Let's do that again. Here's some behind-the-scenes info on this video.
This was a weird video, in that I had a ton of excellent "B roll" footage but not a lot of "A roll." San Diego was teeming with beautiful scenery, and since my camera is my phone I was able to get a lot of good background shots. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to play footbag, so it was hard to get much shred footage to work with.
I ended up playing 3 times on this trip, all of them short sessions jammed in small spaces after work finished and before Haley and Griffin got back to the hotel from their tourist adventures. My first session was on the pool deck at the hotel, which was nearby and secure. It was also a very drab backdrop...grey floor and building, no direct sunlight, and very little in the background to show off a California vibe. I decided to re-hit the better combos from this session during my next 2 sessions, but with better backdrops.
Going into the trip, my only footbag idea was to hit lots of eggbeaters so I could do a "Sandy Eggs" pun for San Diego. When we went to the beach and I saw a surfboard just laying there, I had the idea for making the title card wash away. This shot was surprisingly tough, since I had to write the whole title in wet sand with my finger, whip the phone out, frame the shot, and film it...all before the wave came in and washed it away. Took me a few tries to get it right.
There was a surfing competition to raise money and awareness for Cystic Fibrosis. This enabled me to get some surfer footage, and also the shot of the "surf for CF" logo.
The sugar skulls were being sold by a vendor near the beach. They weren't at their table, so I took this shot as casually and surreptitiously as possible. It wasn't til later that I noticed my shadow in frame, but considering it was a "stolen" shot it worked out pretty well.
The next couple clips were right outside my hotel. I had to deal with more pedestrian traffic and keep a closer eye on my stuff, but the background had a much better California feel to it with the palm trees and warm sun.
Erik Chan asked if I meant to do the smog in the pigbeater drill instead of strongside pigbeater. When I did the pigbeater drill during my first session (boring backdrop) I did the smog by accident, but when I reshot the drill next session I did it on purpose because I thought it was more visually interesting than just the straight up drill.
Obviously I tried to coordinate the "trees" lyric in the song with some palm tree footage.
The phoenix-pdx egg drill was also right by the hotel, at a famous steak house. When I saw the firebird logo I knew I wanted to hit some kind of phoenix drill, and since I was doing an eggbeater theme I went with the easiest drill I could think of. The logo on the wall was pretty high up, so when I did my first couple shots I could only include it if I was pretty zoomed out. At that point I decided to frame the shot the way I did, which was pretty challenging to set up but turned out well. This is probably my favorite shot in the video.
The next couple shots are of old warplanes on the USS Midway. I got to do a little tour as part of work, and figured it'd make for some neat B-roll.
The footbag shots in the red shirt are from my final session. I didn't pack much footbag gear, since I wasn't sure I'd have time to play. This forced me to play in socks that go above my ankle. It didn't mess with my playing, but I don't love how they look on video. Honestly though, I was just happy to get in a 3rd session and be able to rehit all my stuff from the first session.
The gangsta party was a nice surprise since I don't do that trick often. I was really happy with how deep I got the duck, but I was also really disappointed that my blender foot hit the ground like that. Didn't have the time to get a better one though.
Whirring swirls felt good on this trip. I hit 4 or 5 on my first session, and about the same on my 3rd session. One thing that has helped me a lot with this trick is intentionally not setting too high. Like, my body naturally wants to pop a high set and do the whirr high, but that makes the swirl harder to land and control. If I can get the first dex of the whirr fast and low, it feels like I won't have time for the final swirl, but it actually helps stick the landing.
Towards the end of my final session, a strong sea breeze was picking up. It felt nice, but it also messed with my timing some. Even worse, it kept knocking my camera over. I fixed the camera problem by wedging it into the bark of a palm tree, but it was still hard to do combos in the variable wind.
The sunset was from one of our first days out there, before I had any sessions. The baby miraculously went to sleep, and I bolted out to the pool deck to try and hit something with the sunset in the background. I didn't have any time to warm up and the sun was setting fast, so I felt lucky to hit a clean mullet in those conditions.
The final title card was my seating assignment at Haley's cousin's wedding.
OK! That was a lot longer than expected. Hopefully of some interest to somebody.