GoPro: Let Me Take You To The Mountain
Contribution:
Directing
This was the 2nd of two shoots that we knocked out down in Chile for the HERO3+ video. The first was mountain biking in Valparaiso. I was lead on the two Chile shoots and had the help of Trenton Pasic, Kyle Camerer, and Caleb Farro from GoPro. Also part of our team was our producer/guide Clark Fyans and our athletes – Travis Rice, John Jackson, Lynsey Dyer, and Chris Davenport. I was in charge of voicing needs to Clark in terms of shot lists, terrain, etc – and he would help to get things lined up. I also would organize the group morning and evenings and identify the goals for the day/following day and make sure everyone was clear and excited on the plans. We’d work with the athletes to get their opinions on shots they’d want to get and help them build out mounts for each of the days. The overall direction of this video was laid out by Kyle in the editing room after returning home, as many of our shots on site were done to cover needs for the 3+ launch video.
Filming
For filming I had the help of Caleb Farro on athlete mounting and RC heli operation. Trenton Pasic also was a film hand out in the field. Most of my duties consisted of onsite direction, athlete mounting, and follow cam.
Editing
Kyle Camerer took lead on the editing front and I stepped in to offer direction midway through the project. He put together the intro, voice overs, and general story and I cut together the remaining sections of the video as soon as the music/riding kicks in at the 3:30 mark. Kyle did all of the edit prep work including pulling all of the selects and going through all of our audio interviews. A challenge in the edit room was making all of the riding full and consistent. In the middle of our trip we got over 2 feet of snow where it had previously been a very dry season. We only had Chris Davenport for one day of filming before the storm, and only had Travis Rice for 2 days of filming – once before the storm, and one day after the storm. The day after ended up being flat light and we only got two runs. We had John and Lynsey for one extra full blue bird day with great snow. I had to mix and match footage and really utilize almost every shot of Chris and Travis to make their segments as full as John and Lynsey’s would be.
Graphics
I was responsible for all of the graphics in this video including name titles, intro stylization, and styling of the John Jackson interstitials. Once I had a direction for the intro graphics I had Matt Cook step in and assist in setting up a few of the other names with styling to make the process quicker.
Color Grading
The color grading was done in Davinci Resolve. It was all pretty straight forward in terms of getting a vibrant look with clean white snow for most of the video. Our first day filming had more of sunset light so those shots were actually whitened up to look more mid-day to match the rest of the footage.