The guys over at Stillmotion video have come up with a rather interesting way to film point of view video. Instead of mounting something small like a GoPro to a helmet, Stillmotion decided to use a Canon T2i. The camera was upside down directly in front of several football players' eyes as they trained in the 2011 NFL combine. Everything was made from common parts you can find at Home Depot or Lowes and the results are pretty interesting. After you watch the behind the scenes video below, head on over to the NFL Network to check out the final promo piece.
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Why, oh why, would you not use a GoPro? The only advantage I can see is that they were able to get realtime feeds to a director with stand ins. Basically everyone in the video bitches about it with a smile, could have been so much easier.
hey stefan
we had gopros and used them when we could or when the helmet was too good. yes a feed helps, but filming a tv spot with auto exposure and white balance is also definitely not optimal. the bigger issue was that in moderate low light the gopro completely falls apart. we did many side by side tests and ultimately the t2i was much better for this application
P.
actually... that makes a lot of sense, I can't stand a non white balanced image. Good point.
thanks for providing that feedback, I was wondering the same thing!
I think what is most important isn't how white balanced a shot is nor how clean the video is. What people want to see is not a simulated scripted movement of people, but actual player activity in video form. Yes its cool to have a Call of Duty looking video with real people but to reach the general public in a way that causes impact, people would much rather see the players running and catching and being hit while seeing through their eyes. I would have used the Gopro honestly. At the end the guy said the players didn't want to wear the rig, that's kinda bad when the whole point was to show the players.
Content over technique
go pros could have worked for the outside shots, but they are terrible in low or medium light. they look terrible any time you bring them inside, even when its relatively bright inside. only use them in the daylight. also, if your client is the NFL network, you'll probably want to shoot on something with higher quality than a go pro. also, it looked to me like many of the shots were staged, and had several takes, with a director looking at a monitor. no way to do that with a go pro.
Patrick and the rest of the guys at Stillmotion are great. I saw them using the rig during at the Super Bowl in Dallas, it's pretty slick.
I saw this at WPPI this past year, they even had that helmet there. StillMotion rocks!