This was indeed as much fun as it looks! The missus and I did a three day kayaking trip on the Orange river from Hopetown to Douglas over December and I took two GoPros along for the ride.
While this was pleasure rather than work, it was a great opportunity to do some GoPro video work and also keep my skills sharp over the lazy season. Just like musicians and athletes I believe you constantly need to practice your technical skills if you do video for a living. Natural talent plays a very large and undeniable part in the production process, but so do technical skills. And those do not come naturally - you do actually forget how to do some of this stuff if you haven't done it for a while!
Above: My aging GoPro Hero 2 mounted on the stern on a GoPro surfboard mount. Thanks to the crazy adhesive on these babies the mount will probably be there forever, so make sure you stick it in the right place the first time!
The cameras were mounted on GoPro surfboard mounts when they were on the boat. This is the first time I really used my GoPros in rough water and the surfboard mounts never moved an inch. The heavy duty 3M adhesive patches GoPro puts on these things are truly from another world and much better than the weak stuff that holds your bathroom mirror to the wall! For the reverse angle "cockpit view" I used a GoPro head strap. In some of the bigger rapids I rather took this off and secured it in a pocket on the front of my PFD (or "lifejacket", for non-paddlers).
To keep both GoPros running over three days I took a few extra batteries as well as my trusty PowerMonkey Extreme solar charger kit. This was also great to keep my Android phone charged. The phone was essential to take stills and also to set up the GoPro to film sunsets and static camp footage through GoPro's improved Android app. I've found that if you start out with all your devices fully charged, the last few rays of sunlight in the afternoon after you've made camp is usually enough to top up batteries with the solar panel and keep everything charged at around 70% capacity.
To keep all the fancy electronics safe and dry on a rough river trip I took two small Pelican cases and an Otterbox cellphone case. I'm a huge fan of both these brands and they truly are bombproof. The small orange 1120 Peli held my GoPro batteries and accessories while my phone rode in the Otterbox for quick access. Both were tied to the boat with paracord in case I dropped any of it in the Orange river. Both boxes had a rough and wet trip in a mesh storage pocket on top of my kayak and never leaked, even when I flipped the boat rather violently in a large rapid. The 1300 Pelican case held my PowerMonkey kit as well as a few other essential pieces of camping gear and it too survived drowning in the back cargo hatch when I took on some water after two days of river paddling. I believe you can never have enough protective equipment for your camera gear and electronics. Pelican cases have become vulgarly expensive locally thanks to the poor Rand/USD ROE but it's still cheaper than having to fork out the extra cash for drowned electronics.
Above: protective gear - Pelican and Otterbox cases kept everything dry and in one piece. No electronics were harmed during the making of the film.
So while this wasn't a work project, it was a great opportunity to keep my production skills sharp and also have a lot of fun along the way. If you'd like to get involved in paddling, visit Robbie Herreveld's Canoe and Kayak World at www.canoekayak.co.za
Well actually not yet. I'll only be starting editing on new projects from next week. So this is just checking in to do some website maintenance, design a new look banner image and check to see where I left all the gear when I closed shop last December.
But do check out the new look website banner image for desktop and mobile while you're here.
2016 has been a fantastic year for Match Frame Media.
I can honestly say that this year I’ve done some of the best quality work I’ve ever done. And I most certainly didn’t do this alone.
As a very experienced stage director remarked to me a few weeks ago, video production is not a one man job. This is very true. Shoots are brutally hard work. Post-production is painfully detailed and exhausting. Without my faithful camera assistant Ferdi I would not have been able to undertake the p...
What a better way to play out the year than with some gorgeous GoPro aerial footage. Boba Fett impersonators Yves Rossy, Vincent Reffet and Fred Fugen flew their jetpacks in formation with eight Alpha jets of the French Air Force aerobatic display team, the Patrouille de France (Yes I just added that to have fancy French words in this post).
Seriously though, this must require some serious skill and physical effort.
The 4K clarity is gorgeous and I find this both exhilarating and depressing ...
I try to do one big project a year, usually a documentary, and this one for 2016 happened quickly and very unexpectedly when Conroy Cupido phoned me while I was on another shoot. I was also tempted to blog this story earlier in the week, but I decided to wait a few days. Make no mistake I really enjoy blogging; I find the production process and tools I use absolutely fascinating and I love writing about things I have a passion for. But something about this project just wanted me to wait un...
Following the success of MCD Training at the 2016 Sasol TechnoX exhibition, another one of our new clients, UARM at the NWU Vaal Triangle Campus, set up a stand at an IRMSA (Institute of Risk Management South Africa) exhibition event at Gallagher Estate recently. Featured were their current series of videos on Blu-ray.
Looks great! Also happy to report that the videos seem to working as advertised in attracting industry attention to the programme.
This project made me think again about the wonderfully connected world that we live in. I've produced a number of sit-down interviews with international experts for Optentia Research Focus Area at the NWU's Vaal Triangle Campus but this one traveled exceptionally fast...
So here's the production story in brief: the afternoon shoot was a breeze. My assistant Ferdi nailed a good lighting setup while I set up two cameras to shoot the interview. No problem, done it many times before. It was the po...
I LOVE being able to type up blog post headers like this one!
The MCD Training Centre display at the 2016 Sasol TechnoX show in August proved to be a real crowd-puller and according to MD Dan Sothoane the kids flocked straight to the Blu-ray video displays. That's great because it means we managed to produce a video that works. Again I didn't do this all by myself - I couldn't have pulled off the shoot without the help from my trusty assistant Ferdi, and voice talent Yolanda Maartens Brown a...
Nowadays I shoot most of my sit-down interviews with two cameras. As a result I do a lot of multicam editing. A lot. And the good news is that multicam just got better in the latest version of Avid Media Composer 8.6.1
I still recall thinking it was serious voodoo the first time I synced up the footage from two cameras, dropped a group clip into the sequence and then proceeded to fly through a 20min interview like it was a live cut...hit play, then hit cam 1, cam 2, cam 1 on the keyboard. Done...
The following post is more proof that I'm a complete and utter geardo.
When the missus and I decided it was time to sell our aging Opel Corsa Utility we knew the next vehicle had to fit specific criteria: 1) fit the budget (of course), 2) be able to seat four people and have enough space left for all our camping gear and my camera equipment for work, and 3) be able to securely lock my camera equipment in the back. A panel van was the obvious solution and we looked at a number of options. ...
