A few weeks ago I was in San Francisco and spent the day driving around the city with some friends testing my new JVC GY-HD110u HDV Camera. I wanted to make a video about The Golden Gate Bridge, but I also wanted to include a few other landmarks of the city leading up to the bridge.

I started by getting some shots of road signs saying which way to the bridge, while doing that I got a shot of a state building that had the California seal on it. This shot I only had a few seconds of video to work with and slowed it down about 50% to smooth it and make it last a few seconds longer.

We then made our way to the Fisherman’s Wharf and found a observatory that let us get about 15 ft above the ground, this helped get a better looking shot as we were above everyone that was walking on the sand. Up there I did a slow pan from the boats to the bridge, I actually sped this clip up to about 200% as the pan I did was to slow to play in real time.

Watch the Video in HD

Golden Gate Bridge from Max Wilson on Vimeo.
After that we took a short walk up a hill and found a nice view of the old docks with red tile roofs with the Golden Gate in the background ( maybe the Presidio ?), this was an awesome shot and the only thing I would have changed would have been using a tripod. From this location we noticed that you can drive to the base of the south side of the bridge, so we headed back to the car and got back on the road and after about 15 minutes we where closer to the bridge, this is where I got the waves on the rocks.

Now it was time to cross to the north side ( the Marin/Sausalito side), I did this shot from the back seat of the rental car. To steady the camera I wedged my left hand into the top-side of the driver seat and my right arm with my elbow on my right leg, this worked fairly well but I still slowed the video down to 50% to give it a little bit of a dreamy look, I also zoomed the image in to get the rear view mirror out of the shot.

We then went to the north side and drove up a road that had a view of the Bridge with San Francisco in the background; this is where I got the shots of the tunnels with light going though and the wide shots of the bridge.

After about an hour of shooting up there we moved to the closest place to view the bridge before getting back on the 101 freeway, at this same time the sun was just making the sky turn a nice pink color and just looked amazing. So I set up the tripod and started rolling the camera, after about 5 minutes the low voltage alarm started to go off. This is when I discovered that the IDX battery kit shuts down at 12V and not 6V like on the stock battery, so I just left the camera untouched to get the last few minutes I could of this amazing view.
I knew this spot would be a great closing shot for the video and I was extremely happy that I got it before the battery died.

So now that I have all the footage on tape it was time to import it, I hooked up the camera to my Mac Book Pro and started to capture it. After only one tape my hard drive was full, I discovered that when you use the HDV Prores 422 that the file size is about 3-4 times larger then regular HDV and my internal hard drive were not large enough to hold the two hours of footage. So I was unable to edit the video until I got back to Los Angeles and bought a 1 TB Western Digital External Drive.

I finally had all the footage captured and ready to edit, all I need now is a good song to go with it. So after a few hours of searching I found “Heysatan” By “Sigur Ros”, it has a nice slow beat with a little bit of a dreamy feel to it. This works out good because I wanted the video to have a slow pace. Normally I avoid cutting on the beat but for this video it actually looks better when cut on beat.

Color Grading with Magic Bullet:

(Click for full size: Images on the Left are Color Graded; Images on the right are the originals)

For the color grading I did a few different looks throughout the video, for most the video I darkened the blacks and warmed the colors and added a little blue. The clip going over the bridge I did a different look that makes it a little dreamy looking, I did this by warming the colors adding some green tint and brightening the blacks a bit.