How to shoot better snowboarding and winter sports videos – simple tips for getting better coverage in your footage from a professional video editor.

Our Top 5 Practical Tips for Shooting Great Snowboarding Videos

We get a lot of snowboarding videos at Sonic Eye because we’ve made it our mission to edit the stuff we love. The footage varies wildly and we’ve learned a few things about what’s key to shooting better snowboarding videos from an editor’s POV. Following some really simple tips will ensure you’ll have all the footage you need when you’re ready to edit your snowboarding and winter sports videos.

Here are our Top 5 tips for getting great GoPro video results this snow season
1. PLANNING

If you are going to use multiple cameras, get your friends together and plan it out first. A group of guys from the UK who sent us their snowboarding footage from Sapporo, Japan, did just that. They really thought it out and made sure that they filmed each another, showing the start of some runs, shots from behind and alongside one another, and finally stopping at the end of their run to turn back and film each other coming down the slopes.

This gave us heaps of great shot/reverse shot options to edit with, and we were able to link up the different sections of their snowboarding footage to create the impression of a professional multi-camera snowboarding movie.

One thing that would have made their footage even better is using the same, or similar model cameras. We were able to adjust their footage to fit together, but for a truly seamless, professional-looking result, you want all of your GoPro’s or action cameras set to the same frame rate (for example 30 fps, which is the frame rate for all GoPro cameras), the same resolution (height and width of the image, 1920 x 1080 is the most commonly used resolution) and the same aspect ratio (which is generally 16:9 for HD or widescreen videos).

Ideally, use the same model GoPro.  Later model GoPro’s have vastly improved sound quality and of course, the louder the original sound on your camera, the more likely it can be salvaged and used in your video edit. The picture quality is also much improved on later models from what we have seen. If that’s simply not possible, a professional video editor can adjust your footage to get a great result that can sometimes even look like it was all shot on the same camera.

We wanted to find out more on how to set up your GoPro for the best results in your snowboarding videos, so we teamed up with Jennifer Dobson of Renegade Camera a few years ago. Jen is a photographer and adventurer who specialises in teaching people how to use GoPro cameras. 

You can check out Jenny’s guest posts in the series, 5 Best GoPro Angles for Snowboarders and 5 Best GoPro Tips for Snowboarding.

2. LEAVING SPACE

The best way to get a great finish on your videos is to leave loads of SPACE in your filming. If you cut off your video too quickly, it means that the editor may have to lose footage we could have used if you’d just let that camera run just a little bit longer. Our videographer recommends that while you film, counting to ten before you stop shooting will help you to make sure you’re keeping enough editing space in each clip.

3. DON’T PRE-EDIT YOUR FOOTAGE

If you’re getting your footage edited professionally, don’t combine your clips in iMovie or other consumer-grade editing programs, send the raw clips to your video editor instead. This is because the export quality in consumer video editing software is much lower than the export quality we can achieve in a professional video editing programme. Always send the raw footage, so we can keep all that great image quality for you.

There is another reason for this, it’s about leaving space (as we mentioned in Tip 2). Cutting together your clips means we lose a tiny bit of footage each time, so we have to crop the footage to cut out the previous screen. This is less of an issue with digital footage and professional non-linear editing, but it’s still there because you’ll tend to drop the camera or stop focusing on what you were shooting just before you stop filming.

In editing, the rule ‘less is more’ just doesn’t apply unless you are shooting to a script (and even then, it’s dicey!). Always get more footage than you think you need, make sure your key footage is shot and then get a bit more, especially of incidental footage (called ‘b-roll’). This extra footage allows your editor to always find that little bit of film to they need to tie things together, a segue between two different shots.

The other, possibly more important reason not to pre-edit is you’ve now compressed your video, and most likely in an amateur format. If you send us the raw clips we can compress them at the best possible resolution, which means your finished video will look as crisp as your original footage. If you export from a consumer-grade program, you’ve already lost a bunch of quality before we’ve even started editing. What a waste!

4. POV – POINT OF VIEW

If you’re filming together or alone, try to take footage using different points of view to add interest to the footage. For example, on your first run use a hand-held to film back at yourself, then on your second run, face the camera out or use a headcam to get the view doing down the slope. Next run, try filming each other (first from behind going down, then from in front coming down the slopes). If you do this for a series of runs, you’ll have plenty of variety to choose from when you come to edit the footage.

5. NO COSTUME CHANGES!

Our last tip is to wear the same gear throughout your shoot. That way your editor can easily inter-cut footage from different days to get the best finished video, without anyone ever knowing.

To get the best tips on using GoPro to shoot your snowboarding footage, check out our series from guest blogger Jennifer Dobson of Renegade Camera, 5 Best GoPro Angles for Snowboarding Footage and 5 Best GoPro Tips for Snowboarding Footage.

Happy snowboarding everyone, we look forward to seeing your awesome footage!

If you’d like to read more posts on the art of video editing, head to our posts How does video editing work and 7 Rules of Video Editing.

  • Thalia Kemp is the video editor at Sonic Eye sound and video editing in Sydney, Australia.