Long Way Round Style Documentary - Advice Needed Please

FYI for The Long Way Round, Ewan and Charlie had a cameraman with them (riding another identical Beemer) pretty much all of the time, and a support crew rarely more than a day or two away. That's not to say that you need all of that to do what you're trying to do, so don't let it put you off, but be aware that you'll have a hard time achieving the kind of production standards they managed without all of that backup.

I think there are a number of areas that you need to pay attention to well before you set off.

Technically, you need to test how you are going to shoot, e.g., how are you going to shoot on the move, how are you going to shoot the two of you together, how are you going to record sound? You need to spend just as much effort on getting good sound, if not more, than you do for the pictures. You can get away with a certain amount of poor quality vision, and it's possible to do some picture fixing (color grading, grain reducing, stabilisation, etc) after the filming, but bad sound will make the programme unwatchable.

You need to decide how you're going to deal with a huge amount of media files. They need to be logged in such a way that everything is understandable in the edit (e.g., which files come from which day/event), so no duplicated file names, etc. How are you going to store/carry what could easily amount to hundreds of Gigabytes of material safely and securely.

Then there's what are you going to shoot, so you need to think about what the story is that you're going to tell and think about what shots you need to convey that. It'll be a very useful exercise for you to do a shot by shot breakdown of a suitable section of one of the Long Way Round episodes to see the kind of shots you need (and get your head around how many shots it takes).

Also, watch as many adventure docs as you can find. I'd say that the great thing about the McGregor/Boorman series' is that they don't force the material to a predefined narrative structure, of the sort that so many docs force their material into, e.g., forced "jeopardy" (the kind where there's some problem at 36 minutes which threatens the project, which is heroically overcome at 44 minutes) which can make the genre so tedious at times (if there's a problem, cover it as part of the story, but don't blow up some minor thing into a big deal if it isn't one).

And be aware that what's interesting/important to you is a completely different thing to what and audience will find engaging. Editing this kind of thing can be a long and painful process of throwing out what "doesn't work" and you have to be able to recognise when something that you have an emotional attachment to (because of the situation when it happened) falls into that category.

Have a hunt around for different approaches, this guy has done videos of some of his adventures (mostly motorcycling but he's a big cyclist as well) http://www.nicksanders.com/ but have a search around the internet for others.

Absolutely! We have miles of trails here so that would be a great project to get started on!!

thanks!

erek

You will find that the more spontaneous you try to make this look, on a limited budget, the more actual work goes into "faking" the spontaneity.

You will end up running the same sequence several times, pretending it's all new each time and struggling to keep the continuity the same with previous takes, just so you can get all the expected views and angles of the action.

The only way to get more spontaneous and really do things in a single take, is to throw money, staff, and more cameras at the problem. You need to pre-plan your spontenaeity, as it were, having 1-2 advance shooters leapfrogging you as you pass them by, plus you need cameras on the fronts AND backs of each bike, so you can alternate following each other and getting the road POV's that way. Plus a ride-along side cam perspective. That adds up so far to 6-7 cameras, for a simple bike trip done in a single take, with pauses to let the advance ground cam zip ahead and set up.

And you have wild audio to synch up and choose from 7 sources, plus any wireless or personal uadio recorder you were. 7 cameras times 1 or 2 cards per camera is a lot of memory cards to manage in the field and lay off to a laptop and external RAID. Better get an RV mobile headquarters to handle it, or one of you will be up all night in the motel room just data wrangling the cards, keeping the files and logs organized, and getting them emptied and ready for the next day's work.

This is why I say, practice a 10-minute trip to the grocery or something, a few times, before you go any further on this thing.

Do you really want to make a feature length documentary while on your trip around the world, or do you want to enjoy your trip?

"Long way around" & "Long way Down" were professionally produced and shot, with 2 very talented actors as subjects. They had a support vehicle, crew, and an editing team to pull off the production, with the "name" actors, they hand a chance of distribution.

What's your angle? Is Jim Carrey going with you?

Why would anyone want to watch 90 minutes of your vacation?

Do you have someone with you to film while you are cycling by? will you actually ride a mile up the road, set up the camera, ride back and then continue on like your are being filmed by a documentary crew.

Figure out the reason you want to make the film, define the audience and then deal with the technical/logistical issues involved in film production.

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com

You have narrowed the parameters a bit, with the two of you as subjects and crew I would consider making a very different film than "long way round" You can do something great, given your abilities with very modest equipment. As you will not have a support vehicle size and weight of the equipment will be a primary concern.

I have cycle toured across Europe and down the west coast of the US, so I do have an idea of the weight/logistics limitations you may face.

The goPro camera is small, lightweight and can be clamped onto your bike easily, forward looking or backward.

The GH2, by Panasonic, is a great camera, and HD cinema camera, so you can save on weight with this rig vs a HD video camera and a still camera.

The zoom H1 is a very small, high quality audio recorder.

A small lightweight tripod with a small friction head for pan/tilt will enable you to get a bit more professional look than hand holding everything.

Data storage? Will you be bringing a laptop? You will also need a card reader and external hard drives, in pairs, to store your footage. There are dedicated card reader/drives you should explore this as they are lighter, but if you need a computer anyway, just get small external drives and ship them back to home when full.

Charging batteries: There are solar chargers with 12v & USB outputs, you will need to get 2 to keep everything topped up.

Lighting: 1 or 2 small led lights will help with dawn/dusk shots, perhaps a small flash as well.

Some good ideas for your film are always the best to start with and then get the gear to support the theme.

Good luck on your journey!

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com