Recently we rolled out our latest ski film for Crotched Mountain, called “Set Yourself Free”, which is a big film leading into the school vacation weeks, which always tend to be a big time of year at the mountain. For this one, we needed to really do something special and different, so we knew we needed to do a little planning and staging for this one.
The bulk of the video production footage was shot over 2 days, capturing candid shots of skiers and riders around the mountain. With this being such an important ski film, we wanted to take some time to get corduroy shots so we decided to take a morning, before the mountain opens, and set up some shots for the opening. We lucked out with a perfect bluebird day and epic snow conditions, it was a perfect ski film video production morning. The only downside is that to get the shots, Chris, the marketing director for Crotched Mountain, had to continuously hike back up the mountain after every take…and we did ALOT of takes. That is how important this film was to not just Chris, but the entire mountain, because what we say in the film is true. This mountain is home to us, and there is a feeling there that isn’t like any other place I’ve ever been or filmed. You feel like family, you feel like its a place where you can let everything go, and just be free from all the stress of the world.
We utilized a few different setups on this video production project. Most of the wide angle shots were done on a Tokina 11-17 mounted on a 6d, and looking at the footage I realized I had the sharpening set to -1 which is why the images are showing so much moire. Normally I have a more neutral picture profile with sharpening set all the way off. The longer tighter shots were done with a 5dmk3 and a 70-200 with a 1.4 extender, and a few of the shots were done with our new GoPro Hero 3+ Silver edition that I picked up at Target of all places, yea for impulse buys right?
The motion shots I did handheld with a steadycam rig, and the bulk of the opening shots were done with the camera on a tripod but with the entire rig inverted so we could get it right above the snow. For the jump shot, we just jammed the camera in the snow to keep it steady. Fancy stuff I know, right?
I’m extremely happy with how the slow motion shots in the opening came out, it definitely took some time and tweaking, because at first they were coming out horribly but then I realized what I was doing wrong with the timeline settings, make a small adjustment and boom, we got some spot on shots. Your waiting for me to tell you exactly how I did it, aren’t’ you? If I get enough requests in the comments I’ll share the process in a later post.
Yes….that’s my voice on the voice over. I was well prepared to get ridiculed for it because not only did I record it, I wrote the script for it as well. I wanted a sort of heavy, deep intro then to blast into a fun film. Time and budget requirements meant that I pretty much had to do it on the fly, but I doubt I’ll ever do a VO again.
So far the response to this video production project has been very good on social media, its gotten hundreds of likes and been shared north of 50 times. But the ultimate goal of anything I do for a client is to turn viewers into customers, and that is why I we are a commercial video production company, that is our purpose. So when we are done, we dissect and analyze everything we did with each video production project. What worked, what didn’t, how could we improve? Because pretty films and cool effects don’t mean anything if the film is not moving people to connect with the client. But with a place as amazing as Crotched Mountain, its pretty easy to do that.
