This entry is based on the life of C.Y. O'Connor. I apologise to our Perth members who probably had to do school projects on him. I must admit that this is quite a big story for this type of piece so I used the four minute limit from the UWOL rules and even the 15-20 seconds for the credits, which I put voice over as well. I sneaked in at a total of 4:19. It does look better in HD from the vimeo site.

I lived in Kalgoorlie for six years in the late Eighties and early Nineties, so I have personally enjoyed the legacy of his achievements on a daily basis.

Enjoy...

Inspired Engineer on Vimeo

Hi Tim,
This was interesting to watch, and I've watched it a couple times already. A great story, and your VO is really easy to understand for someone who doesn't have English as the first language.
You should build on this piece and try sell it to tv.

Very nice to learn about new things and other countries. Australia is very high on my list of places I want to visit.
Impressive how much one man can do. O'Connor must have been a brave person.


Well done!

Thanks Trond, I always value your comments and criticisms. C Y O'Connor did all this work and more in just over a decade in WA. But, he also spent more than two decades in New Zealand, so he is probably familiar to our NZ members too, for the engineering projects he completed there.

Hi Tim
it's an interesting story, worth telling. I found it both inspiring and depressing. But that's often the way, some of the most brilliant achievers are not well received and are ostracised or ridiculed. Makes you wonder what else he could have accomplished in his time.

There was a good variety of shots. I wanted to see the docks during construction, but it had to be our own video for the entry, so you can't just animate a historical photo in Premiere/FCP.
It was well put together, and Trond is right, there is plenty of story to build on and make it a full documentary.

I agree with Andrew--it is actually a pretty sad piece! You had some very nice shots in interesting locations, Tim. Some of them looked like photos, and I think your work would pop more with slow pans at those times.

Sitting over here in dense, mid-winter Idaho fog I have to say that the sunny images were a very welcome sight! Thanks for completing an informative entry about a truly inspired engineer.

Thanks Lorinda for you comments. I didn't like the pans I shot and edited all of them out. I guess you can see my photography background showing through. I was using a new tripod with which I am less familiar and just couldn't get some smooth pans that I was happy with yet out of it.

I have a special modification on my other tripod and it makes pans much better. I have asked my friend who did the mod to do me one for this tripod, so you should with a bit of luck see some out of me in the March DVC contest.

I agree it is a sad story and I now know more of it than i did when I started the project.

I should have known something like that happened--your comments triggered a memory of editing out my panned shots once for the same reason. :)

Very nice production values. I really got into the story. Wanted to know if he was ever vindicated for the water pumping project. Seemed like a professional documentary. I was an engineer, of sorts, during my 30 year technical career, and I can identify with the feeling of having haters, when you are doing your best to bring a vision to life. Sad ending. Great little film Tim.

Thanks for your encouragement Dick. I tried really hard with this effort to get all factors in the production to be the best I could do.

I sort of mentioned in the OP that I had enjoyed the benefits of this scheme for six years. So, yes it worked. I may keep this as a pet project and add footage and story to include more of the infrastructure and the controversy, for a longer non-UWOL/DVC product.

I have just finished using this film as uploaded as a test piece for starting to learn how to use DaVinci Resolve 10 Lite. I must say that the grading of the footage was a lovely improvement, although I can still see errors in my corrections. Overall the graded product is a much nicer look. Maybe I will post it in this thread when the competition is over?

Chris Hurd, can we have a Da Vinci Resolve forum in the cross platform Post Production section?

Seeing as the competition is over, I thought I would add the colour graded version of the video for comparison. This was my first go at Da Vinci Resolve and I worked from the completed video rather that the edit as it was a bit simpler. The bit rate on this upload is lower than the original. See what you think...

Inspired Engineer on Vimeo