Holiday company promo edited in Vegas

[Ian Stark]

A little promo I did for a sailing holiday company in Spain, edited entirely in Vegas and using NewBlueFX Colorfast (and one or two others here and there). First full job with Vegas under Win 10 and it performed very well. Shot with Panasonic GH4 and AF100 cameras and a GoPro 4, Glidecam, PocketJib, Panasonic 12-35 and 35-100mm f2.8 zooms for shots on the water and Voigtlander 25mm and Rokinon 85mm primes for land based shots.

Minorca Sailing - YouTube

[Seth Bloombaum]

Looks spectacular - love the masthead shots.

Some of the titles do get a little lost in busy or light backgrounds.

I am available for the next shoot! How about June? The idea of a resort based on sailing in that large bay is very appealing, especially as we head into winter here. It hailed this morning... and we had over 9" of rain in Washington's Olympic Peninsula in the last 24 hours. That's just 150 miles from here.

[Ian Stark]

Thanks Seth - apparently the next shoot IS next June! I'll let you know ;-)

You're quite right about a few of the titles. Actually, when I look at them in Vegas or at the original rendered version they look quite clear but I suspect YouTube processing might have brightened some of the highs as there are a few places that look much hotter than in the version I am looking at. I originally had the titles on solid banners, then semi-opaque, but the client wasn't keen. And the client is always right, right?!

[Chris Harding]

Maybe it's just me but the colours looked really weird on my monitor! I guess it was meant to look like that but if I was going to want to go sailing there I would want to have see saturated true colour to entice me?

Gosh, a narration would have been so good here along with some live sound ..I really (as a client) don't appreciate moving lips but no audio except music ... a great narration would have done a more powerful selling job IMHO

Shots however were stunning and pretty much perfect ... 10 out of 10 for the camera work it was really superb!!

[Ian Stark]

Thanks for the feedback Chris. In what way do the colours look weird to you? I am seeing quite nicely saturated colours here (without being obviously overly manipulated!). I agree that YouTube has done something to the colours but not to the extent that I'd describe them as weird :-)

Re audio, the company's client base is global and there just wasn't the budget to do a voiceover for all languages. Changing the text is obviously a significantly easier and less costly task. I did record a lot of ambient audio to add in post, but to be honest it didn't sound great so we scrapped it. Aside from too much wind noise (despite using a Rycote and dead cat) there was also the constant sound of speedboats, rescue ribs, instructors yelling, walkie talkies and, worse than any of that, the owner of the company barking instructions to the boats telling them where to position themselves for shots.That did my head in! I do wish I had captured some of the restaurant sounds, also the sound of the sea lapping the shore for the closing seconds.

All good feedback, Chris. Appreciate it.

[Leslie Wand]

i agree with chris - stunning shots - but overtly saturated for my taste.

[Jim Michael]

Might the transcoding on YouTube made it a tad bright making the text hard to read? Nice production, made me want to go sailing.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Ian

It probably is the effects for the NewBlue plugin ..I looked at their demo and their processed footage looks much the same ... I guess that's the "cinematic" look as opposed to the "video" look? I think it's purely a matter of personal taste ... I shoot on Panasonic as I love the sharpness and great colour compared to other cameras.

Lack of narration is totally understood ..it's not your job to have to try to squeeze in a professional VO from your budget. The captions work well anyway!

[Robin Davies-Rollinson]

Hi Ian,
I usually put a thin black edge around white titles - or any colour titles , come to that - to help make them stand out from the background, especially a light one...

[Ian Stark]

Hi Robin - yep, suggested to the client! The most they wanted was a light drop shadow, which is actually more prominent on the version I am looking at compared to the one in the link.

[Gerald Webb]

I love the colouring in this, reminds me of a Kodak film look.
Did you have a reference when doing your grade Ian?

[Ian Stark]

Actually it was all done by feel - I was mixing footage from a GH3, a GH4, an AF101 and a GoPro Hero 4, all shot in varying light and weather conditions, so my first hurdle was to match them as best as I could (with hindsight, I wish I had just used the GH4 and the GoPro, but the client was keen to see 'proper' kit - you know the type!). I did the matching using the excellent NewBlueFX Colorfast.

For the grade I built something up using MB Looks which I then applied at master video track level. The key element in this was the desaturation of the reds (or rather their shift towards orange) and adjusting the sea colours to be closer to petrol blue. That's where that Kodachrome look comes from I suspect.

I also cheated and added a bit of NewBlueFX Rack Focus on a few shots (I do that rather a lot in my videos actually - I think it does wonders to turn an average shot into something much more interesting). On one clip, however, I now see that I got it horribly wrong and something in the image is half in focus and half out as the camera jibs up - it's minor, but annoying!

So, no reference as such, although I had a clear idea of what I was aiming for.

The great thing is the client is delighted, their web visitors are up significantly and their sales for the 2016 season are better than ever! So much so that I have been asked back in June to shoot some more land based material. No arguments here :-)

[Gerald Webb]

Thanks Ian,
Very interesting. When describing your process I can now see every step in the finished coloring.

Yes, the "petrol" blue tone is what I find attractive and liken to a Kodak type look.

The dropping of the reds is the first thing I normally do after matching lift, gamma and gain, IMO, I think its the easiest way to change the look of your footage from handycam to something a little more professional.

That is great about the ongoing work :)

[Mark Rosenzweig]

The coloring is interesting, but there are blown highlights all over - faces, sails, hulls, etc. Do you check scopes? histograms? YouTube compresses like crazy, but they do not "brighten" or cause hotspots.

[Ian Stark]

Thanks for the feedback Mark.

I'm not sure I agree with 'all over' but yes, there are some (and only a couple that actually bother me). I do check the histogram when shooting but I don't use other scopes at all. Poor on my part, I know.

I will add that when I look at a local copy of this video at my desk it seems much better exposed so I remain convinced that some aspect of YouTube processing (not necessarily the compression) has done something to raise levels in some areas.