This is the first in this series sharing footage from in and around Western North Carolina. The final video below is also the first “full-length” video that I have produced in Premier with all my own footage and sound, aside from the music track. Scene selection and storytelling are certainly concepts I need to put more planning into when I go out and fly, but for this one, I had about 30 minutes of footage captured with the DJI Mini 2 drone that looked great and I wanted to share it.
Glen Falls is not too far away just outside of Highlands, NC, and easily accessible. This makes it a little difficult to capture without a ton of people sharing the views, but we got there really early on a weekday and were able to grab a few shots before it became too crowded. There are 3 tiers, or stopping points with views of the falls along a short descent down and a couple of places where you can step out onto some flat rock faces to get a better view. Heavily forest around it and in the middle of summer, it is densely covered with flowering rhododendron. The falls are created by Overflow Creek which flows off the Highlands Plateau down into Blue Valley below. The final shot, taken above the treeline, looks out over the valley towards North Georgia.
On another day, we explored a little bit down in the valley and found Picklesimer Rock House Falls, which is not far from the bottom of Glen Falls where Overflow Creek continues through the valley floor. We started to go up the Glen Falls trail, but it was sorely overgrown down there, not as well traveled, and decided against it for the day. Definitely want to go back. Picklesimer, though, is easy hike to get to once you find the trailhead along the dirt road. Lots of great camping spots out here as well. Picklesimer is a really cool rock bluff that a small stream flows over in a bit of veil.
A couple of notes about the video production. Footage shot in 4k looks amazing, so clear and crisp and there’s a lot to see on the screen. Editing this down for online viewing in normal HD gave me a lot of room to work with on cropping, positioning, and scaling the shots without sacrificing the clarity and resolution. Since the drone doesn’t grab audio in flight, I borrowed some running water audio from other clips taken along the Cullasaja river to develop a little more depth to the overall video. And, while I’m tempted to overuse transitions between clips, I just focused on timing with the music for the cuts. Granted, my music selection here is a little more epic than the footage, given the relatively peaceful water cascading over the rocks.
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