The Filming Bible for Skateboarding

Regards to www.skateperception.com

The Filming Bible

Thy Shalt Praise Thy Lords, O Sesh and O Grandman, The masters of yonder Bible. Render yourself to http://www.seshskate.com and http://www.skateperception.com to vieweth yonder besteth skateboard videographi.

Saint Sesh - Chapter 1

We know fisheye shots are overused so step it up with the long lens shit. I like it because there is so much you can do with a long lens shot that you cant do with a fisheye. Look at your surrounding. Composite your shot. Look at what you have to use.
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Saint Paul - Chapter 2

White Balance : Use certain colors to give the look you want along with the trick. Set your white balance to adjust everything. I personally like a golden tint to my footy, made by white balancing on blue (example jeans, clear sky). Experiment with colors. Also take a white card with you when filming to be able to neutralise your white balance in wierd lighting situations, especially in skateparks that have flourescents lights in them, as this gives you footy an orange look.
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St Gilbert - Chapter 3

Exposure: Usually filmers are going to run into lots of poorly lit settings. In a lot of cases their is nothing you can do. Its just you standing alone with your exposure controls. In this case pump that sucka up becaue the trick is usually the only thing you should care about here. make sure you can see it well. Use your white balance, ND filters, Exposure, and shutter speed all to your advantage.
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St Mechordie - Chapter 4

Screw on your fisheye right: on some shots you can see little corners on the bottom and top. This is sometimes because the filmer hasnt read the directions to his fisheye. Screw it on right , but don't force anything. Also remember that some fisheyes always have vignetting (example mark 1 bayonet on vx1000). Another thing is to make sure that the lens guards on your death lens are in the right place, other wise you will see them in ths shot.
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St Latestrend- Chapter 5

Framing: this is a big one. Use your objects in your surrounding to frame your shot. You can make interesting shapes around the borders or your frame and have your skater do his trick in the middle. Just use the things around you (ex. trees, walls). Or you can be really unique and block out some of your shot and control what the viewer sees be careful though. remember your main obligation is to get the trick on tape successfully.
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St Foe - Chapter 6

Depth of field: Manual focus is such a useful tool on 3ccd cams. It isn't that great on single ccd cams but on 3ccd-iers you can do some great things. Your can place objects in the foreground and have your skateboarder in the background and rack focus back and forth. Or vice versa. Also remember that a bigger aperture ( such as f1.6 will produce a shorter depth of field then a smaller aperture (such as f11)
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St Miam - Chapter 7

Moving long lense shots: You have to pull it off right. do moving long lense shots and pass bys from every direction to see what looks the best. Also mix it up with some zooming and manual focusing, they can look amazing
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St Bibble - Chapter 8

Get a lot of coverage of everything going on. You don't want to miss out on any angles. Search everywhere around the skater and try it from every angle and actually film it. Ask the skater to to more than once the same trick at different angles, but if your going for a real hammer you better find that perfect angle..
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St PleaseStopPokingMe EyeBum- Chapter 9

Recording : Press the button way early and end way late. You never want to miss out on those rare and special occurances that a lot of people do becaue they are concerned about tape. Do this, and when you stop recording so you can review, you can fastforward to *nearly* the end of your footage and start recording there. Yes, you lose that second or so of previous footage, but your timecode is intact.

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St Fumble - Chapter 10

Use your viewfinder. It prevents battery comsumption and its easier to set manual settings with it, seeing that with the LCD the lighting around you changes everything you see on the LCD.
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St Accel - Chapter 11

Always look through something when filming fisheye, be it the LCD or viewfinder. I've always preferred the viewfinder, just don't go blind eye.
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St Bazil- Chapter 12

Zooming in after a trick : If you really want to do this, which I don't recommend as it is alreday used by lots of filmers. But if you do decide to use this technique, you need to flow it. Don't wait for 10 seconds after the landed trick to point your cam at the ground. Do so rapidly and then zoom in so you have some cool transition to edit too. Make sure the camera moves with the skater and flows nicely and right after the landed trick pound your zoom into the ground just like the skater pounded his landed trick on the ground. You have to flow with the skateboarder too. Again, I recommend against you using this technique.
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St Friday - Chapter 13

Cutting tricks together. Getting one long lens shot and one fisheye shot is the way one usually does it. But if you want to get tech herei s a secret . Go and learn about screen direction. Look on http://www.google.com for info about it. If you can maintain screen direction while you cut tricks together then you will be a huge step ahead of 97% of the pro filmers.
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St ChompOnThis - Chapter14

Develop your own filming style, don't rip off someone elses camera tricks. For example the Sorry video's filmer had shots where he twisted the cam around to totally distort the skate obstacle. Im not really stoked on this camera trick and im not sure why a lot of people try to imitate it, but thats lame. Make your own style be original.
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St Nipples - Chapter 15

