The White Bear's Guide to Making Better Action Sports Videos: Part 1

Yeah, it's an MTB video, but this is my favorite bike video from the last few years.  I could watch this video over and over and over.  But, watching it again, just now, I realized even this video has one of the things I hate about action sports videos today, repeated tricks, different angles of the same trick, after each other.  But it's edited so quick and tight, that it works, mostly. 

OK, a day or two ago, Ike Berner put a question out to the old school BMXers on Facebook, asking if he was right that Eddie Roman's video, Ride On was the best BMX video ever.  In about 50 comments and replies, Eddie ended up tying with himself, with Ride On and Headfirst being the top two, by far, listed as rider's favorites.  I voted for Headfirst, myself.  But I'll be honest, as a guy who was one of the first four riders to self-produce and edit full length videos, and the rider who produced more videos than any other rider from 1987 to 1993, I was hoping one of mine would get a shout out.  I finally shamelessly fished for a compliment, using the S&M Bikes video, 44 Something, as bait.  I got a couple of bites. 

While I didn't make the most popular videos of the late 1980's/early 1990's era, I produced and/or edited 12 full length BMX videos for the AFA, 2-Hip, and S&M Bikes, and myself.  I also produced and edited 44 Something for S&M Bikes, with a total budget of about $750, and it sold at least 7,000 or 8,000 copies thanks to Chris Moeller's sales skills.  It may have been the top selling video of the 90's, and even if it wasn't, it HAD to be the most profitable (For S&M Bikes, not me).  I also worked on a bunch of BMX, skate, snowboard, and body boarding videos for Vision Skateboards/Street Wear, and skate, and snowboard videos for NSI video, a surf video distributor.

In addition, my first self-produced video, 1990's The Ultimate Weekend, had a bunch of firsts, like the first handrail slide down steps, the first ice pick rail grind, the first BMX mini ramp riding, the first 360 over a spine, and the first footage from the Nude Bowl in a bike video.  I learned my video skills, from the older guys at Unreel, primarily editor extraordinaire, Dave Alvarez. 

So here's my basic, simple rules I learned to keep in mind, back in those early days, to make a better bike, skate, or snowboard video. 

1.  Know what you want your video to do.  After 2 1/2 years of being a low guy on the crew at Unreel/Vision, who had no input on videos, watching them make videos I thought were kind of goofy, I wanted to produce my own video to sell.  Do it my way, make the video I wanted to watch.  As I started shooting footage most every weekend that year, I also started asking myself, "Why do us riders watch BMX freestyle videos?"  There are lots of answers, but it finally dawned on me that there's one big reason.  I wanted to make a BMX video that made riders want to go ride immediately.  My thought was, "If I do a good job, then the guy (or gal) watching the video will have their bike ready to roll out the door by the time the credits roll.  You're not (hopefully) making a video (or web edit today) for your demo reel, you're not making a video impress a film school teacher, or to make the world think you're Steven Spielberg, or any of the more self-serving reasons.  If you're making an actions sports video, make one that makes people want to go ride, skate, surf, or progress at whatever they do.

2.  Keep it tight.  This one came straight from editor Dave Alvarez on the first AFA video I produced, and he edited, in 1987.  Cut into a shot as late as you can, show only as much as you need to, and cut out as quick as you can.  Weed out ANY extra frames/seconds of footage that you can.  Keep each shot as short as you can, while still getting what you need out of it.

3.  Shoot from different angles.  I'm so fucking tired of seeing skate videos, now, in 2019, where it's rail grind after rail grind, and the cameraman is standing at the bottom of the rail with a fisheye lense, for every shot.  For BMX videos, standing next to the landing of a set of doubles with a fisheye is the same thing.  Yes, that's a good angle.  But it's not the only good angle.  Get back 50 feet, zoom in a bit, and get the whole trick.  Get up high and shoot down at the trick.  put the camera on a ledge or tripod, open wide, and let the rider move through the static shot.  Shoot head on at the trick.  Mix it up, try different things.  Don't miss a once in a lifetime trick by getting too creative, but move around, and shoot different ways, it really helps your editing and finished video.  You, as camera person, should be getting as creative as the rider.

