My First Video....

Hi all

Well I've just finished editing a highlights clip from a recent trip to Thailand. It is my first video so would appreciate it if anyone wants to make any comments.

Most of the filming was done in the Andaman Sea during their off season so visibility was normally not great (below 10m), although we did get a few good days at a couple of sites (20m). The Whale Shark and a couple of other clips were captured in the Gulf of Thailand near Koh Tao.

I was using a Sony PC350 with Ikelite Housing and UR Filter. Editing was done with Premier Elements.

http://video.mpegnation.com/a0019910419510...5162838199.html

So, hope you enjoy and let me know what you think.

Cheers, Simon

Nice effort for your first time. A few suggestions:

1. Try to shoot at the level of your subjects. Much of your clip is from the top. Of course I don't mean tread on the corals but learning to hover just above it will improve your angle... my suggestion... practice hovering over urchins ;-) you'll learn fast!

2. Don't use AF in crappy viz. The AF will hunt if there's a lot of particles in the water. With crappy viz, set the MF to 2m ahead and let the Dof of video take over.

3. Try to get a main(master) shot of reef or wide shot of subjects then cut to a closeup. It's much easier on the eye than swimming up to the subject all the time.

Really it was a very nice effort and the editing was good. Nice music too.

Thanks for the comments and tips!

On the long version I have a few more wide angle shots, although due to the vis the number of useable ones were still limited and not as many as I would have liked. The water was very very green at times and needed a lot of colour correction to look blue, but of course on wider angle shots with lots of ocean in them this totally screwed up the other colours. It wasn't so bad with reef backgrounds and close ups which is why I've used more of them.

When I put the highlights clip together I was trying to cram as much in as possible, but in hindsight I perhaps should have concentrated on less and created more of a balanced video? It's a real learning process trying to edit down 5 hours of video into 5 minutes!!

The whole trip I was using AF, but as you noted it would have probably been better to experiment a litte with MF as well. A quick question on this if that's ok, if as you suggested I set the MF to 2m what dof should I expect to be in focus? What happens if conditions change during the dive and you are then constantly trying to refocus (because I believe with my camera and housing I can't just switch back to AF), or is this just part of the learning curve of getting to know your equipment and technique? Do experieced videographers purely use MF?

There are many ways to color correct background blue and foregrad subjects. I use FCP HD and it works fine.

As for AF vs MF, I shoot in MF for wide angle in dirty water or when there are lots of little fish around to throw off the AF. I also shoot MF for macro shots when I want to play with the DoF.However AF is fine with closeup with good lighting. The thing is there is no one setting for all situations. Hence the need for good manual controls.

I'm using Premier Elements, which as far as I'm aware doesn't have the kind of flexibilty to colour correct backgrounds and foregrounds seperately, although I'm new to using it so I'll try to dig a bit deeper. I'll probably eventually upgrade to Premier pro, but just can't afford it at the moment - too much other stuff I need before that!