Skateboarders and non-skateboarders alike will agree that there isn't much more spectacular than seeing people pull off deadly tricks or elaborate heel flips in front of the camera. Recording your tricks, tutorials and skate sessions can allow you to share your talents with the world. But where to start? You can learn to get the right gear, tune yourself to capture the best angles and tricks, and some tips for editing to make your footage look professional.
Step
Part 1 of 3: Getting equipment
Step 1. Purchase a Mini-DV camera
Generally, a inexpensive, high-quality camera that you can easily use is a Mini-DV¬ which records digitally. The quality is quite high, the footage is easy to store, and the camera is available everywhere and cheap enough to make it a great choice.
- Prices for small Panasonic or Sony cameras are usually between IDR 4,000,000 to IDR 6,700,000, -. The Sony premium is the most popular Mini-DV camera among skateboarders, because it is easy to carry around and has great quality. Included in the more expensive options are the Sony vx1000, vx 2000, or vx2100. All of these cameras are professional quality, but may be too much for beginners.
- Make sure you have a Firewire 400 connection on your computer. Ideally, Mini-DV also uses the LP mode for maximum quality of the recording.
Step 2. Use a fisheye lens for the camera
Fisheye lenses are very useful for getting skateboarders and obstacles into footage, they can allow the lens to maximize the width of the field so that it is visible, giving the impression that we are very close to the action or also far enough away to see everything that is happening. Fisheye lenses also make small objects appear larger or taller. This is a common trick that is both practical and cool.
Step 3. Get some basic video editing software. You won't be able to edit you're flying if you're just going around skateboarding. Do the trick, and look for easy-to-use editing software that will make your videos look professional and effortless. Before you record anything, make sure you have an easy way to edit it.
There are many options for free editing programs, such as iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Avidemux. All of these programs are standard programs and are available for free. While not unlike professional programs, they are easy to use and can produce high-quality videos that are perfect for beginners
Step 4. Find a good obstacle to record
Before you start recording, do some reconnaissance for good places to shoot video. There's no point wasting time with your camera with you when you and your friends are looking for a place to shoot video. Do that before. Find a nice and easy place to record, but with challenging obstacles, so you'll have something worth remembering.
Ideally, it would be good to find a place with varying obstacles. Good stair railing? Concrete stairs? A gap? It's more traditional to shoot in a location that isn't strictly a skateboarding area, to illustrate your wit and creativity. But the dedicated skateboarding area is also a good place to record
Step 5. Record a group of skateboarders
It is more time efficient to record multiple skateboarders at once, all of whom are trying the same or different tricks. If you try to record your friend doing a difficult 360 flip, you may end up draining your camera battery and storage space waiting for restarts and repairs. If you can keep recording different people, you'll end up having a lot of footage that you can edit at the same time.
Step 6. Find backup
Try to always buy and bring two of everything to record. Bring two batteries, two storage cards, and bring extra lenses if necessary. Because it would be difficult to coordinate many skateboarders together and come up with tricks that are suitable for film quality. You don't want to finish quickly because you're running out of battery. Never skip a good record by always being prepared beforehand.
Part 2 of 3: Recording a Skate Session
Step 1. Focus on your own skateboarding
If you are appointed to record, make sure you focus on how you skateboard and keep playing safe, no matter who you record or how many skateboarders you record. Don't look at the camera lens too much and pay too much attention to how you shoot, stay focused on standing and balancing on your skateboard.
- If you are recording yourself, consider placing your camera on a tripod. Mark the place where your recording is headed with chalk, so you know where you need to do the trick.
- If you're riding your skateboard while recording other players, don't try anything weird while you're recording. Focus on smooth skateboarding and keep the camera steady so that their tricks are captured well.
Step 2. Don't get in the way
When you're standing or skateboarding with someone else you're recording, you have to make sure you don't focus too much on recording and lose track of your goals. Being a hindrance to your friends trying tricks is a great way to break your camera, bruise your face, and eliminate skateboarding buddies.
Even if you're at the bottom of the ladder, which is where your friends are jumping, stay huddled and still in one place. Don't move to try to find another place. Be quiet and let your friends circle you. Stay far enough from the steps to give your friends room to land from a jump and move a few meters without bumping into you, giving you enough time to get out of the way if necessary
Step 3. Continue to activate your camera
Start fast and end long. When someone does something great, always have your camera on. There is no such thing as “overrecording.” You should continue to do this to avoid not recording the rare great moments because you are too worried about your camera. If you leave with an empty storage card, make sure you come home with a full storage card.
- Don't try to edit right away. Do that next time. For that moment, think of yourself as a moment collector. Your job is not to finish the video on the same day. This is to make sure you get the best recording.
- Also record their failures. Don't just record tricks. Footage just full of skateboards spinning will be boring, so it's good to record your friends falling, comparing injured knees, and joking around. Get in the action for the camera.
Step 4. Include all the skateboarders in the recording
Footage doing a trick is not fun to watch. It can seem awkward, confusing, and less impressive to see half of your friends do a good trick, so it's important to set up cameras on all skateboarders so they're always on record when they do tricks. Let the audience appreciate the full footage of the movement and athleticism of performing tricks.
- Try not to zoom when using fisheye. Fisheye is mostly designed to be used at long distances and zooming will make it out of focus. Misting too much with the zoom will make the footage look very wobbly. Don't get too hung up on fisheye lenses, let them capture the tricks and magic that happens.
- Do not record everything using a fisheye lens. Generally, fisheye lenses are used for long apertures, not for short tricks. If the trick is going great, use a wide angle or fisheye which is.63x-.3x recommended to increase the width of the angle and to make sure you get full distance from side-to-side banisters and anything else that requires long-distance footage.
