Hi Everyone!

I’m new to the page. I’m a film and video editor and film-maker for a company called Jump. Ltd. I personally have a passion for filming extreme and action sports most importantly mountain biking 🙂 I thought I’d tell you all about the day I persuaded my boss to make a short downhill film to try out and experiment with our new super slow motion camera. Christmas came early! So one day a small crew and downhill rider James Linney headed into the forest trails (location not disclosed) with a view to making a downhill film. It was freezing, the ground was frozen, and it was starting to snow but we went ahead and did it. This is how it turned out. I hope you enjoy.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q7TRg5GFm0[/video]

Francesca

Just what DH needs, even slower slo mo!

If you must slow the hell out of everything, THIS is Gold Standard in my humble opinion.

The sequence at 1.23 is fanbloodytastic.

I did enjoy your vid though 🙂

That’s pretty nice. Good to see someone filming stuff in a different way.
Needs more roosty berms, heavy landings and less cars!

cheers for posting.

It’s a nice little vid (and much much better than anything I could do), but for me slow-mo needs to be used to show the detail in a piece of footage that would otherwise just be a blur. I think it works best when used among some really fast footage which gives an idea of how reality looks, before the slow-mo cleans up the details and (in the case of mountain biking) shows off the skill of the rider/ability of the kit.

Yes well edited and produced, however I found it a little dull if I’m brutally honest. Only about a minute of riding out of 2:28, and some of the super slo-mo was pretty un-interesting to be fair. Maybe its just me, or I’m missing the whole atmospheric part of it.

I didn’t enjoy it. Not enough riding and the bits that were slow mo were not needed/not impressive enough. I don’t think the music was right choice either.

It sounds like you enjoyed doing it though, so please carry on.

Maybe its just me, or I’m missing the whole atmospheric part of it.

The rhythm and tempo of the motion speed changes do not sync with the rhythm and tempo changes in the music, so it’s virtually impossible to feel/follow the flow of either. I do appreciate how extraordinarily difficult it can be to achieve such synchronisation, especially with slo-mo as slow as that slo-mo goes :]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. The reason why it was slow was because we were experimenting with the slow motion camera (as mentioned) to see what it could do, this was very much an experimental film, with better conditions, and a better trail we would of course have had more riding, and more focus on the skill, however we had to work with what we had. Of course all your feedback is noted 🙂

very good, but as constructive criticism i would agree with some of what is said above. i think slo-mo works best as contrast with really fast bits, or shots of the bike getting squirmy or suspension working hard.(think isle of man tt coverage. slom-mo of someone pushing a bike up hill not so much.
overall really good though, keep at it and hope to see some more soon

[video]http://vimeo.com/40620028[/video]

this is how you do slo-mo….

That’s good 🙂 However, in our case the ground was frozen – there was next to no dirt to kick up, and the trail wasn’t fast enough to get enough speed up. Also, this is probably filmed on red therefore the slow mo will be better quality and conditions were more open and lighter therefore allowing for a faster frame rate aswell, and it looks more effective. If we had these resources on the day we decided to film, we would have gone for similar slow mo shots.

To make a good slow-mo video there has to be something to slow down. Peterfile’s example has masses of bike and rider (in particular) movement, which you can really see when slowed down. I’m sorry to say that your video, with that rider and trail, combo just makes me wonder if my computer’s running slow again 😕 Might actually have been better at full speed….. or with some digital EPO 😉

Not a bad first attempt especially if you were just experimenting with a new toy.

The thing that annoyed me was the rider was often out of focus. I guess you were trying to get the rider to ride into the focus spot? I didn’t think you implemented this well enough.

so your just filming in super slow mo because you can ? as oppose to morrocco media who offer it as a service to show how your coming through a section compared to others with certain race teams using this as tool to see why some riders are faster through sections than others – them doing a time lapsed overlay frame by frame of where the different riders are.

if your thinking of using it to release a bike film – best find another gimmick – this ones been played to death many times over – and then some more.

I liked the riding there was but it stands up to The Wadsworth Constant

For me the slow motion was annoying when merged with normal speed.
At that length the video was too long as there was nothing exciting going on.
The music should have been left out.

What camera was it?? And what fps were you shooting at??

We were shooting In super slow mo because we were playing with a our new 4K 1000fps camera, as anyone would play with a new toy to see how it works. I agree the slow mo is over done nowadays, however but as mentioned this was simply an experimental shoot for the Sony FS700 Camera to see what it could do, we filmed on prime lenses with a shallow depth of field hence the parts where its out of focus. We only actually shot at 200-400fps due to low lighting conditions.

And we do offer this as a service being as we are a professional and established video production company. I understand how to use slow motion, and if we were making a feature or any other film then it would have been different and used in different and more effective places. I suggested we try it out on a downhill rider to help give the rider himself ( a friend of mine) some publicity while and to simply try our camera out.