#dsexamples

Just your old slice-of-life video

Fun idea for evergreen story

Bike To Week Day/Week/Month always makes for the generation of some sort of generic urban transportation story. Who, how many, money saved ... blah, blah, blah.

Southern California Public Radio station KPCC - and Medillian Grant Slater - set about showing what that means to the station's staff with some fun, inventive camera work and a great piece of editing.

The use of a full, copyrighted song, though, leads to some deep, dark questions on Fair Use - Click here and scroll mid-way down for some thoughts on that - and the like. But that aside, a fine piece of work.

Aside from the Weather Channel report below, there were also Storify packages put together by The Washinton Post, Texas Monthly and others.

And if Texas Tornadoes isn't a minor league baseball team name already, it should be.

If it's not Scottish, it's crap

While I do bike to work and consider myself a cyclist, I generally draw the line at BMX. My theory on that, and skate punks, for that matter, is that it's worth watching just for the crashes.

But then there's this video. It's presented here as an example of some nice action shooting techniques, but I admit it's hard not to appreciate the crazy riding this guy does. I think he rides on everything but the road.

But enough of that. This has a lot to like in terms of how it's shot.

Yes, they are using some sort of "pro" level equipment - a DSLR setup if I had to guess. And there are some shots, especially further away from the subject, that your good ol' PlayTouch just won't handle. But pay attention to the angles and setup here for keys on how you can get shots of fast-moving subjects.

With a better camera and a sturdy tripod, you could try to do some action panning - swiveling the tripos along with a moving subject to you keep the action in frame through the course of the activity. You can still try that with the PlayTouch, but may find it's actually a more difficult technique with the smaller, lighter camera. In fact, it's a more difficult technique to master anyway, with plenty of practice in order to perfect.

Here, though, many of the shots are framed with expectation. That is, the camera is set to the spot where the action either will happen or will take place from. This works well for a subject doing something in a relatively small footprint.

For the scenes catching this rider flying across stuff or over expanses, a couple of techniques are used rather than trying to move the camera. Shooting from below or above gives a nice perspective in a number of scenes, particularly when the rider is flying over or acros something. For the scenes meant to show background or give wider perspective, the shot is framed from a wide angle perspective. The rider is still highlighted, but the camera is held in position to let the scene unfold in a wider frame setting.

Again, in all of these shots the camera remains still - OMG, a tripod! - while the subject provides the movement and motion.