Uncaptured Moments: Enter & Escape Mission To Guarded Factory Complex
Click the thumbnail to watch “Enter & Escape Mission To Guarded Factory Complex”
This post of "Uncaptured Moments" will be different. Rather than focusing on the events that I did not film during the mission, I want to share the events and decisions leading up to creating this video. This video was the first one I edited in the "new style" with background music and I believe the story behind the creative decisions I made is interesting enough to share.
Also, in between each paragraph, I will share clips from on-screen commentary segments of the original edit of this video. They will mostly be unrelated to what I write in the initial paragraphs, but will provide examples for what I talk about later in this post.
I started experimenting with the "new style" of filming (using a compact zoom camera along with a new action camera) on november of 2023, during the Armenia trip with Poison (aka GIFGAS). I felt limited and no longer inspired by the two GoPro Hero 8 set up I was using. I wanted to capture more details in the environment and have better low light footage.
Note: I have experimented with an action cam / zoom camera set up and an editing style with background music before. I will put "new style" in quotes every time I refer to a recently edited video, as the style is not actually completely new. It is more of an improvement / combination of my previous styles rather than something entirely different.
After some research, I bought the DJI Action 4 and dusted off my Sony RX100 M6 (which I bought in London with Matt during our 2022 spring trip, to shoot a music video in the bunker tunnels we had just explored). I took those cameras to Armenia and shot a bunch of adventures. When I had time to sit and review the footage, I got inpired by the look of the cameras and edited the first "new style" video.
The "new style" of editing felt refreshing as I was also getting tired of making same "old style" videos over and over. I decided to focus more on it and, after finishing the edit of the Georgia journey, I was wondering how else could I improve the "new style" of videos. I took notice of my older ILLEGAL FREEDOM and other "random events" videos and decided to implement an "actively switching" background music track and voice over, along with on camera commentary inspired by my new "story" video.
I started editing the first mission of my 2024 Spain trip (with checkmate, OnTheEdge and Matt) with all these elements combined. I wanted to make a video with no compromises. I edited the mission footage like I previously did with the missions from Armenia, I added background music that would change based on the tension and the feelings I had while recording the footage, filmed separate on-screen commentary segments and did a voice over that would fit in between certain events during the mission.
The entire production process took quite a while and was difficult. Apart from figuring out creative things, I had to learn some new technical ones. The final video was good, but it did not satisfy my expectations and I did not believe that I could make each video in this style and still maintain a (somewhat) regular upload schedule. I decided to strip back some elements and ended up with the original mission edit again. The only thing that felt missing when I rewatched the footage was the background music track. I really liked the atmosphere it brought and that with it I could shape the feeling of the video, closer to what I felt during the exploration (like I used to).
This is how I settled on the format for the "new style" of videos with background music. I tweaked the thumbnail design a bit to reflect that change too. I continued to edit the rest of the missions from the Spain trip in this format. For the first upload in this newer format I wanted something more explosive, so I chose to share the bunker-hunt video I filmed in Slovakia with Penco first, before I shared any of the Spain trip videos.
Note: None of these creative decisions were influenced by a "youtube school", the desire to pander to a wider audience or monetary gain. I want to make videos that inspire me, that I am proud of and that stand out from the rest.
