Up on the instagram this week are two reels, filmed by Will Tracy. Will is based in Maastricht, and if that isn't niche enough in the Dutch skate scene, he filmed the clips by holding his HVX vertical. Read about it here!
I first decided to film vertical when I couldn't figure out how to properly frame Julian trying that crazy skinny manual into bank. I turned my camera sideways and instantly liked how the spot filled the frame. Soon after I decided to film more clips vertical whenever the spot benefitted from it, and I reached out to some Minnesota filming homies to ask if anyone had ever made a video promo for Instagram with vertical HVX footage. No one had heard of anyone doing this so I was hyped and planned to use the vertical clips to make a promo for a new full length.
Then one day my homie and filming/skating partner Julian told me he had decided to move to the mountains of Malaga and he was leaving in a couple days. With Julian now in Malaga and the video date set at an unknown time in the future, I thought I would release these clips to the world while the idea was still fresh. When it came to how I actually filmed, I simply turned the camera sideways and held the handle in my right hand and pressed my left palm against the bottom of the camera to keep it tight in my hands. That plus a little one knee tripod and you're good to go.
For the title card I asked DALLE-2 to create an image using the prompt " The words "insta clip" made of fuzzy neon green yarn, no shadows, white background" I quickly realized DALLE is not designed for type and after trying several attempts to get it to create the words and a failed attempt to chop a bunch of different DALLE renders together to spell the words, I decided the very first image they gave me was by far the best, even though it was kind of nonsense.
