A recent project I’ve been working on is a video for St Catherine’s Rowing club. I’d made another rowing video a few years ago which has done quite well in the rowing sphere. For this new project I was asked a while ago but at the time I didn’t feel like I had enough time to film and edit a perfect piece so I agreed to just edit footage they had collected on their IPhones. It wouldn’t make a film true to the slick and stylistic form of a normal rowing video but I wasn’t in the position to do everything myself. I back flipped on this idea however because I’d still be associated with the low quality footage even though it’s clear I didn’t film it. So then I went into a lull period where I did, but didn’t want to make them a rowing video.
I think the moment when I realized that I wanted to make a new one was when I watched quite a few new High school rowing videos. Since I had made my video there had been a massive explosion with the number of videos being made. The cameras people are using have phenomenal quality and are extremely expensive (you can tell the videos where daddy’s funding was involved. There are now a number of 4k RV’s (rowing videos) online which steps up the process of the RV. The production value is so much higher but the execution is not revolutionary.

I noticed a few trends. It was either pop music or an intense orchestral movie score which sounded like it had come off a royalty free site. A lot of them used the same songs which kind of reflected the videos originality. None of them really tried to challenge anything which I was surprised about. Flume-esque voices and juicy beats isn’t all a rowing video should be. These videos were formulaic but true to ‘the rowing videos’ form.

This want to challenge the preconception of a rowing video spurred me on to make the St Cath’s rowing video. I had a few songs in mind which were very different to the classical tunes you’d hear. I was tossing between a song I had been holding onto for a while Subliminal ‘Touch’ and a newer song which I was loving at the time Black Merlin – Tanksport. Both songs had the darkness and intensity needed for the video but I chose Touch instead because it was shorter and I knew that I wouldn’t have enough footage to do the complete song of Tankspot. The industrial low frequency pulses and the exact grunginess I was needing for the project. Using this song broke the form of the typical rowing video style allowing me to explore the edit.

I only had one morning to film the video which meant that I wouldn’t have a massive catalogue of footage to work with. One problem I ran into was the darkness of the morning but it actually helped the video develop a style. I was amazed by the light reflection on the Yarra. I made sure to show this off in the video. I had no control of lighting the subject only the framing. I could have bumped up the ISO and lowered the shutter speed but the quality would have severely diminished. Silhouetting the rowers was the best approach to tackle this. I didn’t realize but the lens had small splashes of water on it so some of the shots look blurry even though they were in focus.

I have a love hate relationship with editing. Its great when everything works fluidly but this is often never the case with any of my projects. In this rowing video I hit a massive wall because I didn’t think the music was working with the footage. I was half way through and couldn’t really turn back. I persisted with one of difficult parts (the under the bridge shot) and eventually finished it. I wasn’t happy with how the rowing action wasn’t in sync with the music and I couldn’t get it to work very well. With most projects I edit for too long then get bored and annoyed because I’m so sick of it.

I’m considering doing a music video this studio but I’d need to find a song and get permission to use it before I start filming it. I really need to hurry up because indecision is my worst quality and when I start to get behind it’s a bloody push to the top.