UWOL #14 "The tidal belt" - by Trond Saetre
 

My goal for this video was to show the tidal belt. IE the land which gets dry on low tide and flooded on high tide. To see which living creatures live there.

The good thing: Finding a theme and building a story was surprisingly easy this time, compared to previous challenges.
The not so good thing: When building a story, it would have been a good thing to have a location suitable for filming the video in my mind too. I had a hard time finding anything alive, except for the algaes of course. But that's part of the challenge, right.

The opening sequence is shot from my boat to get an overview of the area where I shot my video. Tried both using a tripod and handheld, and believe it or not, handheld was less shaky.

To have more various shots, and even find more animals who actually can move around, would have made the video better, but time (and partly weather) prevented that.

In the end, I had a major battle with Sorenson Squeeze which had desided not to cooperate with the encoding. So I encoded to quicktime within Premiere itself. Needless to say, the audio quality is less than perfect.

Oh and yes, rule #11 was strictly followed at all times. :)

Anyway, I look forward to all the critic you can give.

Link:
The tidal belt

Trond:

I liked this film. Subject matter and scenes were interesting and infromative.

Only shot I didn't like was first shot. I think it had to much motion. I know it was likely on a boat, but it didn't quite work with rest of film, in my opinion.

Thank you Chris,
Yes I agree that the first scene has too much motion. Maybe I should have dropped that one, or only used a still picture instead.

Trond-
What a difference your intertidal zone is from the one on our flat sandy beaches in Texas. Our intertidal can be 100 meters wide. The organisms you showed were old friends though because their close relatives live on our breakwaters and jetties. They cycle between two tough environments- air and sun, and then saltwater and surf. What an excellent choice for our theme. I liked the shots where you were shooting through the water surface into the tide pool. Were you using a polarizer? Very nice work.

Mike,
Thank you for the feedback.
Here in my part of Norway, the difference between high and low tide is about 1 meter. Takes a while to see the level changes when just looking at the vertical rocks. We don't have so many beaches here, and not those big ones you have in Texas. There are more beaches down south in Norway.

I did not use polarizer, only the UV filter I always keep on the lense.

Link to the video on youtube:
The tidal belt on youtube
(lower quality)

Trond,

I really enjoyed your video. The opening sequence on the boat did not really do the rest of your video justice - it was a little too shaky.

Your use of sound was very nice. The shot of the tidal pool beginning at 1:23 was very well done. It's amazing what creatures you can see in such a small pool.

You had a nice script and narration. Did you write the script first and then shoot the video or did you craft the script based on the video?

rich

Trond,

Nice film. As you said would have been good to feature more animals, buts that's the way it goes. I agree with the others about the opening shot, but enjoyed what you showed in the film.

Some of the shots looked a little bleached out. Was that the encoding? I thought the audio was fine and was narrated well.

Good work.

Mihali

Rich,
Thank you for the feedback.
I didn't write a script, but I had a pretty good idea of what to shoot and how I wanted the video "in my head" before I went out to shoot it.
So the shooting and editing was very much based on that, with a few creative excemptions.

Mihali,
Thank you. Yes it's not always easy to have the animals come out when we want it. The day before when I was checking out the location, I saw several crabs and a few small fishes as well.
The bleached out shots you mention, do you mean the shots down into the water?
I'll look into that. There is a small, but noticable difference from the original video, so possibly the encoding might have done it worse than it was.
A polarizer filter would probably have improved this?
I also bought a new version of Sorenson Squeeze yesterday after my previous (v4.5) stopped cooperating with me last week. And the new encoding with Squeeze gave better quality than the file I uploaded, which was encoded within Premiere.

Hi Trond.
I liked your film and your choice of topic.
When it comes to filming from a boat, especially small boats its not an easy task.
In my opinion its better with an handheld camera then using a tripod.
Your film is very informative and educational, I like that kind of stuff.
Hope you didn't get salt water on your camera.

Wish you all the best.
Geir Inge

Geir Inge,
Thank you for the comment. Glad you like the film.
Yes, I tried both with tripod and handheld, and I ended up using the handheld shots.
And you are right, filming from a moving boat is hard. Would have been easier if I had someone to keep the boat's bow towards the waves while I was filming.

My first thought was also to do a tidal film. Where I live the tidal range is less than 50 cm, so I dropped it. I like your film and your informative narrating. The stereo sound of the sea waves have an amazing effect.

Trond,
I enjoyed your film showing the tidal change and some of the seaweeds and snails that live on the shoreline, it reminded me of summer beach holidays some years ago when we took our three young kids to some of the Dorset rock beaches.

after the tide had gone out they would love investigating the rock pools and catch many of the small sea life that get trapped in these pools, until the sea returns and covers the pools again.

Trond,
a very nice and informative film! I think you have developed very well in your skills making this uwol entries.
Agree on what other commented, keep up your good work!

Finn-Erik, Ron and Per Johan,
Thank you for the feedback. Good to hear you enjoyed watching.