7634 miles: A journey through America

[moving_glass]

Hey guys,

This is my first post on the forum, and wanted to start off with sharing a project I've recently finished.

This video documents the incredible adventure that my girlfriend and I embarked on earlier this year for 3 months around America in our loyal campervan companion, Simba. It was the first time in years that I've worked on a project not constrained by a client or brief, and it was very creatively liberating to make exactly what I wanted to, from the heart.

I hope you guys enjoy the video and hopefully you get a taste of what we experienced. It was a hard one to tackle given the abundance of footage, as I wanted to include as many of the places we visited while also not going overboard on the length. Critique is welcomed!

Shot on a Canon 5dMKIII in RAW, and a DJI Mavic Pro for the drone shots. Edited in Premiere Pro and graded in Resolve.

 

[Bunny Too]

Hey guys,

This is my first post on the forum, and wanted to start off with sharing a project I've recently finished.

This video documents the incredible adventure that my girlfriend and I embarked on earlier this year for 3 months around America in our loyal campervan companion, Simba. It was the first time in years that I've worked on a project not constrained by a client or brief, and it was very creatively liberating to make exactly what I wanted to, from the heart.

I hope you guys enjoy the video and hopefully you get a taste of what we experienced. It was a hard one to tackle given the abundance of footage, as I wanted to include as many of the places we visited while also not going overboard on the length. Critique is welcomed!

Shot on a Canon 5dMKIII in RAW, and a DJI Mavic Pro for the drone shots. Edited in Premiere Pro and graded in Resolve.

Howdy from Wyoming moving_glass, welcome to the community, plenty of fine folk and excellent information here.

 

[moving_glass]

Howdy from Wyoming moving_glass, welcome to the community, plenty of fine folk and excellent information here.

Thanks, looking forward to digging deeper. Hope you enjoy the video

 

[Joely-Bird]

Hi, Great film, I very much enjoyed it! There is still so much of this country I need to see, and this makes me want to get out there, so mission accomplished!

I'm not a great fan of the soundtrack, but that's my personal taste and it clearly worked for you! You obviously have some excellent editing skills, and it sounds like that's your profession.

I have a question about your process for a project like this with no brief as such... Did you just shoot pretty much everything, all the time and spend days going through your footage to see what you had? Or do you pretty much know what shots you want when you're out and about and shoot specifically to an edit you have in mind already? I'm mostly speaking of the short clips and close-ups, the stuff you put in between key shots, they're often the things I miss, but they really give it that extra... something.

Thanks for sharing

 

[MarkYvette]

Amazing work...not familiar with Resolve, is it not possible to grade in Premier?

 

[moving_glass]

Hi, Great film, I very much enjoyed it! There is still so much of this country I need to see, and this makes me want to get out there, so mission accomplished!

I'm not a great fan of the soundtrack, but that's my personal taste and it clearly worked for you! You obviously have some excellent editing skills, and it sounds like that's your profession.

I have a question about your process for a project like this with no brief as such... Did you just shoot pretty much everything, all the time and spend days going through your footage to see what you had? Or do you pretty much know what shots you want when you're out and about and shoot specifically to an edit you have in mind already? I'm mostly speaking of the short clips and close-ups, the stuff you put in between key shots, they're often the things I miss, but they really give it that extra... something.

Thanks for sharing

Thrilled that you enjoyed it! Can't recommend doing a road trip in a camper van enough.

I am fortunate enough for filming and editing to be my profession, I run my own small production company alongside freelancing for others. I used to work full time for a production company but wanted to spread my wings and have more control over the projects I worked on, and also have the freedom to take time out to do trips like this.

It was a bit of a free-for-all to be honest! I had inspiration from other travel videos prior to the trip, but really had no idea of how I would piece it together. It took me around a week to sift through the footage and make a first pass of selects, and I then had a bank of usable clips to work from in sequences from each location I visited. I just made sure to capture as much of a variety of shots as possible in each location, whilst trying to not go too overboard! There was still so much footage that didn't make the cut.

Once again thanks for taking the time to watch it!

 

[moving_glass]

Amazing work...not familiar with Resolve, is it not possible to grade in Premier?

Thanks Mark! Resolve is a much more powerful tool for grading, but I definitely regretted my choice to grade in it due to the workflow with the RAW 5d footage. Due to the amount of effects used in Premiere, I had to bake in the effects and export a ton of clips individually from Premiere to put into Resolve. Also had to export a ton from Resolve to Premiere after grading with handles, to re-do the speed ramps I'd done in Premiere, as often they had slightly mis-translated upon importing the XML of my project into Resolve.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Nicely done, your editing skills are obviously high, even to a total editing newbie (like me ), and time taken to select footage etc shows your commitment to the best you can do.
Your clients must appreciate that.

The Mavic is obviously going to be used a lot, in your professional life too ?

You should give your camera to your girlfriend sometimes though to get some footage of you to put into such video memories, it did look like something was missing (you).

Again great work, really enjoyed it, and welcome to the forum.

 

[moving_glass]

Nicely done, your editing skills are obviously high, even to a total editing newbie (like me ), and time taken to select footage etc shows your commitment to the best you can do.
Your clients must appreciate that.

The Mavic is obviously going to be used a lot, in your professional life too ?

You should give your camera to your girlfriend sometimes though to get some footage of you to put into such video memories, it did look like something was missing (you).

Again great work, really enjoyed it, and welcome to the forum.

Thanks, I'm glad that the details are appreciated!

Unfortunately I actually sold my Mavic a couple of months ago, I bought it primarily to use on this trip and to get used to drones, to see if I got along with it and whether it would be worth me investing in acquiring a commercial license in the near future. I may get a Phantom 4 Pro plus next, I do miss the Mavic though and wish I could have kept it!

True, I did have 2 small cameo's though (sand boarding and skate boarding), plus my feet in the Yosemite section Haha but in all honesty I understand and agree!

Thanks again for taking the time to watch it and feedback