Little Cold For My Friends
 

Good Day all,

Sense nobody is stepping forward to start response threads I thought I would plumit into the foray of constructive criticism.
first, this turned out to be the hardest challenge for me in the last two years. With a theme like cold I would have thought it would be easy, how wrong I was. Sence I shoot solo and have no actors or crew to ever work with most of my ideas were ruled out. In the end I stuck to what I do and that is shoot nature. So the goal was to let the natural world tell the story even though it starts indoors and ends indoors (Kinda).
Inspite of camera failure I still adhered to the rule, "have fun". I truly did even with numb fingers and face at times. It was a cold experience, but that is kind of normal up here in the winter.

I hope you enjoyed it for what it is worth.

Link

little cold for my friends on Vimeo

Dale, looks like you had a real cold experience here! Liked the snow owl very much, the hare (the live part) was also nice.
I know you had some technical problems during your recording and I think you did fine manage to upload something at all!
It seem that the footage is original 16:9 but it squeezed to 4:3 at the Vimeo viewing! I think you did something wrong in the converting process from the timeline, what setting did you use? It should be better quality if your original footage was in a HDV-timeline!

If any visual can make me cold to the core of my being, it would be something like the footage in your film with the wind (nearer the end of your film), especially starting about the time the windblown snow is sheeting across the road. Being from Montana originally.... that scene quickly brought to mind some VERY cold times in my life.

I too noted the aspect problem, but enjoyed your film very much. Thanks !

Thanks for the comments:

I watched my rendered qt version from my computer and it is fine. When I post vimeo it is getting cut down some how. I will try again to post another on vimeo.

Dale,

That looks really cold! Hope you didn't freeze too much while shooting that video.
Have you ordered the Polarbear cover for your camera yet?

Thank you for sharing the Canadian winter with us.

Hi Dale:

Happy New Year friend! Brrrr.... you nailed the theme on the head with this one. What are the wind chills up your way? You are very hearty to tromp around long enough to get this kind of footage.

Your wildlife shots were superb. The snowy owl was awesome, and the hare. Were they quail trying to fend off the wind? The lighting just added to the chill factor.

Nice one Dale, I enjoyed this very much, even with the Vimeo resizing of your film. Don't you just love those inconsistencies at the last minute?

Cat

Because you posted early this was the first film I watched, and I agree with what Cat said--you nailed the theme! I've now seen them all (got a sneak peek at Vidar's) and this is still the one that makes me feel the coldest.

In any extreme weather, like lots of people, my first thoughts are always for the animals who can't escape the heat...or the cold. The birds in your film trying to find food or even stand against the terrible blowing wind drives home the struggle.

On the other hand, you had some shots that warmed me up, as well. Loved the hare!

Thank you, Dale, for braving the cold to bring us this very fine entry.

Hallo Dale.

This film really moved me,you make here a film whit different wether
and I think that make a big diffrent.Here you can feel mother nature
and come near the closed rom in Wildlife. I had a good frend how was
a clever Wildlife-photograf he always say you must make youre cut in
bad wether. And I think you have proof that her Dale.


Really nice Film!!!

All Best
VJV.

_______________

I love that opening shot of the snowy field. The dim, overcast sky and the way the trees in the distance are washed out to that shade of blue-gray make for an eerie feel. Makes me want to visit, I feel so comfortable in light like that.

The whole movie felt otherworldly to me, really. Am I the only one seeing a face at 1:07 through 1:14? That plus the overall darkened quality of the daylight, that creepy rabbit staring at me, and the Clubbed to Death sound-alike music set one hell of a mood. A mood that enchants me, to be frank. Well done!

Of course, it's not all creepy. The birdsplosion at 1:54 was cute, as were the little guys skittering around in the wind toward the end. The snow blowing over the road in the shot immediately before that is mesmerizing, too.

I would suggest cranking up the bitrate on the audio track, though. The QDesign Music codec can produce decent quality if you give it enough to work with, but 24kbps is rather low. As far as your aspect ratio issues, may I ask what settings you used when rendering, and in what software? Vimeo, Youtube and the like base such decisions on AR flags in the video file, it's possible yours were either incorrect or non-existent.

Good Afternoon,


Thank you all for the nice comments.

My computer I doo all my work on has been fully occupied rendering and burning up Dvd's trying to get a wedding dead right. Hence no time to try and rerender this video. I have to have it finished tomarrow so I will get at it this weekend and see what I must have done wrong in the compression issue.

Cat, it always drives me crazy when something comes up right before deadlines.

I had submitted an 80 mbt version then read that the program will not link t them if its over 60, so I recomprressed it down to 58 and submitted. I may have made an accidental change along that trail.

thanks for the tip on the audio, will give that some tries soon.

I had to put a jacket on to watch this one. You sure nailed cold. How you guys brave the elements for the shots your getting is unreal. I don't think I could stake out my own animals in the warm house and get as good of shots as you and the other UWOLers do.

The opening and closing scenes were really cool.

I had issues with my first few attempts posting on Vimeo too. Did two that never made it at all. Found this and it helped a lot.

Vimeo HD FAQ

Its for a mac, not sure what you are using.

Beautiful, Dale!
 

Since sound plays such an important part of any movie, I loved your composed background track. It gave an ethereal quality to your snowy images. I loved the way you caught the milky texture of the wind-blown snow across the roadways. Hypnotic! I also loved your rabbits! For some reason, I am in a better mood now! You dedicated yourself to the making of this movie by braving the elements. Excellent!

cool shot of the roosting birds flying up out of the field, what are they, grouse?

i have no idea how you managed to even see that white bunny, he blends in amazingly with his environment.

some very nice shots, but what happened to the compression??

that's some serious COLD all right...takes a strong person to get out there in that kind of weather...

Meryem,

The birds exploding up out of the snow are Hungarian Partridge.

The Bunnies are white tailed Jack rabbits, a breed of Hare. They weight 7 to 14 pounds and everything tries to eat them, generally making them wary and hard to get. When they are fully white sometimes they will freeze and you can actually get a shot or two. when I filmed the close up it was -39 c (at -40, C and F are the same) It took about an hour of slowly moving closer and closer with the pod until I got the shots I did.
I have been out two days sense looking for some good hare footage and have not been as fortunate, but then its 20 degrees warmer and the Hares are happy to romp about as apposed to hunkering down.


Compression: It happens when I go to a quick time render. I have checked the properties and all that and have not yet figured it out. I made another 2 minute " a little Fun" video for some friends and am trying to sort it out. I am going to go back to the old p4 and see what it does. I even restored my computer to no avail, I am thinking it is something in settings when I render it.
If I save it as an avi file and play on quick time it is fine. So it is a compression issue for certain.

It has warmed up to -10 F so I am going out to shoot with a new camera.

Dale, I will try to help you out regarding this.
To start with your timeline in the editor, what's the preference? Then when you do the export settings, my experience is NOT to check any "keep aspect". Just set the appropriate width and high (I use 1280x720) if your timeline is set to HDV.
If you export to an AVI file or QT should'n matter, as Vimeo support both and several others.


Below you can view my settings for the final export from my NLE. Note that this is on a Mac Pro and FCP, but I think we could find something for your NLE too