My first video shot on an iPhone and edited on a laptop with iMovie.
(Those Costa Ricans love their percussion instruments…)

The interesting thing about Costa Rica’s national day (15 September) is that the celebrations have a focus on youth and the next generation. It is not jingoistic and there is nothing at all about the military. Cost Rica abolished its army in 1949 and spent the savings on health and education.

As a result, it has become a stable and prosperous democracy with a well educated population and an excellent health system.

I used a Bluetooth selfie-stick when shooting this.

The obvious advantage of the selfie stick is that it gives you many more choices when positioning the camera , but another great benefit is that the Bluetooth connection means you can turn the video on and off by pressing a button on the stick. This is much more convenient than having to physically touch the iPhone screen each time.

With all of that percussion the audio levels were ear-splitting at times. I was very impressed with how well the iPhone handled the extreme changes in audio volume with minimal distortion. All the more so because the iPhone worked out the sound levels by itself – on “automatic”.

(It probably helped that I used a external microphone – a Rode video Mic Me).