All-Ireland Skydive Challenge Mini-Doc on 550D

Posted on 19. Nov, 2011 by admin in General, My Shorts

I was approached by two organizers about 2 and a half months ago to film an event they were organising in aid of their charity. It was to be a charity skydive event in aid of OláGolá (http://olagola NULL.com), for the prevention of suicide, depression and stress related ilness’s in young adults around the world. I was a little hesitant to accept something quite so heavy seeing as I’m only 15 and was afraid of mucking it up or something…but Liz, a co-organiser of the event told me what it was about and I then realised how important it was – so I accepted.

It took about 5 weeks to get this fully done. The main event was on one day so it was essentially like a wedding, where I couldn’t get second takes. I shot on one single 550D, with a fairly cheap rig I borrowed off a friend who got it on eBay (can’t remember the name of it), a 20 quid tripod and two lenses: Canon 18-55 kit and Canon 75-300; both cheapies. As you can tell this equipment is very light i.e not perfect, but I did what I could with it.
It was so windy on the day and even started raining heavily at some points, so it all kind’ve went downhill…luckily I got what I needed before the weather took over.

I shot the aerial footage 3 weeks later; my brother is a pilot and took me up in a small plane for about an hour – the sky was so stunning and was just after a storm so there were some amazing views to be filmed. In the final edit I only used about 20 seconds worth of this footage, but it’s some of the nicest shots in it.

For the interviews I just used the 550d again with the kit lens. I used all natural light because I don’t have any lights as of yet (which explains the bad lighting). For the sound I had with me a Sound Devices 702 DAR (http://www NULL.sounddevices NULL.com/products/702 NULL.htm) and the mic (can’t remember which one). Stupidly, I only brought a 2gb card for the recorder and it obviously ran out..half way through the interview…I had no other audio from it so I ended up having to use the camera’s audio! Sucks, but it turned out OK. The day after I was shooting the interviews with the two politicans featured in the doc and was all set with the DAR…the camera was all set, and I stuck the XLR into the recorder and next thing I know the whole device is f*cked up and totally uncorrespondant…so once again I had to abandon it!! :@

I edited it about 3 days before it was being premiered so I spent the majority of the day on it. I used Premiere Pro CS5.5 and colored using Magic Bullet Looks. Gert Kracht (Twitter: @iGert) was a huge help during this, by giving me a ton of help on bettering my colouring skills! Huge thanks to him for that!

The actual skydive shots were done by the Tandem Masters at Tandem Skydive Kilkenny (http://www NULL.tandemskydive NULL.ie/). Thanks a million to them for letting me use the footage!

The photos at the end were by Ronan Melia, and they’re all brilliant. Thanks to him for letting me use them too.

Music was the obvious Fix You by Coldplay…I used the instrumental version which I found online somewhere. And for the credits I used Noorgard by The Vaccines.

Liz Campbell and Eddie Hughes organised this charity event. Jumps took place at Kilkenny Airfield in cooperation with Tandem Skydive Kilkenny. Help Reduce Suicide, Depression and Stress Related Illnesses in Young Adults – olagola.com

Thanks,
Nathanael Macdonald