UWOL#4 - aquacosms - By Rob Evans
 

So, really struggled to pull a thread together on this - I thought of lots of close up ideas, and actually spent a lot of time in the back garden ( again ;-) ) shooting things spinning in water, rainbow effects and bubbles.... nearly all of which didn't make it into the film!! I then started to concentrate on shooting reflections, but again I found it really hard trying to pull a thread that would fit. I then came up with the idea for aquacosm - roughly translated as "world of water" ( not a kevin costner epic, thankfully! ) and then set about finding different "worlds" where water was the main component - I randomly stumbled accross a working medieval mill in winchester, which was so active and powerful! The following day I found two other sites more locally, an old brick pit which has been converted into a nature reserve, and a gravel pit.

OK, so armed with my footage, how do i edit it? Well, my first action was actually to write a load of poetry that described each scene - after an hour I had enough "reasonable" lines to set half of the film to - so I voiced it and tried it on the timeline, and it just didn't work :-( I decided to play around with some music, and with combination of sony cinescore and a friend's track, I had something with plenty of mood that I was happy to cut to...
And thats it really - It's been quite a rollercoaster ride, as I really struggled with the theme - there were three or four sibjects I would have liked to have covered, but "water" would have not fitted with them. Next time, I'll try to carry no pre-conceptions ;-)

Did I have fun? Oh, YES.

Cheers,

Rob

OK, here's the link:

http://www.uwolchallenge.com/challen..._aquacosms.mov

I'll post a HD version later, and hopefully get round to putting together some of the "making of" footage.......

Good Luck all ;-)

Nicely done Rob:

Excellent editing. Everything fluid (no pun intended!), and nice interplay between water as is and water put to work. Great music selections and timing. You are so tallented! The dragonfly was excellent camera work. Thanks for another great entry.

Cat Russell

rob,

this was an awesome Job!! I really liked the Dragon fly!!! I like the split pespective!!! Good music to match.

OMG! The follow control on the dragonfly was totally amazing!!!! The watermill was wonderful, I thought as a whole your project was incredibly well put together!

Please tell me how you got the dragonfly, oh please please!!!

right on rob!!!!!

excellent, i enjoyed each and every second. your choice of music and the flow were perfect.

thanks for sharing.

brian

Thankyou all, those words mean a lot ;-)

Marco - the dragonfly was pretty hard to get - I found a stretch of water where a single 'fly clearly had it's territory - it was doing 20 yard "racetracks" and only breaking out of this to defend it's territory from other 'flys. As such it was kinda easy-ish to predict it's flight, but saying that I was stood there shooting handheld for about 20 minutes, rolling throughout, and I ended up with about 3 seconds of usable footage. It was worth it ;-)

Cheers,

Rob

Wow, that's beautiful.

Rob,

A superb stand-out piece of work...I have watched it twice and shown my wife as well. What terrific color, pacing and beauty you have captured in this piece.

The dragonfly was great but I was captivated by the waterwheels and rushing water. I cant wait to show my son as he will be enthralled by the music and the wheels turning.

I love the bubble at the end too...

Fantastic as usual

Jeff

Hi Rob.
Great film.
Loved the dragonfly, the waterwheels and the great colors in your film.
Keep on videoing :)

Geir Inge

Hey Rob

You have a great eye for detail and that dragonfly pan....wow ! The waterwheel shots were nicely composed and built up an interesting picture overall picture.

I was suprised by your first 2 shots...both of which were quite low contrast and not overly exciting and I have to say after such a strong premise in your last film I kind of missed it in this one. I know you had mentioned this and boy I know how you feel. I think its a difficult thing to give enough to make things understood and interesting but not start being obvious and spoonfeeding.

Still think 'Kites in the rain' would have been cool ;-) !

Hi Rob,
Congrats on UWOL #3 - fantastic!
I enjoyed watching your film, primarily marveling at the technical excellence.
The dragonfly shot was a real winner and yes, I can imagine the difficulty in getting this shot.
I enjoyed the diversity you presented initially but felt the water wheel sort of stopped the story short?
I am already learning a lot from the approaches you take to your movies and look forward to seeing more of your work.

Rob,
I must say you uk people have a wonderful way to cut film together.
For my eay this was a realy god peace of a film.You have a realy smoot
way to cut the film.And the story was good.

Thanks all for your feedback ;-)

@Mat - quite agree on the low contrast intro, looking at it now I can see exactly what you mean. I played with all the three pieces and it kinda just "came first", and I guess I hadn't thought over the implications of the opening shots - thanks for highlighting it, it's amazing how blind you can become to things sometimes ;-)
Found a place where they're feeding kites, you can get to within 20 feet of them ;-)

@David - yeah, I think TBH i could have shot the whole three minutes on the mill If i'd have thought enough about it - it really was quite a magical place...
I'm very pleased and honoured that you're learning stuff from what I do :-)
Please feel free to check out any of my videos in my online folder http://www.treborsnave.com/video/ - but there's some pretty old and random stuff in there though!!!!

Rob, amazing film as always! You have a really good eye for details and you are also able to show it to your audience.
Most have been commented by the others, the dragonfly pan was nicely done, I have been struggeling with the same some time without any luck!!