Well, folks things have been exciting lately. July 4th weekend brought many great photos of unusual subjects, including chorus frogs and PhD horticulture students doing their work with raspberries. There’s been good news that I’ll tell you more about when it hits the presses.
But the main point of this post is that very soon many of the entries will be video. I am adding a dedicated camcorder to my mix soon. To all those dslr video enthusiasts, don’t worry, I’m continuing to do that as well, but will use the 5d for things that it is best suited to and the camcorder for that which it is best suited. When I have someone on location with me willing to do so, I will have them recording behind the scenes sorta stuff, for the blog.
I finally posted my first documentary to Vimeo. It’s been a long and at times trying experience. Furthermore, there’s the frustration that always comes from knowing that you could do better at the process now. Overall though I am very excited about posting this movie. Certainly video is a fun and challenging experience.
This is a very exciting thing for me. I am publishing the trailer of my first documentary short. This documentary was shot entirely on a 5dMkII and edited in Premiere Pro.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I am currently very much involved in expanding my business into hd video. The current focus is deciding on a camcorder as I am currently using the 5dII and with the work I do, I think a combination of the two would be the best solution. Use a dedicated camcorder for the bulk of the work and the 5dII for sequences where depth of field control is important, or perhaps shooting in very low light, etc.
Having been a still photographer most of my life though, I had no idea where to look for info. With Canon’s recent announcement that their next camcorder is going to use a 50Mbps 4:2:2 codec, I went wild trying to find more info. Well, recently I came across two very useful sites. DVInfo and MacVideo. Ok, I’m a PC guy, editing on Premiere Pro, but MacVideo is still incredibly useful for information about the cameras. There’s this guy there, Rick Young, who breaks it down exactly the way I think of it; proof is in the pudding and when you’re talking expanding your business into hd video, pudding=picture quality and can you market the footage. So, if you too are looking to do these sorts of things, I suggest you check out these sites.
Expect a big post within a week or so about NANPA. The summit is next week, I’m very excited.
Now to think up what my next conservation oriented documentary will be.
The script is now written, and I’ve gone over it with my narrator for timing etc. This will take a little bit of reediting, as some sequences are too short for the narration needed. Of course, I totally expected that.
Anxious to get back to it.
One tool that’s helped me a lot with this step is Adobe Clip Notes. This is a great little tool in Adobe Premiere Pro that allows you to create a PDF with your video in it. Then there is a note pad at the bottom and the people you send the clip to can make notes at any point in the movie and their comments get cataloged at the timecode where they made the comment. Then you can import it back into Premiere and see their comments connected with the timecode. I used this to send it to my narrator to get comments and then the video was already at his house for us to go over with the script. Yes it is at greatly reduced resolution, but that didn’t impact the work that we were doing.
Tonight has been a big deal for me. I just completed the first rough cut of my first documentary short. In the next couple of days, I will start writing the script for the voice over narration and adding the subtitles for telling the audience who certain people are. Then it’s on to sweetening the sound, mainly a matter of eliminating recording hiss. The audio system on the 5d MkIIincreases the gain level when there aren’t any loud sounds, this creates a lot of recording hiss. The 5d MkII is not a perfect solution for recording video, but does a very good job and serves its intended roles in video quite well. As I see it, the intended roles in video for the new video dSLRs are to introduce people to video and to allow for recording some clips for posting to the web without the photojournalist carrying additional cameras. I recommend following Vincent Laforet’s blog for cutting edge information about video capable dSLRs.
Hopefully, this project will convince inhabitants of the Willamette Valley to help out with savanna restoration. Some of the invasive weeds project that the Friends of the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex furthers restoration. Just about anyone around here can help us pulling weeds.