Third-person view
Also known as: third person, external view
Any shot in which the athlete appears inside the frame, seen from outside their own body, which is the counterpart to a worn camera.
Updated
What it means
Third person means the subject is visible. Whether the camera is on a tripod, in a hand, on a drone or on a stick held by the rider themselves, the defining feature is that they are in shot.
It is the counterpart to POV footage rather than a style. One shows what somebody saw and the other shows somebody doing it, and almost every edit needs both to make sense.
The self-filmed version is its own category. An Invisible selfie stick or a Me Mode clip produces third person footage without a second person present, which changed what a solo rider can film.
How it works in practice
It is what makes a trick legible. A mounted camera shows speed and texture, and only an external angle shows how high, how far and how close to the edge anything was.
The simplest version is a camera left running. A Fixed-camera recording covering the feature produces usable third person footage for a whole session without anybody operating it at all.
Mixing it with point of view is the standard structure. An external shot establishes the action and a worn camera puts the viewer inside it, which is why most action edits alternate between them.
What to watch out for
Filming yourself produces a particular framing. A stick-mounted camera is always the same distance and the same angle, and a session of it reads as monotonous however good the riding is.
It needs somebody or something in position. The shot exists only if a camera was pointed at the right place, which is the reason mounted footage dominates most cards.
Scale is easy to lose. A wide lens from a distance makes everything small, so a Focal length that compresses, or simply getting closer, is what keeps the action looking like it mattered.
How RawClip handles it
External angles usually score well, because the action is fully visible and its scale is readable in the frame. Mixing them with worn camera clips is what gives an assembled sequence both perspectives rather than one of them repeated.