Looking over the shoulder of the pilot. Big scale planes are perfect platforms to carry onboard cameras as they are not bothered by a bit of extra drag and weight.

How to Create Great RC Soaring Videos

Make yours stand out from the crowd.

On YouTube there are countless videos that show our hobby. But the majority of those videos are not very interesting to watch. All too often it’s just the raw footage that is placed on the internet without any editing. Nice material for those directly involved, for others not really attractive to watch. Yet some of the movies are noticeably better. What is it that makes them stand out? With some effort you too can make movies that are worth watching. That way you can let others enjoy your videos too. In this article I will show you how I build my videos and what I pay extra attention to during the editing process.

A general remark about my editing style is that I do not try to make an exact registration of one single flight from beginning to end. I want to capture the ‘feel’ of a model or a meeting, not show everything that happened during one flight or during the whole day. By mixing footage from different flights I am able to show a general impression of a model, rather than just show a particular flight.

Filming

The whole process starts with capturing your footage. It helps if you have a general idea about what kind of video you want to make, but that can also be decided later during editing. Some tips for filming:

Use the Zoom Function Sparingly

Choose a frame and keep that frame for a while. If you need to zoom: zoom as slow as you can and make only one zoom, not zoom-steady-zoom etcetera. Try to make both wide shots and zoomed tele-shots. When you make tele-shots, do not zoom in too much. The model does not need to fill the whole screen. It’s better to zoom out a little bit and keep the model in the frame than make really close-up footage where the model bounces all over the screen. Tracking a flying model accurately is very hard and takes practice!

Keep the Arm Holding the Camera Tight against the Side of Your Body

An arm hanging loose in the air will swing, resulting in wobbly footage. Don’t breathe too deep, a shallow respiration will also get you more stable footage. For shooting stationary objects a tripod is ideal, but a tripod involves a lot of ‘carrying around’. A monopod can be a nice intermediate solution. With a monopod you are much more mobile than with a tripod, but you do create more stable footage than without any support.

Do Not Talk during Filming

Preferably also ask this from the people next to you. It’s nice if you can use the original sound during editing, but a talking cameraman or neighbor will be very loud on tape and can be very disturbing or even make a clip unusable. If you want to add spoken commentaries you can do this during the editing process. But removing chatting from a clip while retaining the environmental sound is basically impossible.

Do Not Only Shoot the Airplane

Also film stuff in the surroundings and details that show the environment you’re in. Professionals call this ‘B-roll’ footage. The windsock, a panning shot of the field, bystanders watching, a church on the horizon, a closeup shot of the transmitter or grass weaving in the wind. These are perfect shots to add visual interest in your final video or can be used to ‘jump’ from one part of a flight to another part without feeling weird. A lot of B-roll footage can easily be shot before or after the main action.

Left: With a tripod your footage will be much more stable. This benefits the quality of the footage. | Centre: With a monopod you are more mobile than with a tripod. The extra weight of a folded monopod under the camera can also stabilize shots where you have to move the camera around. | Right: The pilot controlling his model with the mountains in the background. Perfect B-roll footage to use in your video edit to set a mood.

Onboard Footage

Nowadays you can buy a lot of different action cams that are small and light enough to carry on airplane models. By using onboard video you can get a lot of variation in the final video edit. Make several flights with different camera positions, by making a smart video edit you will make it seem like the plane was hung with many cameras. Variation is the trick here!

A small Mobius camera is put on a stick ahead of the leading edge of the wing. This gives a spectacular video angle.

With a wide angle lens you can get your whole model in the frame when the camera is on the wingtip. Another advantage of a wide angle camera is that the footage is less shaky.

Drones

Another great tool for filming is a camera drone. You can get really nice and potent camera drones for affordable prices nowadays. Sometimes I just position the drone at a strategic location and start the camera, the GPS position hold makes sure that the drone stays in the same position. In the mean time I can operate my normal videocamera or take pictures. If you have friends that are confident with racing drones you can even have a drone chase your plane, thus creating unique footage.

With a camera drone you can get unique viewing angles.

Software

Video editors come in a wide variety, ranging from free programs with limited capabilities, via reasonably priced consumer programs to expensive prescription based professional suites. With freeware you can get okay results, but the options are often limited and the workflow may not be very ergonomic.

A while back I stumbled upon DaVinci Resolve (see Resources, below) from hardware manufacturer Blackmagic. This is pro-level editing software and to my amazement is completely free to use. The possibilities are endless, but you will have to invest a lot of time and practice to get to know the software and get comfortable with the workflow, especially if you want to get into special effects and colour grading. For a beginner a stripped down program may be the better option. On YouTube you will undoubtedly find many tutorials for your video editor to get you going.

DaVinci Resolve is a very extensive free video editor with tons of features, but requires a long learning curve.

