GoPro first person climbing videos

[tyler.yarbrough]

Over christmas I bought a GoPro HD video camera that shoots in 1080p, so naturally i was aching to take it to the crag. This weekend, we did the first test run at Drive-by, and i was just hoping to receive some feedback on the first person perspective. My ultimate goal is to create a database of all the most popular sport climbs at the Red, so this is just the beginning. Please let me know what you think, and check out the video as the link below.

http://www.vimeo.com/19376522

Thanks all,
Tyler Yarbrough

[pigsteak]

could be cool..but the head movement makes it too fast. crisp though. good luck with that.

[the lurkist]

you have little girlie arms.

[climb2core]

Cool video. I think it has potential as I did get the feeling that I was somewhat climbing that route. It has been years since I have been on BB and the video helped me remember why I liked it. But Pigsteak is right.... you have to slow down the head movement. When you look down for feet, move your head like it is in slow motion and then spend a little longer staring where you want to place your foot. Same thing when move back up from looking down... super slow. Then I think it would look more how it feels.

[Ryland]

I definitely think there is potential for Gopros and climbing. But, I think it would be best if mixed with different angle from other cameras, on two different goes so that you don't see the camera on their head while they're climbing from other angles. Sure, it's not the "real" send, but honestly climbing videos, as much as I watch them (and I'm in disbelief that I do), are pretty remarkably boring. No matter how strong or weak you are, or if you've never climbed at all, it's so incredibly hard to fathom the difficulty of the moves. You watch some guy fly off a 90 ft backcountry jump on a snowboard and you're like wow, "that's fuckin crazy." Climbing doesn't lend itself to being filmed this way. So I think that some mixing of first person gopro footage when someone is, for instance, going through the crux, could be really cool. The other thing to remember is that Gopros shoot best in flat light, you get the highest resolution, but then the light is just that--flat. You will do wonders for your audience if you color correct the footage. I don't know if you have the editing software to do it, but if you do, it's incredibly easy, and makes the footage look ten times better.

Also, to address the how your head is moving too fast. If you shoot at 60fps at 720p, you can slowmo sections of the footage without getting the choppy stop motion effect.

[toad857]

cool. next time, fall at the chains

[One-Fall]

Hire yourself out at the end of fall and spring. Climb peoples projects for them so they can rehearse the route in the off seasons. Id be interested for sure.

[tyler.yarbrough]

Thanks for all the input, i went back and enhanced the color and it really made the entire video much better. One-fall my goal is to get to the point where most of the popular routes are already in a database so no one has to pay anyone, they can simply go to the site to review their projects at any time, in HD. I'm planning to start with all the 4 and 5 star climbs that my friends and i can send (up to 5.12d) and hopefully partner with some really strong climbers to get the harder routes. The videos will really start flowing come better weather, but does anyone have suggestions as to how to make the videos more interactive????

[ynot]

would it be better if the camera was on your shoulder?

[DHB]

Aside from pause, play and click-able progress bar, there really isn't a way to make a video "interactive" unless you wanted to code the video into a Flash, javascript, or HTML5 player so that when you grabbed a handhold in the video, a diagram of the hold's shape and type would appear in a sidebar. But that would take a shitload of time and work. And you wouldn't necessarily need to use a GoPro. So what did you mean by interactive?