Turrialba volcano eruption (Costa Rica) with Inspire 1P

Salko · Mar 15, 2016

Hi Everyone!

Last Sat managed to get to "restricted" area near Turrialba volcano (Costa Rica). Turrialba started eruption in 2015 and still is active volcano.

Equipment used: I1P X5 and few ND filters, shot in D-LOG.
Was able to get 700m near to volcano, there is no chance to get any closer, due to the increased volcanic activity all roads in the surrounding area are closed.

This is 3rd video in my life. I'll really appreciate technical critics, no cheesy things

Cause obviously there are tremendous qty of issues and mistakes (like shooting issues and post production as well), which need to be improved.
Thank you in advance.

p.s. Free-roaming horses were shoot just at the foot of the volcano

unyks · Mar 15, 2016

Well done for the 3rd shot but as mentioned by yourself, there is some post work to do ;-)

1:29 nice view on the volcano, a almost mars like environment and 1 sec later the 2 horses... and you do this switch several times.. and i don't get the connection of the 2 sceneries

You should maybe start from the foot of the mountain and go up, finishing with the view into the vulcano.. or the other way around..

But what do i know.. just my 2 cents ;-)

Chris

slim.slamma · Mar 15, 2016

dude you screwed up a wet dream.
Sexy area by the way. Footage seemed out of focus
I can't see the clouds

PortCanaveralFlorida · Mar 16, 2016

Most of us are our own worst critics, I know I am! To me, it's just stunning to see footage from all over the world in this small little forum! Good, indifferent, what-ever it may be. My area is flat, I mean REALLY flat, and to see this and others from our blue ball we live on I just OoooAhhhhh! Thanks for sharing!

Kilrah · Mar 16, 2016

Pretty nice shots, but awful color grading IMO. Hopefully the original footage isn't as overexposed as it looks in the result.

RaptorMan · Mar 16, 2016

Yeah, there are some problems here including some blown highlights, but much of it could be significantly improved with a better understanding of color correction/grading. You have something quite interesting and I'd love to see you re-process this and re-upload. Understand that while we're being a bit critical we are trying to help and want you to do better.

So, take some time to handle the highlights in particular and to pull detail. Much of this could be improved by using curves or other contrast adjustments.

Brian

Salko · Mar 16, 2016

Guys, Thanks a lot for your help and valuable advice! I like to get some hints and guidance of improvement, really appreciate it. I'll keep working!

Salko · Mar 16, 2016

Guys, any comments are valuable for me cuz as I mentioned it's my 3rd video in whole life. Never held any camera (photo or video) and never did postproduction before. I would really appreciate if you can spend a couple of minutes more to comment on same, video before postproduction.

You mentioned that there are some problems with color correction/grading. Here is original video for you to comment - I disabled all colour correction, then rendered file.

For shooting I used ND16 filter, as it was really sunny day and ND8 gave me overexposed image.
Shot in UHD 4K, 25fps, PAL, D-Log and 0,-3,-1 (color style), Shutter '50, F/7.2 till 9, ISO 200 till 400. In the FCPX used LUTs.

Can you please advise where exactly focus is lost in the time frame as I tried to keep focused.
If you notice over exposure in initial file, can you please point me where exactly, so I could adjust my skills

Of course I will really appreciate any advises for colour grading in postproduction as it's quite complicated thing to me right now.

In case of any questions will be glad to answer.

RaptorMan · Mar 16, 2016

Salko said:
Guys, Thanks a lot for your help and valuable advice! I like to get some hints and guidance of improvement, really appreciate it. I'll keep working!

I'm not sure what editing program you have and it would help if you say what it is, but whatever program you use there are lots of adjustments you can make. One thing you can do is search on you tube for video editing tutorials and particularly those that use your program. But, even without doing that you can just play around in your editor and know that NLE's don't actually change your raw video at all so you don't have to worry about messing something up -- so go ahead and play.

As I mentioned in my prior post you have some blown highlights that you aren't going to be able to do much with but for much of the video you could try some of these things:

1. Reduce the exposure -- try a little and try a lot

2. Reduce the highlights and/or whites -- a little and a lot

3. Adjust the blacks so that they are close to the bottom but not quite -- it looks to me that everything is biased to the high side so lowering that should help.

4. If you have a contrast adjustment try increasing it -- you may have to lower the exposure and or lower the white or highlights after increasing the contrast.

5. If you have a "curves" adjustment try applying an "S" curve and see what happens -- try lots of changes with the curves.

6. If you have a "shadow" adjustment you may wish to try lowering or raising.

The bottom line is play around with the knowledge that you are not changing your raw files so if you don't like what you did you can either undo or delete the project completely and start over.

Basically, with a NLE all your adjustments are nothing more than a list of instructions so that at the end, when your ready to render and export, the program reads the edit instructions and applies them to a COPY of the video in your edit.

Imagine a simple edit that involves one raw video clip that lasts, say, 10 minutes long. Let's say your edit includes only the portion of the video from minute 1 to minute 9 -- a total of 8 minutes. What the program does is read in only the part of the raw video clip from 1 minute to minute 9 and applies the changes you specified where you specified. The output is a new video file and your original is unchanged.

So, just go crazy and try ****, some will work and some won't, but no big deal as you can undo or try again.

Brian

Salko · Mar 16, 2016

Forgot to mention, i use FCPX

Salko · Mar 16, 2016

Thank you Brian. It's really helpful! I will go through it and let you know what the final result is.

Just one quick thing. Does FCPX has all of the tools you mentioned out of the box. Or you advise to look for some plugin like for example "Color Finale plugin"?

RaptorMan · Mar 17, 2016

Salko said:
Thank you Brian. It's really helpful! I will go through it and let you know what the final result is.

Just one quick thing. Does FCPX has all of the tools you mentioned out of the box. Or you advise to look for some plugin like for example "Color Finale plugin"?

I don't use FCPX but I'm 100% certain is has many tools like this. There are others on here that do use FCPX and I'm sure they can help you out.

Try this ... go to Youtube and type in fcpx color correction tutorial in the search box and check out some of the videos -- should get you started.

Brian

Salko · Mar 19, 2016

Thank you very much guys. Went with some colour grading. Here is the result.

Any comments, may be I did something wrong or missed something?

RaptorMan · Mar 20, 2016

Salko said:
Thank you very much guys. Went with some colour grading. Here is the result.

Any comments, may be I did something wrong or missed something?

Much better!

Clouds can be tough as they can be very high key particularly when you are above them with the sun both lighting and reflecting from it. A bit more work on the highlights and you're on your way...

Brian

RBirtles · Mar 20, 2016

Well done on your first video put out there and asking for review.

Quite a few people have made colour suggestions etc but the one thing which I found disconnected was the cutting over to new scenes that were not really related.

One example was a scene where you were showing the volcano's rim/crater and then you cut to a scene of horses...

I think working out a flow to the video would be good so you will take the viewer on a journey.

Anyhow, well done on trying and take my words as being constructive, not critical as I meant them to be.

Cheers from Australia,
Birty

Salko · Mar 22, 2016

Thank you guys for really valuable comments.
Will try to get deeper into "Curves" and story line.

Hope next video will be more professional than current one