Definition: Regatta
Venice? Who knew?
The Breakdown
Recently Aaron & Vanessa McClearnon of *Elite Watersports asked me to film and edit a promo video for the *Florida Kite Racing League. The bi-annual Foil Regatta, as it is known, is a kite board/hydrofoil racing series held each Spring & Fall in the St. Petersburg FL area. This time around we were at the North side of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay.
Event Details:
40+ Racers
7 Sponsors
Need to capture facts about the race and event
2 hosts for commentary
First race begins at 10:30am sharp
Drone - GoPro - DSLR
"What am I filming?" is the question I ask myself. In this case, action sports over the water with some audio commentary. I will need to rely heavily on aerial footage while at the same time mounting GoPros for a chest cam, forward front board cam & reverse front board cam. Plus DSLR to capture the commentary/hosts and beachside event coverage. Naturally the night before the event I was charging batteries and clearing memory cards like I was preparing for the apocalypse. I knew I was stretching myself too thin with this many cameras rolling. So I invited Tim Johnson, a local drone videographer to come out and alleviate my aerial responsibility. Tim and I worked together on the previous *Spring Foil Regatta event and I knew he was more than capable of handling this event with me.
Tim piloting the DJI Phantom 4
Mother Nature is a...
RAW Footage
My crew and I arrived at the North Skyway Pier by 9am sharp. Immediately we realized that we would be filming eastward over the water. AKA - directly into the sun. AKA - silhouettes in an overexposed background. So what now? I can't make a video where all of my shots are washed out. So I knew I was going to rely heavily on Tim's footage and the GoPros to capture the action. But I didn't spend all this money on my DSLR equipment for nothing. I put the sun behind me and focused on the smiling spectators, preparing racers and faced my camera North to capture some of the practicing surfers.
Our next issue was that the race itself was extremely far out into the Bay. Meaning even if the sun wasn't a factor, the DSLR wasn't going to cut it. All of the racers were just ants on the horizon. Additionally, Tim was at maximum range with the drone. With 18 mph wind gusts we couldn't afford risking losing signal over the water. Especially with 40+ racers extending out 100ft of ropes each. We needed to get closer to the action...
The little kites in the distance are the actual race.
Fortunately Vanessa hooked us up with a boat to put us right in the middle of the race. That should solve our issues, right? Now we can position the sun behind us. As well as keep us in range with a strong signal for the drone. Well, almost. We beat the sun but now the waves were knocking us around like a piñata. My DSLR footage was a mixture of sky then water with a series of blurs between the two. The drone might be in the sky but the pilot has his thumbs on the controls. Tim persevered and I switched from videographer to photographer. Amping up my shutter speed of course. And I couldn't have been happier with our results!
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BTS shots!
We wrapped up the 7 hour day by filming our two commentators. Shout out to Vanessa & Kevin, they did fantastic jobs. Informative, direct and to the point. I wrote a storyboard of suggested key points I'd like to see them cover. By sending this to them 4-5 days in advance is helpful for so many reasons.
It gives your talent time to prepare which makes them more comfortable in front of the camera.
Eliminates a lot of "uh's and um's" during the shoot.
Gets their head in the game with ideas and things to add.
Plus it's appreciated and displays professionalism.
Kite Boarding Success!
BIG THANKS to Aaron & Vanessa from Elite Watersports for hosting such a remarkably well run, organized and most of all FUN event! All in all we ended up with 156GB's of footage from all 4 cameras combined. Which resulted in a lot of time spent in post production. I think the end result was well worth it though. Looking forward to working more with these folks in the future. Maybe next time I'll find myself up on a board ... you never know ;)
Sincerely
Anthony Bove III