SAN DIEGO
DESCRIPTION
My friend and I gave ourselves one day in downtown San Diego to document anything the city had to offer us.
With his drone and my DSLR, we aimed to capture the beautiful look and easygoing lifestyle of “America’s finest city”.
GEAR
Cameras - Canon T6i, DJI Spark
Lens - Canon 50mm
HIGHLIGHTS
Going up - perspective change
Utilizing footage from both a DSLR and a drone, I needed a way to carefully blend these two perspectives together, taking the viewer from the ground to the sky in a way that made sense and wasn’t too jarring. In this case, the helicopter serves as that connection. By zooming into the aircraft, we are made to believe that we have suddenly become passengers on this helicopter, thus seamlessly connecting these two individual shots together in a way that makes chronological sense.
…and back down
Similar to the example above, I needed a way to bridge the perspective of these two different types of shots, only this time going from the sky back down to the ground. I had asked my friend to get a good shot of Petco Park since the Padres were playing, and lucky for us, they won. As we were walking by a few minutes later, the fireworks went off in celebration. Using the same zoom transition and some careful sound design, I could quickly tell this story to the viewer and effectively blend these shots together at the same time.
Creating a Mood/feeling
Having spent most of my life in San Diego, I have many fond memories of this beautiful place. Feeling a bit nostalgic, I wanted a way to properly portray it in the edit. I found this old VHS overlay to put over top the entire video and it seemed to perfectly fit the style I was hoping to achieve while not being too distracting or out of place.
day to night
I put these two shots together early in the edit knowing I would figure out how to blend them together eventually. After adding the camera tilt and some motion blur, it still seemed like too aggressive a transition to leave be. So, sticking to the old VHS look I was going for, I used this static noise overlay to hide the harsh cut and transition into another time of day, all while complimenting the style of the video.
a bit of bounce
After speed ramping this shot to sync up with the music, I wanted to further emphasize the impact behind the footsteps. Altering the stabilization settings gave me just enough camera shake to do so while keeping the rest of the shot evenly smooth.
timeline
Below is a final screenshot of my Premiere Pro project timeline for San Diego.
