Filming Myself Skateboarding - Finding a Balance and a Reliable Video Editor Phone App

Nose slide in the driveway.

I like filming myself skateboarding. The problem is I'm not interested enough in the filmmaking  process to film great shots or tell a compelling story each video to compensate for my lack of ability on a skateboard.

It's not that I'm bad at skateboarding, and I understand there is an audience of people who like to watch how other beginner (or aging relearner) skaters progress. I'm part of that audience.

As much as we love watching pro skaters video parts and competition runs, for many of us that level of skating isn't as relatable as watching someone going through the same struggle we're having with trying to land basic pop shove-its and kickflips.

I recently broke the drought of not making skateboard videos for the past six months by posting a new driveway skateboard session that I filmed, edited, and uploaded from my phone. You can watch it below.



This video would have had a bit more of a story had the bit in the middle, where I gave my initial thoughts on my new shoes, had not recorded without audio. I think I forgot to turn the external microphone back on. It's the first time I've used it with my phone, so it was bound to happen.

In case you're interested the $20 shoes with $5 insoles were really good to skate in. Comfortable right away. It'll be interesting to see how long they last the wear and tear of skateboarding.

As it stands the video ended up being more of the same. Though I did add a bit of sweeping and my warm up stretches for something completely new... oh, and I mentioned the Zazzle deck.

The reason I stopped filming videos is that it's no fun editing down skateboard footage to remove the boring bits between trying the same six or seven tricks over and over again. It's also not that interesting filming the same six or seven tricks over and over again. The tricks I'm trying to learn.

If I was more interested in filmmaking I know I could probably do a lot more but usually, when I go out to skate, I just want to skate. Skating is the one thing I can kind of do that doesn't require too much thinking outside the moment. All my focus is either on whatever trick I'm trying to learn or, just enjoying doing those few tricks I can do. As soon as I set up a camera it becomes about making content. Essentially I'm working and not really enjoying my skating.

Filming, editing, and uploading from my phone helps alleviate another issue, being tied even more to my desktop computer. It can be a little discouraging going out to skate knowing that I'm coming back with a few hours of editing being added to my workload.

Editing on my phone means I can be editing in the evenings while I'm watching TV or Netflix - which at least makes me feel better about my second screen activity being more productive than scanning social media. It's also nice to be more productive on any of my mobile devices because it shows I literally can work from almost anywhere.

It took a while to find some video editing software for my phone that was even halfway decent. Movavi makes the best app for one handed editing I've ever comes across. Unfortunately their app only lets you edit one project at a time. You can't save it, start a new project, save that, and then open up a previous project and continue working.

Worse is, that while you can keep a project open in the app, close the app, then come back to it later with your project just as you left it, on multiple occasions I reopened the app to be faced with projects I'd spent hours on just gone. Reset back to an empty document.

Movavi's app is a paid subscription. After losing all my work one too many times (another reason for why it's been so long for me making a new skate video) I cancelled the app and uninstalled it.

VlogU Video Editor.

The app I finally settled on is called VlogU. From what I gather it's a new entry into the field. It's not quite as good a user interface as Movavi's app for one hand editing but it's close enough, and it has more features.

What it does have going for it is you can save multiple projects. As well, it crashed a few times while I was making the video above - which wouldn't usually be a plus but each time I restarted the app, my project was still all there minus maybe the last one or two edits. Way better than losing everything for no apparent reason.

VlogU is a free app. It does watermark your video but this can be removed for each video if you take a moment to watch an ad. I was also able to upload directly to Youtube from the app too.

Anyway... this post is really becoming something of a rambling stroll...

The upshot is, that I'm hoping my new workflow of filming, editing, and uploading from my phone will inspire me to start making a few more skate videos again. I pretty much have my phone with me at all times so I can be a little more spontaneous, and film wherever I happen to skate knowing all the clips will be on my phone, ready to edit, without having to sit at my desktop computer.

The challenge is to find some kind of story so my videos aren't just you watching me running through the same batch of tricks video after video.