The first time I mounted my GoPro to a car yielded some interesting footage, however as noted in an earlier post, my makeshift mounting solution wasn’t flexible enough to capture the kinds of shots that I wanted. With this in mind, I decided to purchase a suction-cup mount. I’m really glad I made this purchase because having this piece of gear really broadened my filming options, I could now basically stick the GoPro wherever I wanted on the car – on the roof, the inside of the windshield, the bonnet, etc. Now I’m not sponsored by GoPro (still waiting for the call), but I’d really recommend their suction-cup mount. Despite being a little pricey it’s really solid and doesn’t feel like it’ll fail me anytime soon.
So with my new mounting options I set out for another drive, and this time I was able to easily move the camera around in order to get more than 1 type of shot. First I placed the camera facing directly upwards, and this configuration captured my favourite shot of the night. All the different road lights and signs that I drove under were picked up by the camera and in my opinion the low-angle, paired with the motion of the lights passing by looks really great – right now I’m in the process of editing something together with these shots.
I also captured some footage from inside the car, mounting the camera so that it was facing through the front windshield of the car. I was worried that the glass in front of the camera would distort the image, however this shot also worked out really well and gave an interesting perspective – almost like a POV shot from the passenger seat.
Before setting out on the drive, I planned a rough route as there were a number of locations that I wanted to capture. From a safety perspective I think this was a really important aspect of the shoot as it allowed me to focus on driving 100% of the time – and I didn’t need to worry about the camera.
All in all, I’d call this shoot a success as I was able to capture footage that was of a higher quality than what was shot in earlier tests. I also learned that a car’s headlights make for a powerful lighting solution – when I mounted the camera facing forwards, the car’s lights lit the road ahead really well. The new mount definitely helped when it came to filming more interesting perspectives and I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with the footage in Premiere.