So, I just wanted to make this thread because I see more and more people at our events shooting videos, and I wanted to share some things I really enjoyed and have been helping me with my own video stuff. Cameras are just like drifting, you get excited to play with them, and then they become a giant money pit that only accelerates in it's appetite for your money, and taunts you with an endless road of learning. There are some really great sites out there now to help out, and tons of great people in our area with lots of resources and the ability to help you.
First of all, the people. They are by far the most important part of all this. The gear is second fiddle to the people shooting, plus they are all cool dudes.
Get to know and follow their stuff. I ask them questions all the time.
Sy Pham
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=694730956Jake Guenthardt
http://www.facebook.com/infrared407Cody Slack
http://www.facebook.com/sodyclackCagle Johnson
http://www.facebook.com/cagle.johnsonAnd there are many more. These guys mostly shoot Canon, and I seem to be the only Nikon guy around besides Norm. All these guys shoot pics and video on their DSLR cameras, and the only other video cameras they use are GoPros. The DSLR's are kind of hard to use for video, but look rad when done half way decent. We are all learning when it comes to these around here.
While those people are huge resources, how do you learn while sitting at your desk? Vimeo film school is fucking rad. Go there and watch all the videos starting at the beginning! This link is for the start, but they continue on, and they get a lot more advanced : ).
http://vimeo.com/videoschool/101Once you have exhausted those, check up on the staff picks and get some ideas.
http://vimeo.com/staffpicksThere are lots of sites to look at as well with exif data to help you learn how to use a DSLR in a more advanced way, such as
http://500px.com/popular Plus sites like this are just beautiful. So much amazing work laid out for you with tons of data to pour through.
You can also follow some of the people that are influential in the DSLR video making scene such as Phillip Bloom, and see what he is making.
http://philipbloom.net/ He is constantly putting up new projects on his blog that he is shooting. His videos are more about the technical aspects of shooting neat stuff.
http://vimeo.com/mhp/confluenceFilm Riot is something I watch regularly which teaches you all kinds of neat techniques with video cameras and special effects. It is cheesy and fun, but they teach a lot of stuff, and get to play with equipment from 5Ds to Red Epics. They do some really advanced looking stuff too, and teach you how to green screen and motion track stuff in After Effects, as well as how to do simple stuff like squibs and camera moves.
http://www.youtube.com/user/FilmRiot-----------
So, that should get you started with video stuff if you enjoy it and want to learn something about video. I am slowly getting better, and if I had more time and talent my stuff would turn out better. There is some amazing stuff being done by people with literally no budgets! Be creative, shoot your stuff, even if it is just a drift event in a fun way that captures the spirit of what is going on, and is exciting to watch, and tell a story!
Tell a story!
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Color Grading.
I have been shooting pics and vids for awhile now, and have advanced up to color grading. I have been using it in photography for awhile, and now in video for a bit. You can learn color grading at places such as
www.colorgradingcentral.com where there are tons of awesome free tutorials, and even some free presets and "looks". I recently edited a video with Sy and Jake that took advantage of color grading very heavily to fit our footage with footage that wasn't ours. For fun we filmed Jake rapping and stuck it in someone else's video. Obviously it would have been extremely hard to match our camera settings to match the look of their video, so in editing we color graded our footage to match their footage as best we could, to seamlessly as we could merge everything. Here is the video, we slipped the white dude into it. In the same concept of merging the footage together, we also made title sequences that matched theirs, and recreated their logo from scratch to overlay it over his footage. It was a good exercise in editing stuff and I had fun. Sy shot pretty much all our footage, and Jake was the lyricist.
