Here is the final film:
I have posted a bunch of stuff leading up to this (scroll back using the buttons at the bottom of the page) showing my development stages as I tried to eek out ways of making semi-coherent story about running. In the end I am happy with the end result - there is a good mix of stuff going on that serves to communicate the experience. Of course it’s a personal story but I worked hard to not make it all about ‘me’. I hope that it serves a wider audience who are interested in trail running, outdoor adventures and delicious scenery.
Some end thoughts:
1: There are no short cuts.
Whatever process streamlining you can make gains with, editing seems to be one of those activities that sucks a huge amount of time from your week (or in this case spare time in the evenings). I am certainly a lot smarter with my working but - rather like running the marathon itself - you have to go the distance. Even with the key framing and design in Motion much clearer now, it still takes a while to put it all together. There is a certain care that is required - shortcuts aren’t that easy to come by. I suppose the speed and confidence comes from having an idea of how a certain technological ‘bone’ is going to fly when I throw it into the air.
2: Specific gains:
GoPro tech is remarkably good. Very reliable. After some testing I settled on using a Hero10 with the ‘shorty stick’ which fits easily into the Salomon running pack I was wearing. I used the one button record function and kept the footage as wide 4k 60fps. Keeping it simple and not switching modes is quite important. I concentrated on capturing certain kinds of material. As you can see from the end film I was able to zoom in at times and make use of the 1080 frame within the 4k ratio. This is useful. The advantages of using a GoPro over the admittedly superior iPhone three lens system is that it is more rugged and easy to grab. I could have gone with an external mic (and very nearly did - even on the morning of the event) but I decided to keep within the ‘less-moving-parts’ boundary. I could have added another ‘max mod’ lens to the camera but it just added bulk and in the end this was excellent.
For the in/outro shots I did use the ‘media mod’ and Rode Wireless 2 lav-mic combo to see how good it was. As it turned out this was remarkably good and the sound is superior. I can see the two mic-set up being very useful in the future. I have anxieties about filming longer interviews with the GoPro purely because of the battery and overheating issues which seem to be rife online. The iPhone is way better for that kind of thing, but those times are fairly rare. I can see a time where I will be running and interviewing someone with us both having remote wireless mics and it working smoothly.
That’s it - just these two modes. Higher frames for out in the field action and 30 for talky stuff.
The AddMotion plugin for FCP is superb. It enables a lot of easy/interesting functionality when forming the material. I posted about this earlier. I used it a lot in the final piece. It felt surprising how good it was.
Combining keyframe-animated visuals from Affinity Designer - via Pixelmator Pro - into Motion and then out to FCP is now a clear process in my mind. For the film I had to make a lot of detailed notes. There were around 30 ‘moments’ in the end. Here is a snippet from my sketchbook:
I had to go through the whole course and keep a careful eye on the data and exact places to make the sections. Okay so this was a personal project and who cares about accuracy? But I think careful handling of data and information is important so I had to take some time to make sure everything was right.
3: Serve the story, not the design/tech ambition
I had originally planned to have these time and distance tags appear at each of the points where the map line stops but in the end the feel of the sequence was better without them. The footage actually carries a lot of the storytelling in itself so some of that information ended up being a bit superfluous. For that reason I ended up taking this approach:
edit the filmed material as an interesting sequence that is varied and engaging in it’s own right. Compress clips and sequences as needed to get it into a rich enjoyable sequence that flows well.
break this up into sequences (I had 31 but got rid of a couple that I felt didn’t add enough to the overall story) and then look at the graphics needs.
I had the overall design in place but with this edited sequence I now knew that one overview (without the gradient) was useful. I also realised that I had about 30 stopping points where a closer camera for each would be good.
I animated all of those and then found myself enjoying the process of getting the different pieces to flow into each other. This is where AddMotion was used well. (Side note: annoyingly there is some kind of bug in FCP with using these 3rd party plug-ins - I found a fix by moving and re-positioning the adjustment layer).
I really like the way it all slots together in the end, but the process was important so I could improvise in the edit.
4: Music and YouTube
this was an interesting thing to deal with - every filmmaker wants to combine distinctive audio and images. Too often I find myself cringing at the default music choices being wheeled out across the social networks - rather like the use of Comic Sans or clipart in corporate training events. For a lot of my videos I have gone with Khonnor’s lovely 8Bit tunes and I paid for the right to use them. I wanted to use another artist this time but due to timing it didn’t work out so to avoid a copyright strike I went with YT’s Creator Studio rights-free audio library. It took a little purposeful digging but the end result is quite good I think. In the future it is important for me to cultivate some good links with indie musicians so I have made an effort to use Bandcamp a bit more proactively as it seems to be one of the best ways of connecting with that crowd.
It took a while but there is some good stuff on there.
5: If you’re going to make an effort, serve a community
I think this is the bigger underlying principle to aim for. I sent out the video privately to a few friends for some feedback - for me the biggest fear was that I’d made something narcissistic (“hey look at me! I ran here! I am really good! I love being on the camera!” etc etc) as per so many of those awful YT clips that line up on your subscription feed. I was really aiming here for an end result that would be fun to watch, give a sense of what outdoor adventure can be, help potential marathon runners reflect on the experience, give the 3 Forts event a boost to outsiders and say thankyou to all those people who are involved in setting this kind of event up. Richard Askwith’s book Running Free makes the point that there is a ‘Big Running’ industry out there that is really a kind of synthetic substitute for personal running - a theme-park style alternative to the reality of being on a hill in the rain alone in your shorts. 3 Forts is a smaller event and has some of the structure (medal, stations, T-Shirts) of those things but it also has a lot idiosyncratic personality which is endearing. I hope they get lots more people stepping in.