Give it a wash : Clean your lens pratically before and after every trick. Half water, half Windex works well, but so does optical paper and other lens cleaning products. Even though you cant see the dust on your lense in the viewfinder it will magically appear on a computer or tv screen TRUST ME those little specks are out to ruin you.
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St Ladd - Chapter 16

Set exposure while you film lines. Keep your exposure on manual and before filming the line run through it on your board and test the exposure settings for every area you roll through and count how many small clicks back and forth each part is. This is hard and risky but once you master it well then you are damn good.
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St Evans - Chapter 17

Lighting: Soooo useful. Its your best friend and greatest enemy. Play with the light on your shots. Lens flares can either be cool looking or annoying so watch out. Backlighting is cool. Play with your white balance and you can make all the light golden. Usually afternoons when the sun is getting low are the best times to shoot. Always great lighting then.
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St OohJustALittleToTheRightOhThatsPerfect - Chapter18

Auto focus at lowly lit conditions : Watch out this can hurt you. Always switch to manual during these times as the focus will go in and out because it doesn't have enough light to focus onto.
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St Burn - Chapter 19

Kenko lenses: these are ok but whatever you do dont take the macro off and turn it into a super fisheye. That is the most ridiculous thing i have ever seen, don't do it, it's got tons of vignetting.
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St DontThinkYourGoodUnlessSomeoneSaysYouAre - Chapter 20

Doesnt matter what you film with: It's how you use it. There are so many worthless 3 chip filmers. But remember companies like 411VM only accept 3 chip footage.
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St Orangina-Chapter 21

Get the craziest angle. If it means climbing a tree or a roof then go for it. You only want the best shot
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St Belgium - Chapter 22

Your cameras gonna get hit so get insurance.
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St Wolfe - Chapter 23

Film cameras: Super 8 is all over the place, its nice but be original with it. 16mm and 35mm cameras, expensive is all i have to say, I see a lot of this being used without the filmers knowing its full potential. Film is great and their are limitless possibilities so dont just go around and film some skateboarders against a wall for his intro. Be creative and use your money wisely.
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St Optics - Chapter 24

Mark 1 and Mark 2 lenses. For a VX1000, Mark 1, for a VX2000, mark 2, both on bayonet, as screw ons of these versions of fisheyes vignettes and are more likely to fall off. These lenses are the best fisheyes for these two cameras.
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St Marsh - Chapter 25

A steadily held camera makes a world of difference.
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St Muffin - Chapter 27

Check out every camera before buying the one. Don't be persuaded by others to buy the wrong camera for you go and test or the GLs, VXs etc and find your favourite.
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St eIe - Chapter 28

When buying a fisheye, if you plan to become a big filmer then save up for that death lens, dont bother getting an intermediate cheap (aka crap) fisheye, just train those long lens shots. But remember, as said in Chapter 20, good equipement doesnt make a good filmer. I would recommend for you to buy a top fisheye only if you are a talented filmer, as splashing out on a 600$ lens is a waste if youre not gonna make it in the buisness. For those who just film your buds for fun buy the low range fisheyes they will be perfect for you.
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St FilmingSites - Chapter 29

All go to DigitalSkate.net and Shumways.net but also Interlaced.tk for the best info about skateboard videography.
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St See - Chapter 30

If ever you're VX1000s ribbon cable snaps or frails, then I would recommend you repair it yourself. The part is availible cheap and the repair is easily done.
This site has detailed instructions and photos on how to replace your viewfinder ribbon cable.
http://www.geocities.com/jefferyc22/VX1000...viewfinder.html
You should also order your part from www.visuals.co.uk
as the part is 50% cheaper even if you live in the U.S. The part number is 165640013 (On the www.visuals.co.uk site go into Spare Parts, then into Spare Parts List, then write in the part number. Just for you dumbasses
Just don't fuck up. The repair is not difficult, but if you can't spread butter on a piece of bread, they do not try this, and send your VX1000 to a Sony Center.
Another useful thing you should know about VX1000's is how to make color bars. To do so turn the power switch to camera mode, set the start/stop switch to the lock position. Then press and hold the black photo button and at the same time the small red record button that is on the top of the camcorder near the edit search. Then switch the start/stop switch to standby mode, color bars appear and you can record them. To turn the bars off, switch to lock mode, then to standby mode.
Also check out http://www.videouniversity.com as they have interesting tutorials and forums about most cameras including VX1000's.
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St Kermel - Chapter 31

