The making of a kite video.

For some time now I’ve been making kite videos and in the process I’ve learned a lot. This article is done to cover some of my experience, and to try and share some of it with you.

First let’s look at some of the motives for making these videos. The fun part is obvious one, the process of cutting and putting together a kite video is for me almost as fun as it is to fly kites. The main reason is to educate myself, meaning these videos are a great tool to analyze your own flying style & technique and by that enable me to become a better pilot. The goal I aim at with the final kite video, is to make the kite look good and to try and share a moment with others.

 What you’ll need:

 If and when you decide to do some kite filming its one item that is very important besides the camera and that’s the camera stand aka Mr Tripod.  

The one I use is an old beat up stand made for photographing, the important thing is that it is quite adjustable and it’s a very stable stand that don’t tip over easy.

My camera is a budget camera with a lens that is 10x optical, it has digital video in and out. If you plan on doing some editing on your computer the digital video out part is important. Last I checked there were some odd EU rule that made digital video cameras with digital video in\out much more expensive than the same camera with only digital video out.  That is something to consider if  you plan on purchasing a new digital video camera, that plus try and get a big lens instead of a small camera. I find that 10x optical is a bit on the low side. But the bottom line on the hardware is that it does not have to be very expensive.

Also its  nice to have a set of extra batteries in your bag, I for one have showed up for filming and setting it all up perfect conditions just to discover that the battery is empty from last time out.

Not going to say much about tapes and brands, but it’s advisable to buy a good quality tape and not the cheapest one. When you start using a new tape, wind it to the end and back just to let it adjust itself to your video camera.

If you got time to do a “dummy” take first (recording with lens cap on) and then rewind and tape over that its even better. It’s got something to do with magnetization of the tape, and these tapes are intended to be used and reused for quit a number of times, another reason to use a good quality tape. It will last longer!

In the field:

Well let’s move our focus to the field and the actual filming.

I usually fly for about 15 – 30 minutes before setting up the camera; by that time I’ve found a spot to film that suits the current wind conditions. Talking about wind conditions, high wind is often harder to shoot in than lighter wind. The kite gets a much bigger area to fly in and it often picks up speed, you want to get as close up and personal as possible with the kite and that makes the big wind window and higher speed quit challenging.

 I usually start out filming with the camera on the far left or right side of the wind window. This position covers a great deal of the flying area and it enables you to get close up to the camera if you want to.

Important when setting the camera up with Mr Tripod is to level out the picture, meaning if you film by the ocean don’t let the ocean surface be out of level. 

Set up the camera as close to the ground as the tripod tolerates and point the camera at an upward angle.

^{(look at the ground, notice my markers?)}

Cover as little ground in front of the camera as possible, you don’t have access to fly there anyway and that gives you some extra air to fly in. Leave a little ground in the picture frame so that the kite shows when taking-off and landing.

 When filming kite videos I use markers on the ground, these are set at a straight line in the centre of the picture frame. I often use three markers, one close to the camera, one in the middle of my wind window and one on the far side from the camera, basically we are talking extreme edges of the wind window and centre window. The kite’s path is a curve, so you have to move according to the markers to keep the kite positioned in the “centre” of the picture frame. These markers can be made-up or they can be i.e. vegetations or natural markings on the ground, what ever helps pinpoint the centre of the picture frame.

The top of the picture frame is more difficult to put markers on, and this has lead me to a flying style where I use the lower half of the wind window for most of my flying, this is also something that you get better on when gaining more experience determine how far up you can go.

 Well Mr Tripod and his camera is set to go, so I usually let the camera roll for about 15 – 20 minutes at that location. In which time I do my stuff, trying to hit the ground markers as best I can. Flying the whole field from the far edge and real up and close to the camera is one of the up sides to this positions of the camera. Repeating combinations in different locations from the camera gives you more possibilities when the editing takes place.  When I feel that I’ve gotten the stuff I want on tape I move the camera to the opposite side, lining it up with the markers on the ground and then do some more flying trying to repeat some of the stuff I did on the last camera location.

Well now I’ve got about 40 minutes of “wind windows edge” filming, so I move the camera behind the wind window (pointing at the pilot). Usually I use the centre marker from before as centre and move the camera as far from me that the edge markers from before now marks the edges of the camera window.  But now I face a new challenge! The new camera angle leaves me with a conical flying field. Well the flying field is the same but if you want to fly close to the camera you’re in for a tight squeeze.

I’ve come to terms with putting markers on the edges of this too (outlining the “cone” if you like). Far too often I’ve ruined some great shots because the kite was not in the camera focus. Flying closer to the camera at this position is much harder then the far side position, but you can get some real dramatic shots here. After a while of shooting from this position I move the camera behind me setting it up according to the original three ground markers.  (The two pictures from the field show the same ground markers, they are in this case made up by small piles of sand.)

The last 2 – 3 minutes I reserve for close ups of the kite and such.

The reason for using multiple positions of the camera is that the end result becomes more dynamic and better looking. It also gives you more freedom when editing.

