Fire & Ice by Kevin J Railsback - UWOL 36

[Geir Inge]

Thanks for answering my questions, Kevin.
A fisher? It's related to our pine marten I guess.
I have never heared of it before, so thank you for enlighten me.
My experience is that you are always professional in your work.
And you clearly show that you care about nature's welfare.
We are fortunate to have you in this forum.
All the best my friend.

[Kevin Railsback]

Geir,

Same family:

The fisher (Martes pennanti) is a small carnivorous mammal native to North America. It is a member of the mustelid family (commonly referred to as the weasel family) and a part of the marten genus. The fisher is closely related to but larger than the American marten (Martes americana). The fisher is a forest-dwelling creature whose range covers much of the boreal forest in Canada to the northern United States. Names derived from aboriginal languages include pekan, pequam, wejack, and woolang. It is also sometimes referred to as a fisher cat, although it is not a feline.

Don't expect much from my February entry. Wildlife is hard to film here unless you have a lot of time and a hide etc.
If we have no snow then everything is brown.

[Bob Safay]

Kevin, we can team up again. You finish the video, write the script, and I'll do the VO. It will be fun. Bob

[Kevin Railsback]

Bob,
You got yourself a deal my friend! 😀

[Bob Safay]

Fantastic.

[Bryce Comer]

This it going to be awesome!!!! Go for it guys!

[Geir Inge]

Originally Posted by Kevin Railsback

Bob,
You got yourself a deal my friend! 😀

Now that's what I call a Christmas gift :)

[Steve Siegel]

Kevin,

Sorry I missed out on the challenge this time. Today was my first opportunity to view the entries. Once again you show your mastery of light. Totally enthralling. You say you shoot where the animals are used to humans, but come on now, they don't just come up and say "hello, take my picture". Those shots of big mammals, not taken in captivity, had to be hard to get. Amazing.

I do have one suggestion, if you are interested. In the final scene of the moon set the shaking of the foreground trees, because of time lapse, is distracting. What about a garbage matte?

[Catherine Russell]

Cool Steve.... what's a garbage matte? I'd like to know. I have a lot to learn about mattes.

[Kevin Railsback]

I'll do a tutorial on it Cat and show you the results.
its easier to show you than explain it

[Catherine Russell]

Sweet! Thanks Kevin!

[Andrew Hood]

Kevin, the title was almost synonymous with Games of Thrones, and the entry lived up to the hype generated before the deadline. You have captured superb footage, it has to be some of the best produced for UWOL. Between stunning scenery and a diversity of captured animals it really stood out.

The one drawback I saw was already mentioned by Geir. In the rushed time you had editing there is a definite structure and logic to how the events unfold, but a formal narrative would have really rounded this out. The absence of a narrative can leave the theme in the background rather than being a character in the story - at least from the viewing perspective. And maybe just focusing on one part - ice or fire, it seems like there was plenty there for just the winter aspect - not that I don't like fire. The contrast between the two was interesting though. I'm assuming credits were done quickly during the edit. I think the image is fine, but with centred text moved to the left it looks a little untidy to me. Maybe play with the spatial layout a little, and you might even be able to have all 3 segments of text on the same screen but just fading them on in separate stages. It just felt like everything else was so carefully composed, but the text didn't seem to match that aesthetic. I'm having to dig to find things to improve.

If you finish Plan A, or B let us know. Great to see your work, and I'm jealous of how easy you make it look. Half the wildlife I see on shoot days is more likely to end up under a wheel than in front of the lens (must get a dash cam). But I think I need to dedicate more time to filming trips and learn the meaning of patience. And maybe getting up early... if I have to.

[Steve Siegel]

Hey Cat,

A garbage matte is a way to make part of your clip transparent, with part left alone. In my editing software (Premiere Pro) you pull little corner tabs around to outline what part of the scene you want to show. The rest, outside of the "fence" created by the tabs becomes transparent. So if you align two clips on the timeline, one on top of the other, the scene in the top clip inside the fence is shown, but for the areas outside of the fence, the bottom clip shows through.

So if you have a shot with timelapse, and the same shot in real-time, you can put the timelapse shot over the real-time one in the timeline. Pull the fence around the timelapse-important area (the setting moon in Kevin's piece). The time-lapse will show inside the fence, but outside the fence the real-time footage shows through, allowing the moon to set quickly, but letting the trees blow in the wind normally.

Of course you need some areas where nothing is happening between the moon and the tree to place the
garbage matte fence. No one will notice that there is a sharp boundary there, because there is no movement. You can feather the edge of the matte to make it even less visible.

[Mat Thompson]

Hey Railsback
Wow, some beautiful stuff in there Railsback. I like the contrasting images too.

Nice to see some yeti work again!

Mat

[Phil Goetz]

#railsbackforpresident