Here's a little bit of sunshine to brighten up your day, and a bit of insight into the filming process that we use here at Flybubble. This is shot in one take. No cuts. Precision flying by Carlo, beautiful bouyant conditions, and a spectacular sky: all came together for a great session on the Skywalk Arak.
I wasn't sure what to do with this footage, because it's beautiful, yeah, but what is it ABOUT? In the end I decided to just share it as a cinematic scene.
Although I had over ten minutes of great aerial closeups, the real trick was to cut it down to one single shot that conveys the feeling best. Once I found the music I scanned through the footage to find something with a suitable wide angle start, close flying, and a great swinging movement with an end flying into the sun.
I always film in 50 frames a second, so I could slow this down by 50% without losing any quality, and at that speed the footage really comes to life, because you have time to watch the pattern of the waves, the subtle movement of the wing, the play of the light. The 'widescreen bars' (top and bottom) add a touch of art. It's a signal to the viewer that this is a purely visual treat.
Straight out of the camera, the Gopro footage was pale and pink, so I added a strong colour grade to make the sunlight warm and the sea blue and the rocks black. Because this means it is manipulating every frame, this made my PC grind to a halt on exporting the video, taking a few hours to render just 2 minutes 30 of video. The first time round the effect seemed too heavy, so I adjusted the colour grade to about 60% and rendered again. Then I discovered a spelling mistake in the end credits. Edit and re-render. It was now well into the wee hours of the morning...
Although I feel it's missing a story (my next challenge), I think it describes the feeling of soaring quite well. What do you think? Leave a comment on the video.
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