Example: You’ve got some real nice flying close to the camera on the right side, but when flying of in a low ground pass towards the left side, the kite crashes.

Instead of making a transition cut to next clip, you can make a cut before the kite crashes, switch to a clip from one of the other positions showing the kite flying of to the left side in a low ground pass. This can make it look like you’ve used multiple cameras when taping your video. This often makes for a smooth and fluid looking video. So try and get at least two different angles when shooting a kite video.

Well this is the “no cameraman kite video filming blue print” I’ve come to use, needless to say I deviate from it from time to time.

With a cameraman available the possibilities changes and it often leads to much more freedom in terms of flying. But shooting a kite is a hard task and it takes some real skill to pull it off. If the cameraman knows kite flying the chance of success is greater! The setting up of the camera is pretty much the same as before, but you can forget all about ground markers and you can allow yourself to fly to the windows top as often you like. I find the use of Mr Tripod is preferable to the often bumping and waving freehand filming. As before I like to change camera positions, but now you can experiment with new angels and get more radical shots. Zooming now becomes an option but it often makes the cameraman job even harder so use it wisely. To zoom in real close on a kite in a long and stable fade is great and adds something to the video. Try and do the same on a kite doing the comet and you will end up with a real bumpy take (at best).   
 

I tend to think that the use of a cameraman opens up for more creative possibilities when it comes to angles, close-ups and presenting the kite.

But it also leads to more of the less usable footages, and a bunch of frustration when discovering all the great stuff the cameraman did not manage to capture.

Communicating with the cameraman is important, not so much to tell him what you are going to do all the time, but to ensure he got the rollup, rollout, backspin or what ever right. If he\she is uncertain it’s an idea to repeat the combination a few times, just to make sure.

 From time to time I’ve managed to have a cameraman on parts of the tape and a fixed position on other parts. Combining the two often results in good and dynamical videos.

Usually I shoot only one hour of film at the time, I’ve come to this based on the relatively time consuming process of cutting and editing, and more than 60 minutes is overwhelming. These 60 minutes takes often results in a 4 – 5 minute kite video. From time to time I can squeeze 2 kite videos at 4 – 5 minutes out of a take but that is not often.  

Well I’m not going to tell you which editing software is the best, I’m using Pinnacle Studio 9.0 because of price and the fact that it was available at the moment of purchase.

When editing I start out with a relatively time consuming cutting process, organizing the cuts into categories like axels, backspin, cascades, etc etc etc.

When the cutting is finished I use different methods of putting it back together.

One is to find a cut with some nice combinations in it and the edit shorter cuts into the piece.  I.e. if this take is from behind the pilot I will find points in the flying that makes for a natural change of camera angle. Lets say the kite is in a backspin, I often make a cut at the end of the backspin and put in a backspin from another camera angle preferably one in the same position in the wind window. When this backspin with the new angle is near its end I often “switch” back to the original angle to get the fly-off from that location. Next is to find a new trick which can be shown form another angle and so on until I run out of takes. This way of editing makes the final video more dynamic, and a certain trick becomes more interesting to watch when you get to see it from multiple angles. And if you get it right you can end up with a result that gives the impression of multiple cameras running at once while flying.

Another is just to put different cuts in a “random” order, use the simple dissolve transition and then just pour some nice music over it.

Lately I’ve started out with the music first and the laid the different cuts on top of it, this way you have a set time to work with (the length of the music piece).

When it comes to all of the cool effects and transitions I’ve come to like the simple and clean “dissolve” where the two clips melts together in the transition. Using no transition effect is often a great way of creating dynamic and dramatic transitions from one cut to another.

So far I’ve not used any filtering in my videos, I’ve not discounted them but when and if I’m going to use filter its going to be on a special occasion.

A little side note. The digital video is made up by 25 frames pr second, and that means that you can access a lot of pictures from a tape by frame grabbing. The different editing software provides different tools for this but it is quit cool to click through a video clip frame by frame, hunting for that great and dramatic picture.

By all means its not high resolution pictures, but I’ve printed some of them to photo paper and the end result is often quit good.

These pictures can also be used in the film as stills (well that would be the reason for the software producer to put in the option in the first place wouldn’t it? ;))

When I first started out making kite videos I ended up with huge videos. Often as long as 20 minutes. They are seldom interesting for other to watch, I watch them from time to time over a good cup of coffee and the music turned up. If you are planning on sharing the videos with others I think that videos with lengths at 3 ½ - 5 minutes ends up at an acceptable size (30 – 50 mb) to download and still have a picture quality that is acceptable. To me the quality of the picture is important.

When I’m done editing I always end up making the video in the .avi format this is a huge file often as big as 1 – 1,5 GB. If you plan on sharing on the internet you have to do some kind of compression on the video. As always there are a lot of options available to you. I for one import the final video into dr.DivX or into Windows Movie Maker for internet compression.

Paul O. Gausel
Norway
30-08-04