Birdwatching Vietnam Segment
 

Hey everyone! Im going to keep posting these pieces of a documentary Im working on. Any comments would be great. This was shot in Vietnam. Sri Lanka and Thailand will be the next 2 after this.
Thanks,
andy

http://hosted.filefront.com/awheel41215

ps. go halfway down the page and click on vietnamwebb.mov on the left side of the page

Can't seem to get it to load up-I wanted to see RVN again. Last time was a looooonnnnnngggggg time ago. Where in RVN did you do the taping?

Don B

For the download, make sure that people know that they need to add a ".mov" to the file name.


Two quick comments on this new clip...

I figured that this is just rough footage that you're sharing, but when it's ready, it definitely needs some color correction to remove the inherent "pasty" skin look of the faces from the stock XL2 settings.

Also, you really need to get the EF adapter (about $400 or less). Speaking from experience, birds are so damn elusive, even if by the habitat and not just their behavior. A simple 300mm lens on the EF adaptor (which replaces the 20x lens) would allow you to get the 35mm equivalent of a 2700mm lens (due to the CCD block "magnification"). The close-ups would be stunning, even though the light would be cut down.

Check out my crappy website for a video of the EF in action on my telescope. The moon is a bit fuzzy in spots due to the poor atmospheric conditions that night.
http://www.geocities.com/amjoyce2004


Otherwise, thanks again for sharing. I love travel and nature, especially when mixed together.

Hey Andy, Thanks for the comments. You are indeed correct about the CC. I will not be doing that if all goes well until at least a year or so from now along with the audio. There are many shoots that involve traveling to be done! i wouldve died to have the EF adapter on this trip but the idea for the film came up just before we left, it was not the original intention of the trip. I scrambled just to get the bare minimum in time. I will surely be getting the ef adapter when we shoot more bird stuff. Im looking mostly for content related comments at the moment. I should have been more specific.
Don, any of the city stuff was shot in Saigon and the nature stuff was shot in a national park 3 hrs outside of Saigon and I cant remember the name of the park at the moment. Ill check and get back to you.

Yeah the EF is pretty cool.

Anyway, content comments...

I would put subtitles under the the PhD's scenes. I could understand him, but many people probably can't and his volume was a little low in the scene which makes it harder.

Were the kids catching that bird for fun, or was it a meal? The scene there is a little awkward since it's hard to tell what the kids are up to, and that unconventional guy is kinda standing there not knowing what to do.

The city scenes were really cool. I made a student film with some friends that had some old footage like that that was shot by one of the interviewees of the film.

Also see the parabola mic thingy on my website. Something like that could help you get some really good bird sounds or other isolated audio.

Hey Andy again thanks for the comments. They are very helpful. Basically what Im doing at the moment is since I have an overwhelming amount of content and were not entirely sure where it is going, Im putting the film together in short mostly completed 5-10 min pieces . This is helping me to narrow the footage to the good usable stuff, see what were possibly missing, and sometimes it brings out other small narratives that are going on that i wasnt focusing on or aware of. The footage with the kids with the dead bird, they killed it for food, they were poor villagers and they needed to eat. Right now my idea is, I shot some really great fun, footage of an all kids team at the world series of birding a month ago and it will contrast these privileged kids (by SE asian standards) involvement with birds as a hobby and fun whereas for the vietnam kids its a way of life. Thats my idea right now. We'll see how that pans out! Also I will defintely do sub titles when the film is closer to being completed so that I only make them for what stays. Thanks for the comments and the tech tips. I appreciate it very much.
Take CAre,
andy