4.  Wide-Tight-Wide when editing.  This is another basic rule from Unreel editor Dave Alvarez, who won an Emmy for editing, after leaving Unreel and moving to Hollyweird.  When you edit a shot that ends up tight, really close in on the subject, then make the next shot a wide shot.  It naturally flows and looks better to the viewer's eyes.  If you edit a shot that ends wide, use a tight-in shot next.  For a basic frame of reference, a tight shot is a person's face, a medium shot is the person from the chest or waist up, and a wide shot is full body.  If your shot ends medium, start the next shot at one extreme or the other, either really tight or really wide.  This is how they shoot and edit movies when they don't use effects, and get a good flow.  Video effects are an excuse for bad editing, learn to edit without any effects, and then use effects only sparingly.

5.  Edit to the music.  Another rule from Dave, and almost NOBODY does this these days.  He called it "fancy news editing."  You have two (maybe more these days) tracks of audio, and one track of video.  USE the audio to enhance your video.  First, pick music that has a feeling or similar vibe to your video.   Then, make the video cut from one shot to another on the beat of the music.  This has a huge, but largely unnoticed, effect on how watchable a video is.  Even better, have the main action of the video also hit on a beat of the music.  Like if a rider does a can-can on a jump, when the leg comes across and hits full extension, it should hit right on a beat of the music.  You do this with back timing, or today, perhaps by watching the audio track for the beat and matching it to the video action. 

6.  Use cutaway shots.  In today's fast paced, web edit and VLOG world, jump cuts have become an epidemic.  A jump cut is like in a VLOG where the host says something, and then the video visually jumps to another shot, at the same angle, but with their position a bit different.  Your eyes automatically go, "Hey, what the fuck?"  This is typical in VLOGS today, but it sucks. 

A cutaway shot is a shot of something else, that you show for a few seconds to smooth out the transition from one shot to another.  For example, you're watching a football game, and they zoom in on a guy who got hurt and is lying there, a wide shot of his whole body.  Once they figure he's not getting up right away, the live director will cut to the face of someone in the audience.  So, wide shot of the hurt player, tight shot of an audience member's face, then back to the wide shot of the player.  Wide-tight-wide, it flows.  In a bike video, you can show a shot of a rider riding away from landing a trick, then a shot of his friends watching, or a sign, a weird person nearby, then go on to the next riding shot.  Always shoot a bunch of cutaway shots when out shooting something.  Shoot shots of that 15 step rail from a distance, showing how gnarly it is, shoot the close-up of the "No bikes or skateboards" sign,  shoot a tight shot of the security guard's veins bulging in his neck when he gets pissed, shoot close-ups of the rider's tattoos, his girlfriend's boobs, the sign for the city or region you're in, pretty flowers, your sticker on a bus bench, everything.  This give you lots of options for cool cutaways when editing.

7.  Log ALL of your footage.  I know the standard trick these days is to put your hand over the lens after the rider/skater finally lands the trick on the 47th try.  Then you just zip through to the hand, back up a bit, and you've found the shot.  WRONG.  Sit down with pen and paper (going old school on you here), and watch the whole freakin' tape or drive, and write down everything that happens, and the time code where it's at.  This does two things.  1) It reminds you of all the weird little stuff you shot, so, mentally, you know it's in there.  2) You have a written record of where everything you shot is on the raw footage.  OK, I'm from the tape days, where we had tapes from the camera, and then edited them on to other tapes.  In today's digital world, watching all the footage will show you what's there, and you may want to render/file some of the minor shots (like cutaways) and keep them for editing, or for weeks, months, even years later, on whatever you record your footage on.

I can't tell you how many times I was editing back in the day, and I needed something to fill in a little spot, and something I saw while logging would pop into my head.  I'd dig through the log sheets, find it, and edit it in.

OK, I haven't shot or edited video in a long time.  But all these thoughts are principles, basic concepts that don't change over time, though how you use them or work with them may change due to changing technology or where the video will end up.

In future posts, I'm going to go into more depth on these basic ideas, and also things I see that bug the fuck out of me in today's videos.