Viewing All Footage

If you have shot more than a few shots, you will need to inventorize your footage. I normally make an Excel file where I write down all file names and the content of the clips. If I find specific interesting moments in the clips I mention them in the prescriptions with a + (nice to use) or ++ (must-use!) and the time stamp. When I get home from five days flying in the mountains I may have up to 300 clips, then it’s imperative to have some sort of system where you can quickly find the moments you want to show in the final video.

Music

Before putting one clip on the timeline I first look for suitable music for my video. Background music is extremely important to set the mood of your video. So take the time to search for the right track. Fast or slow, dreamy or with tension, having the right music is half of the success.

YouTube can be picky about music in a video. You may get messages that the music is copyrighted, or even the video may be muted. Copyright-free music can be a solution. Many websites have royalty-free music for free or for a small fee. Even YouTube offers a royalty-free music library, albeit with slightly cheesy music.

For this project I used a commercial pack of loopable music files to create my own soundtrack. A lot of work, but you can build the music yourself to flow to your wishes.

Logical Sequence

A video should have a logical sequence in all the footage. It’s probably an open door, but start with the model assembly, then the takeoff, flight and landing. For a viewer it’s weird if he sees a second takeoff without having seen a landing first, or if the video starts with a landing. This does not mean that all clips should always be in placed in chronological order. You can mix footage of multiple flights where in the video it seems to be one flight.

Successive clips should also have the correct ‘connection’. If one clip ends with a left turn, the next clip should not start with the model in a right turn, or inverted. Onboard footage at high altitude should not be followed by a low flyby. If the clips do not have a logical sequence the viewer has to think about the new situation with every clip. You want to present the viewer with a ‘story’ that is easy to follow. If you want to make a ‘jump’ between moments that do not naturally follow each other you can use a B-roll clip in between.

Short Clips

A good video editor uses only a small amount of the total footage he shot. On a flying day you should film as much as possible, giving you enough choices during the editing process.

In the edit use very short clips. More than half of the clips in the video should have a maximum duration of eight seconds (and three seconds is often even better than eight seconds!). This creates variety, keeping the viewer fascinated. Off course you can sometimes use a longer clip, but if all clips are more than 30 seconds the viewer will quickly be very bored. When starting with video editing you will probably want to show way too much. Narrow it down to the absolute top moments and cut away the rest. It will benefit the end result.

Not only the clips, but also the total video length should be kept to a minimum. Five minutes is normally enough to show the best of the best. Limit yourself to using only the very best material or your movie will be tedious.

Sound

Not just the video, but also the sound deserves some attention. Often the sound part of video editing is neglected by amateur editors.

The balance between the original sound and the music has to be right. Sometimes the original sound does not add anything but distraction, then the original sound can be put at a very low volume or even be muted. But many times you do want to have the original sound. Even if you don’t hear the model or people talking it will add background sound that adds to the atmosphere. If original sound becomes very important (conversation, model sound) the music volume can be (temporarily) turned down a bit. If two successive clips have very different sound volumes the volumes should be matched or a smooth transition should be used.

Wind can cause annoying noise, a fluffy microphone cover can reduce wind sounds considerably.

Transitions

With video editing software you can create all sorts of exotic video transitions between clips. Do not be tempted to use this trickery box to the max. Every once in a while you can use a fancy transition, but an overload of digital tricks will get annoying for the viewers. By far the most used transition is the simple ‘hard cut’, basically without any effect. Crossfades (where one clip slowly fades into another) can be used regularly, but keep the exotic transitions to a minimum.

The first flights of the amazing Fokker FG-2 model featured in RCSD (see Resources below). A camera drone was used for additional footage.

Practise Makes Perfect

Making interesting videos takes practice. Video editing is always very time consuming, but especially during your first few projects you will need to put in a considerable time effort. But hey, it’s a hobby! Count on at least one hour of editing time for a minute of video, probably more.

With the tips in this article you should be able to make a good start with making videos that are not just fun to watch for the directly involved friends, but are also worthwhile to watch for others. The list of options I mentioned in this article is far from complete. Once you master the basics you can advance to slowmotion, stabilization, color grading, time remapping, visual effects et cetera. But that’s for later. First try to film more consciously en edit your videos using short clips and plenty variation. You will see that you’ll progress very quickly. When friends or even strangers start to make nice comments on your videos it’s very rewarding.

Good luck editing!

©2022 Raymond Esveldt

This video was made during a flying trip with friend in the French Vosges mountains. With 10 minutes the duration is kinda long. You may recognize the key image from last month’s issue of RCSD!

Resources

• DaVinci Resolve — from the website: “DaVinci Resolve is the world’s only solution that combines editing, color correction, visual effects, motion graphics and audio post production all in one software tool! Its elegant, modern interface is fast to learn and easy for new user…”
• The Fokker FG-2 — Vincent de Bode’s magnificent recreation of this classic vintage aircraft, as described in the February, 2021 issue of the New RC Soaring Digest.
• How to Create Spectacular Multishot Photos — my previous article on this interesting photographic effect.

All images and video by the author. Read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.