty much just "point-and-shoot." I shoot everything and what makes a cool picture or video is when you point the camera at something cool.

I can't think of too many things as spectacular as NZ.

Re: Waikato - New Zealand
 

I don't know if you were interested in feedback on the audio, but one thing that I noticed was the very obvious change in sound whenever you cut. You'd obviously faded between them, but there was a noticeable difference whenever you cut (and I wasn't even listening with headphones). Something as simple as another single audio track running alongside the existing audio probably would've helped. I'd also ditch any sounds that aren't in the shot. For example, there's one shot where you're looking at the sky and you can hear a river. Presumably it was shot close to a river, but it sounds weird because you can't see it on screen.

Re: Waikato - New Zealand
 

Nope sound suggestions are good too.

I wasn't really focussing all that much on sound with this one(didn't have the equipment) and your right I did just fade between each shot. So having a just a single atmosphere track running through the entire video would help ? Make it flow better.

I was just using the 60d microphone for this one, I have a rode ntg2 mic but I use that with another camera and don't have anyway of using it with the canon yet. I've heard Connecting the microphone straight on to the 60d is better than the cameras internal mic, but only by a bit and the best way is of course one of those zoom h4n recorders.

I will also have to have a play around with some of the cs6 audio features because right now it basically an alien language to me