You could film the review at dawn or dusk, that would give you a much higher/softer quality of light and will help eliminate harsh shadows on your face. In a photograph your eye is always attracted to the brightest area, it's the same concept with video so you'd want that "brightest area" to be your face. In the portions where your speaking, have the videographer not center your face in the frame, but instead position your face 1/3rd of the way into the frame on either the right or left sides. If your confused look up the "rule of thirds" its used in still photography, but again, applies to video. I do like to see the camera keeping a rather tight crop on you when your speaking, that was done right, you always want the subject (you when your speaking) to fill as much of the frame as possible. If your camera has the capability to use a more shallow depth of field, that can be nice too. The audio I thought was good but that's not my expertise. If you want an inspiring audio experience listen to an episode of Radiolab, that's the best audio production i believe I've heard and I'm sure it would give you some ideas. As far as the technical review I thought that was great. I would make a last of key things to cover in every review...for example durability, cost, experience required, the planes Philosophy of Use, what's included at purchase. Then I would make sure to cover each point on this list concisely and in order , but do it discreetly, to veil the fact that your covering points. I think this might help give the review a bit more structure, and would help lend consistency to multiple reviews. I thought the the floating words denoting battery size and esc size were wonderful and gave a professional touch. I'm never a huge fan of the typed up wrap up at the end of reviews, I think if you cover the points well enough you'd be able to eliminate that portion all together. Overall I thought the whole thing was really wonderful, had a very Flite Test feel to it. Of course these are all my opinions and I feel like your your already doing really well. Keep up the great work.
Hi Coleman,
Firstly thanks so much for typing all this up! I've added your name to the top of the description as a thank you because this is really helpful
Totally agree on filming at dawn or dusk, in fact here are screenshots from a day shot compared to a nice evening shot (attachments). You're completely right in that the everything takes on a very harsh look at day, compared to a much softer, pleasing look in the evening.
Many thanks for the info on rule of thirds! Never heard of that before but after some research it looks to be an important part of getting a shot right! Would you recommend I tilt it off at an angle in some places like in the video or always keep focused on the eyes?
Just listened to some of Radiolab and wow! That is some really tight audio work
I'm listening to a few more podcasts and noting down tips for mixing!
I'm glad to hear filling up the frame with the face is the right way to go! I was hoping it would work
Regarding shallow depth of field I'm using the Canon EF-S 15-85mm 3.5-5.6 lens. I was working at F5.6 through the whole video (bar the shots of the plane flying where I was at F18) and 5.6 doesn't give a huge amount of depth of field
If I could step down to 2.8 I definitely would as I agree the background is a tad too prominent!
So so agree on review structure! My friend and I were talking about this and both said we need to improve massively as this is all a bit jumbled at the moment
Thanks on the floating text! I was hoping it wasn't too gimmicky, haha
It's definitely an effect I'll be using a lot as it's surprisingly quick to do with the 3D camera tracker in After Effects
It was the silly things that took me time, like applying a gaussian blur as the 'glass' slides over the video (finally figured how to do it now!)
I got that idea from iOS where it blurs the backgrounds when enabling control centre and notification centre.
The conclusion text was a bit cheeky of me as my friend was gonna read those points off but we never got round to it. It was definitely a substitute to actual voice. In the video we plan to skip ending text like this unless necessary
Haha it's an honour to be compared to FliteTest! I watch a lot of FliteTest videos and the format of their show definitely has an impact on mine (hopefully that's not a polite way of saying I'm copying them! I really don't want to do that). One other big inspiration for my format is a tech channel called MKBHD (
https://www.youtube.com/mkbhd). Absolutely love the format of his videos; so concise, clean and to the point.
Once again thanks for the help!
Kind regards,
Francis
