The Craft of Creating a GoPro Launch Video

Ryan Truettner, a Senior Production Artist at GoPro, has an extremely insightful look at the production of the latest GoPro launch video for the new HERO4 Session.

He was also behind one of my all time favorite GoPro videos, the launch video for the HERO4.

Here are some of my favorite takeaways:

Start with a palette first. When planning their shoot, the GoPro team starts with color first, to make sure there’s enough visual variety to ‘cleanse the palette,’ then they pick the locations from there.

Efficient shooting. There’s some good production tips, but my favorite is their use of the 80/20 rule. The example Ryan gives is a 10 pitch rock climb in Zion. They had three days to shoot the climbers. Rather than start at the bottom and hope they have great light and weather at the dramatic top, they started at the top first then got whatever extra shots they had time for.

Using portals. Portals are the signature GoPro transition or wipe where the lens gets obscured from dirt or water and cuts to another scene. Ryan has some great breakdowns and uses of the specific transition, along with how to edit eight storylines into a cohesive video.

Be sure to read the whole article for a lot more insight into GoPro’s production.

Source: The Science Behind a GoPro Launch Video — RyanTruettner.com