Hi Gordon.
Hope you're doing fine and your work on uwol5 is in schedule.
You want some rain?
Well, take a look at the weather forecast for my home town.
Larsnes weather
It's been like this for many weeks now so you're welcome, take all of it :)

There's been just a few glims of the sun now and then letting me film some cutaways. I've also been together with some local hunters (the hunting deer season opened 10.sept) and got lucky shooting a small clip of a deer. Also filmed a squirrel in a tree and a heron in my garden :) So I have to make a twist to my original plan if I'm to come up with a documentary of my mammal.

All the best.
Geir Inge

Wow! Looks like you better be ready to shoot on the 18th! :)

For UWOL#3 I had three shots up until the last day pretty much. A duck, a flower and a mushroom. That last day was a whirlwind of shooting. So hang in there!

I just found out my next free day might not be until the week of Thanksgiving now. Might have to sit UWOL#6 out as well. :(

Yes, I'm not loosing my faith.
Always have a backup plan :)
The worst part is that I'm not able to go to a island where my mammal live almost as wild :(
Sad to hear that you'll miss uwol6 too, I really enjoy your films.

Geir Inge

Well Sony's had my A1U for three weeks now and it's not fixed yet.

Guess I'll dust off my TRV103. I think I still have some Hi8 tapes somewhere. I may be a no show this time, but who knows?

Hope everyone else gets there shots. Watching them is the best learning experience I know.

Man, I thought I'd be in the shark tank for this one. Then, out of the blue, I am gifted with a HUGE mammal surprise (gig) to film on Sunday!!! OH MAN< I won't be able to sleep, this is gonna be GOOOD! Wish I could give it away, but you all will have to wait until it's cut.

Sounds like you have something interesting coming up, Marco.
I'm looking forward to see it.

My project will be a "last minute shot".
The plan is to get most of the shots next weekend.
So far I have only got parts of what I need.

Geir Inge,
Do you still survive all the rain we got lately?
Almost as if we should include a dry suit as standard video equipment these days.

Hi Trond.
Well, can't do much about the weather, rather than talk about it :)
I've never seen so much rain since I was born, as the past weeks.
Today it is some rainclouds, with a few blue spots on the sky.
The rain stops for 5 - 10 min and then it's pouring down again and it's windy.
After all this rain I just have to put some of it in my uwol film, or else it would have been a waste of moaning :)
I've decided to stick to my original plan but with some changes. I don't think this will be my best uwol film, but it's the one I've put most effort to in research, planning, writing manuscript and translating it to English. This part have been fun though, and a challenge itself. There's been a Heron in my garden for some days now, and I think I will use a clip of the bird but she's not the star in my film. I had one day with sunny weather, and then I managed to film a squirrel, so I'll put it in my film as well.
How are you doing?
If you live in Bergen maybe you should visit Nordnes?
Some great water splashing mammals there :)
If it wasn't that far I would go to Langedrag and film some wolf and polar fox.
I mentioned it to Per Johan if Dovre should turn out wrong because of the weather. I'm looking forward to see all the entries in this round.

All the best.
Geir Inge

I live in Haugesund these days, but I'm often back home in Bergen.
But yeah, I know what you mean about the aquarium in Bergen.
I got one sunny day so far during this challenge.
The challenge for me this round is to make a video I basically can't make a script for, or to make any specific plans about what will happen.
Have to catch the good moments as they show up. Hard to tell baby dogs how to behave. (or even to stay in one location long enough to catch them on tape)

Yes, this round will be a great one.
Seems like we will have video about everything from polar bears to not so exotic animals. I can't wait to see all the videos.


Have a nice and productive weekend everyone!!

Hi Geir Inge
Thanks all is well. Yes I would say you're going to have to go right down to the wire on this one by looking at the weather. Hope things will work out for you.
We did get a bit of rain last week and they dropped some restrictions. Got out three days last week. Things started to get interesting Friday evening but I have to work this weekend so I suspect I'm missing out on some good footage. I know I'll hear about it as a number of photographer friends will be there.
Thanks and best of luck.

Gordon Hoffman

Well, well, back from a weekend in the mountains. We are writing middle of September but believe it or not it's almost full winter up there now. Are we talking about a climate change or....!!!???

Last year about the same time I was at the same place. Back then I was laying on a carpet sunbathing in my underwear (no... you ain't got any photos...!)

Luckily I managed to get enough footage to be able to make up my entry. When I woke up today it was snowing heavily, almost 20 cm snow cover on the ground.
Left photo below show a muskox male passing by in a very short distance early in the morning Saturday 15. of September 2007.
Right photo is taken 6 hours later (believe it or not!), almost at the same place showing the beautiful colors in the mountains right now

Great to hear from you Gordon and Per Johan and I'm longing to see your films :)

My film is almost done, but as I've told before, with a little change from original plans.
I was lucky and get to join a local deer hunter some days ago (the deer hunting season started 10. sept), but the clip I got of the deer is a bit dark. I'm joining the hunter again tomorrow or tuesday to see if I can get a better close up of the deer. Also I had to use my cheap Sigma 300mm lense, and the quality wasn't good. I had to tune up the gain and it all get "snowy". This is the one clip I need to finish my film.

Just one week left to deadline guys and gals :)

To Meryem: uploading instructions?

I wish you all - the best.

Geir Inge

Well, done editing and was ready to upload yesterday until I noticed what compression was doing to 2 scenes.

I had just a few hours with Mike and Cinco, once we got to shooting the "incident" sequence we were faced with rapidly changing light due to approaching sunset (with the sun ducking in and out of the edge of a cloud.

I adjusted lighting and white balance on both scenes in post and it looks good in AVI format and on the DVD's burned from the project.

But compression did some weird things with the subtle lighting changes and I got a change to blueish color, then magenta, then a tinge of green. Like a slow strobing effect.

So I've taken most all adjustments out of both scenes, allowing them to go a tad dark which works with the end of the sequence anyway. But sometimes this compression drives me NUTS.

If the render underway works well enough, I'll be uploading shortly.

Edited to Add: Render went fine and upload is underway, about halfway through.

Tip on compression: I'm compressing with QT 7 Pro (Would love Sorenson Squeeze but can't afford it for now). I render out to an AVI in Pinnacle Studio and open that with QT. (Looks great in Windows Media Player but AWFUL in QT)

I select Sorenson 3 video in QT, set the size to 428x240, pick 30fps and set keyframe for every 5 frames (just picked that out of my head today), and then start playing with the quality slider. This morning's render was done at 41 on the slider and the file came out at 48MB. But the keyframe every 5 instead of automatic gave me the best compressed render I've seen come out of QT yet.

Wow Per I love that second image....the first too but that second one has such great colours and lovely contrast. Looking forward to the Musk Ox its been too long since the last episode ;-) !

well shucks, plan A fell through. was out all weekend in the forest, but didnt see even one non-human mammal. too bad the theme wasn't insects though - there were lots of great butterflies, dragonflies, and "ladybugs" where i was.

will have to wait until saturday to implement plan B. still have to come up with a decent story, but I know I'll be able to get footage at least.

Hope you guys are having better luck at it. I wish i had more free time.

Very nice photos, Per Johan!
Reminds me that I have to bring both my shorts and winter clothes when going to Hardangervidden (another mountain plateu in Norway, a bit south of where Per Johan's musk oxes live) this weekend.

I'm looking forward to see your next musk ox film.


Lisa,
Hope your plan B works out.
Saturday will still be "a long time" before deadline. :)