The Silicon Valley Tour [Video]

There are two things that I’ve always wanted to do: a time-lapse video and a tour of all the big Silicon Valley companies. This video is what I came up with for the final project for my Intro to Videography class,

This shoot took place over two days with about 8 hours of driving each day over a distance of 200 miles. My wife Andrea drove while I shot the video. I took footage with my DSLR while the GoPro mounted on top of my truck captured the time-lapse. Of course we brought J.T. our mascot with us too.

Here was our planned route. I had planned to complete the loop from Livermore to Livermore, but we only got as far as Treasure Island as the sun set on the second evening.

This trip was really fun and we got to tour by the most famous tech companies in the world. With over 15 hours of GoPro footage, it was a quite challenge to keep it short. Originally I wanted to keep it to the length of one song, but I split it to two, one for each day of driving.

At each stop, we started walking J.T. in front of the famous signs. Later the first day I realized that I should have made J.T. the central focus of the video. By then it was too late, but it really would have been cool to have the movie called: “J.T. the Dog Who Toured Silicon Valley.” But I’ll use that as a nugget of wisdom for another day.

In class, we dabbled a little bit into using keyframes and motion. So I experimented with that as you see with the logos in the video. I really wanted to add a moving map showing our location, but I ran out of time. I also learned that it’s important to check camera settings. Since I was also taking a photo lighting class this semester, I didn’t realize that my white balance was still set to flash until we reached Intel headquarters. I didn’t have much luck fixing it in post-production, so that why my early DSLR footage is a little blue.

This was a great assignment and I really learned a lot with this project. Now that I’m done with my Intro to Videography class, I really wish this was something I had gotten into earlier. I really like it. A lot!