- Use manual focus on the camera. Don't use the steadyshot option using fisheye, as this will ruin the schematic.
Step 5. Record the ladder, not the skateboarder
A common mistake beginners make when trying to record a trick is to move the camera too much because it focuses too much on the skateboarder instead of letting the trick come to itself on the footage. Focus the camera on the ladder or other obstacle that will be used for the trick, up to a few seconds before performing the trick.
- Point the camera up so you can focus on getting the entire skateboarder's body and the entire ladder.
- A good general angle is at 1 meter from the bottom of the ladder, don't block the path with you curled down until the camera is almost touching the ground. Start recording when the skateboarder is about 1.5 to 3 meters from the top of the ladder.
Step 6. Help the skateboarders to stick when they land
Leave as little land as possible on the footage, if you can, to make the trick look even more sublime. If your friends have trouble sticking to their skateboards after jumping, having the footage to wiggle and balance after a trick will make the footage look even better. Arrange for us to see the skateboarders before landing, and not much after.
Step 7. Record the banisters by riding the skateboard at the same speed
Other classic recordings require you to move while recording, preferably on a skateboard. If your friend wants to try a trick on a long banister, or some other trick, you'll need to get on your skateboard and aim parallel to the trick. Point the camera at the skateboarder, adjust the depth of field so that the footage is not blurry. Try to maintain the same distance as the skateboarder when you record.
It's important to record instead of running or walking briskly, as footsteps can shake the camera and make it difficult to watch. With you on the skateboard, the footage will stay nice and soft
Step 8. Get creative
There are many ways to create a recording, but the choice of the angle of the recording, how you want to edit, and the recording you want to keep is all up to you. Practice until you get it right. Keep the footage from the distance you are using, and the distance that produces the best footage.
Try recording at different times of the day. This will give you more footage to work with when you want to add variety to your recording
Part 3 of 3: Editing Skate Records
Step 1. Upload the raw footage and save it
Use the Firewire port to connect your camera to a computer and upload footage. The specific process will depend on the type of program for editing and the camera you use, but you should always upload the footage to your computer first and then save it. Don't start editing the recording before you save it. If you make a mistake, or decide to use another tape for a particular trick, make sure you have the original footage to work with.
Step 2. Alternatively, you may want to leave the raw footage in the repository until you've edited the entirety, before you clean up the repository itself
This will help you save a lot of space on your hard drive.
Step 3. Start by getting rid of the unimportant recordings
The first and most important part of this process includes getting rid of repetitive footage, boring parts, and unnecessary footage. Throw away the unimportant and leave the best. Save the funniest parts, the most successful tricks, and the starting parts of all skateboarders just spinning around on a skateboard and looking cool.
- The best skate videos will have a mix of different types of scenes and tricks, successes and failures to create drama and tension in the video. A skate video that contains only great tricks will be difficult to watch.
- Save great failures to include as well. If your friend fell into a tree, this would be a great scene to include, reminding viewers of the risks skateboarders take every time they climb on their boards.
Step 4. Save some sounds
For many parts, skate videos are provided with a soundtrack played with music, rather than the sound that pops up during the recording process. Because these sounds will be mostly whoosh sounds and the sound of wheels turning on concrete over and over again, and this is not a very interesting sound to hear. It's great to include a variety of voices or sounds, and keep the natural sound to include if you want. Especially loud screams when someone manages to do a trick, this will make the video look cool and fun.
Don't worry about using external microphones and other types of recording. Let the camera record natural sounds
Step 5. Set your color and white balance
Many skate videos are too dark or blurry, which means color and contrast must be adjusted in the editing process. You have to make sure the viewer can see all the details clearly and the quality of the video looks as sharp and high as possible.
Don't mess with weird filters or other effects in the program for editing. Using silly transitions will make the video look amateurish. Even if you're just going to put it on YouTube, it's worth it if you make it great
Step 6. Arrange the videos in the order you want
You don't need to follow the order in which the right trick occurs. Place them in any order you want to make your videos look interesting, dramatic, and fun. Start with the usual then work your way up to the most dramatic of the greatest tricks. Let us take a look at some of the big flops and injured knees before finally looking at a successful long jump or kick flip. Make the audience want to see you succeed.
Step 7. Be careful not to make the video too weird or too fast
Beginner editors have a habit of cutting tricks right after they're done, or when they're just starting, which can make viewers dislike them. Let there be a bit of a start before the trick and let the scene go a little further after the skateboarder lands on a trick. This will help increase the suspense, and the audience will appreciate what we've seen more easily.
Step 8. Choose a soundtrack
A good skate video needs a great soundtrack, and many editing programs make it very easy to cut your song and insert it into a video. What song gets you excited about skateboarding? You might choose an original song, or choose a skate genre. Choose the one you like.
So-cal punk, instrumental hip-hop, and thrash metal make the perfect soundtrack for skates. No recording is perfect, but you can never go wrong if you use songs from OFF! Or Gizmos. Skate videos should be about rebellion, humor and equal amounts of fun. Choose a soundtrack that explains it all
Tips
- Bring extra skateboarders. Many will be excited to see each other play better, and that will leave you with plenty of scenes to shoot.
- Maintain your position and keep the camera still.
- Never say anything to a skateboarder that you realize is frustrated by their tricks.
- Do not speak or shout while recording. It will be hard to resist rescuing your skateboarder, but it will be better than you ruining your record because of your screams. If you can't hold down to save, try holding down to continue recording for a while, then continue aiming for the skateboarder to save.
