The 5 Best GoPro Angles for Snowboarders
With snow season just starting in Australia, I've teamed up with the Aussies at Sonic Eye to bring you my GoPro tips as a professional photographer and Thalia's GoPro tips as a professional video editor. This is my first post in the series and Thalia's post will be up tomorrow!
GoPro's are a great way to capture snowboarding like no other camera can, but with so many different settings and accessories and no clear instructions, it's easy for snowboarders to get frustrated trying to film the content they love.
The secret to getting the best footage is choosing the right mount, the right resolution and the right frame rate. In this post I'll cover camera placement, followed by tips on GoPro settings.
Filming awesome snowboarding footage for your GoPro all starts with choosing the right mount for different points of view. Have you seen snowboarding videos with just one angle? It might only be a 5 minute video but it feels like it drags on forever. Getting multiple angles instead makes everything feel more dynamic and entertains your audience longer.
Making awesome videos means getting mutliple angles.
With that in mind; here are my top suggestions for GoPro placement while snowboarding.
1. A wide environmental: Get a shot of the area you will be snowboarding through. Mount your GoPro somehwere in the environment from a gorillapod, a tripod or even a tree or a rock. These shots are usually taken off of something stable but drones are another cool way to introduce the viewer to the terrain.
2. A full character shot: Introduce the snowboarders of the film. The easiest way to do this is by attaching a GoPro to an extended arm or pole and following eachother down the mountain. You can also use the handlebar mount to attach your camera to a ski pole.
3. A medium character shot: This shows the upper torso of the subjects and can be shot with the ski-pole setup or another extension. Advanced riders can also try recording with a spinner which rotates around the snowboarder from a pivot point on top of the helmet.
4. The character's face: To show the rider's expressions use a chesty harness with the GoPro pointed upwards. Advanced riders can also try a gnarwhal here which hangs from the helmet in front of the rider's face.
5. The point-of-view shot: This captures the action from the subject's perspective and can be achieved with a mount placed on the top or side of a helmet.
Don't worry if you don't have all the gear mentioned above. The important thing is to shoot from multiple vantage points so you can cut back and forth in the final video and keep the attention of your viewers. Get creative using what options you have available and have fun with it.
