PADSTOW SEA LIFE SAFARIS

Padstow Sealife Safaris gave us the opportunity to film the beauty of the Cornish coast and to see some amazing wildlife. Grey Seals, Dolphins, Porpoises, Basking Sharks and Sun Fish. We set sail from Padstow harbor making our way out of the spectacular Camel Estuary towards caves, stunning cliff sides, islands and finally into the bay looking for the elusive dolphins so many came to see that day.

We filmed the trip from another boat, using a Sony FS7 camera and a Sony A7S with a 16-35mm Mark II Canon 2.8 wide angled lens mounted on a Ronin M handheld gimbal.

We shot it at 25fps and 50 fps for the different cameras we were using. Giving slightly different effects and allowing us to slow down the footage in post-production for those juicy slow mo’s and speed ramps.

Because we shot it S-LOG on the FS7, it gave us enough colour information to give it a nice grade and really adjust what we wanted. Water, sky, cliffs, all could be adjusted accordingly. It was an overcast day at the time so we didn’t have the problem of over exposure.

We used the DJI Inspire Drone to get the nice aerial perspective of the trip. It allowed us to capture the beauty of the Cornish coastline and have a different view of the boats and dolphins down below. They were a lot more visible this way too, having that birds-eye view gave us the ability to see the dolphins movements and show them off easier.

For the colour grade, it was a bit of a complicated process to make the colours match throughout the edit, because we used 3 different camera’s to capture the trip, we had different lighting, lenses, and apertures that were all changing the colours. So matching colour is actually a skill in itself.

Have a look at this colour grade ‘before and after‘ , where you can see the difference from the original in-camera footage to the final graded shot.

Editing this was quite tricky and time consuming. Sticking to the clients wishes and keeping it brief. With a lot of footage to play with, it can be tough to be ruthless and whittle the best footage down to an edit. We needed to include, sea life, coast line, parts of the experience and the peoples expressions all within under a minute and a half. After a bit of back and forth between the client, it was finished. Another job successful and another happy client! Just what we want our customers to be!

From all of us here at Crow Creative,

Thanks for reading!

Alex Shaw