Col, I feel your pain. Been there. And no comments. Man... that kinda sits all wrong. "Ok.... no more vids from me!"
I just reviewed a few seconds of the last vid you posted here. I wanted to say something then, but I didn't. "If ya don't have something nice to say....."
I am no expert in film or vid directing/editing. For that, I'd refer you to one of my HG vid heroes.... yeah, Mr. Jonathan. At the very least, many of his vids are interesting. His examples that have muzak as the only audio nearly bore me to death.... I have to kill the sound in order to continue to watch them. And then, I sometimes only watch them in part, but always find myself yawing and sliding my rolling office chair during his excellent extractions from nearly impossible escapes. He can be a real shlt-magnet. There's ALWAYS something to learn from his stuff. I say all that with all the love and respect that I can manage.
I like most of Robert Booth's vids ('East Bay Hang Gliding' on YT).... super simple, yet he keeps you on the edge. Just wish he had some commentary.
There are other Hg vids that I enjoy as well, but their composers are many times not consistently adequate in their delivery.
I'm nearly certain I don't have ADD.
What bores me:
1) Muzak. No other interjections, no sweet songs of the wind, no commentary, all muzak. It holds ZERO meaning or interest for me. If it starts out to be muzak, I may watch the launch, but then I go straight to the end to see the landing, if there is one. The video composure could be brilliant. But sorry. No compromises. To me it's a waste of my time if I'm not laughing or learning.
I really don't understand why people want to stick in some man-made "music" when there are a plethora of interesting things (audio) going on, being captured perfectly on the video camera, and all they want to do is cover it all up! Inconceivable!
What excites and keeps me on the edge of my seat:
1) Good commentary. This is not only from the pilot, but from ground-crew, from the sag-wagon/chase vehicle driver/crew, etc.
All verbal comms help to paint a 3-D picture. Even the shenanigans and banter at the set-up and tear-down areas. It's
people who make HG what it is, so do your best to celebrate the pilots and crews, and they ALWAYS have something entertaining/educational to tell the rest of us, whether they mean to or not. And when I say commentary, I mean unrehearsed, real-time commentary. Descriptive commentary to fill in some of the blanks can be of value and informative as well, as Jonathan has also done well.
2) The sweet song of the wind as the glider yaws, pitches, banks and dives. It has a song and language all it's own, and to cover that up is, well..... ! The ambient wind sounds lend much more depth to the flight than any other audio can.... except possibly for entertaining/informative commentary.
3) The visuals.... To me, it could be 480p, but it could be the greatest vid in the world if only the audio contained no muzak, allowed the viewer to imagine the touch of the wind through it's varied sounds, and plenty of quality commentary.
I think changing the camera angles and view points (multiple cameras) is a good idea, but cameras are expensive anymore, and two viewpoints are fine. Refer to some of Jonathan's vids. Normally not a big fan of the pilot manually flipping the camera for different views. But sometimes it works. Sometimes.
4) Background theme-song. Hmmm. It's gotta be
way in the background. And then, only sporadically. If done well, it can really set the tone and emotion. If too much, it ruins the whole show. I've tried this on my first flight-vid that I attempted real-time commentary, and at the time I thought it all came out well. But after watching it a few more times after publishing it, I think I went a bit overboard on the background theme. It's gotta be very artistically done if it's gonna make the vid worth watching.
(if you
really want to view the vid-flop I am referring to, go to SagaSeaCraft channel on YT - 'Hang Gliding over Hibriten Mtn' ... yeah, and leave a f'kin' comment while you're there, positive
or negative!)
I think it requires a lot of practice to develop a good video-editing formula to create watchable, entertaining vids. Cruise around YT and watch some of the latest well done, popular vids in any catagory, and then take a look at that channel's beginning vids. There is usually a large learning-curve that is plainly evident.
Hope my honesty wasn't too brash and hard to swallow. But then I'd rather someone be straight-up and uncompromising when I'm trying to get to the bottom of a subject.