Use filters : UV filters slightly sharpen the quality of the picture by stopping ultra violet rays from getting to the actual lens, this stops glare off objects to leave a very clear picture. They are also very useful for protecting your lens. I prefer a smashed 10-50 buck filter rather than a 300 buck lens repair.
There are also Polarizing filters that create a transparent view to water and glass surfaces. Polarizing filters also get rid of glare and reflections off of an object but sometimes enhance the color. They also make the sky look fabulous.
Another kind of filters are ND filters, which bumps up the power of the ND filter on your camera (cuts down the overall light by a couple of f-stops)
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St Focis - Chapter 32

When filming fisheye, turn off the steadyshot otherwise the vignetting will bob up and down. Also turn of the auto-focus otherwise the camera will often focus on the lense then on the subject then on the lense and so on.
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St Oil - Chapter 33

Use tripods to your advantage. They might be bulky but they are damn useful.
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St Karl - Chapter 34

When filming lines, keep the camera low and slightly tilted upwards. Try and make sure that you wont be seen at all in the shot and try and find one of your buds who has softer wheels as it'll reduce the sound of your wheels.
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St GrandMan - Chapter 35

Try long lense lines. Mostly do this when you have a wide open shot with plently of space to roll around and zoom in and out in. Done correctly they can look fabulous just dont exadgeratte on the zoom as headaches easily occur.
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St Paella - Chapter 36

With long lense shots, use a variety of techniques, such as letting the skater roll in or out of the shot, not moving at all, following the skater from beginning to end and playing with zooms and focus etc. And be original. Please.
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St Interlaced - Chapter 37

Shutter speed : when filming skateboarding try and keep the shutter speed as high as possible, to keep the motion as smooth as possible. Especially when filming a trick to be slow moed then bump up that shutter speed as itll make the slow mo a lot clearer.
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St MrBerns - Chapter 38

Thou shalt not ruin thy timecode. After showing that lovely trick to your friends be sure to wind back on to the last milisecond as to not break that delicious timecode that permits you to do batch captures. You can also prevent this by filming completly color bars on your tape for a continous 60 minutes on as to have a lucious timecode ready for you.
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St Mr.Mecrow - Chapter 39

A useful way of marking a landed trick is by putting your hand in front of the camera. Like this when editing you can just wind on until you see a huge hand and youll know that is there that the trick was landed.
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St Empireofdirt - Chapter 40

Thou shall not kill : try and not cut off your buds heads while filming. It just looks generally better with the whole person in view and its really cool to see the wierd expression on peoples faces when their doing tricks! Also filming from behind isnt a very good idea, as most people don't want to see butts, but don't ban this out, I've seen some faboulous high up shots filmed from behind, but otherwise just try and remember to keep to the right side of the skater depending on what way he'll be turning (if he is). Empireofdirt also once said that a simple broom is often useful to take to spots, to clear away those damn pebbles that can make you fall and break a limb. Props to St Empireofdirt for have the most posts on yonder forums.
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St Grow - Chapter 41

Do what you think is right. As you gain experience, you will start to vision the angle you are going to take as soon as you arrive at a spot. Don't listen to bitching skateboarding bitches as they know nothing and you are a master. Be confident as you will shake less if you believe in your self. You can get the best angle.
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St Century_Films - Chapter 42

Always choose SP recording over LP recording. LP recording is really silly, as you lose quality and you get tons more drop outs. Also if you cam permits it then film with 16 bit sound, that pop will sound juicier, but this doesnt mean that the 12 bit sound on VX1000's is bad, cos its not. Also, taketh a secondeth tape with you, as long sessions happen. This saint also said once " Love thy lord (your camera) and he will love you (by giving you the shoots you love).
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Saint Site - Chapter 43

O minions, I present to you some interesting sites about editing a videography :

http://www.camcorderinfo.com
http://www.videouniversity.com
http://www.abcdv.com
http://www.creativecow.net

God I've lost the list with the other ones.
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Saint Tape - Chapter 44

When filming, one should always try to stick to the same make of tape, as different makes of tapes use different kinds of lubrifications(grrr) and if you mix them together then can dirty up your heads. From personal experience I can tell you from personal experience that JVC tapes are fucked, and that Fuji tapes are absolutly fabulous.
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Saint Cold - Chapter 45

When filming in cold envinronnments, you should know that your battery will run down really fast. I've also heard of zooms going slower than normal and buttons taking longer to respond. You should also know of the possibility of condensation, which is often a problem, especially with larger 3CCD cameras. This happends when you go rapidly from a cold to warm environnement, such as outside to a heated appartment. To prevent this you should take out the tape before going inside and place the cam in a plastic bag. Another way is to wrap the camera in a towel, as this absorbs the condensation. If you do find out that your cam has been condensated, then DONT place it on a radiator, this can fuck it up even more. Just place it in a mild environnement, and leave it for a couple of hours, then it should work fine.