Hunting The Hard Way, Long Form
 

Good afternoon,

I have been working hard at getting good footage, have about 5 hours of tape and a tad of useful stuff for the third segment.

The document is a comment on base objectives and base outline. (some occurred quite awhile back in tales of wonder and woe.

the title is still up in the air.


I will place a link to some video clips called glimmers, rough takes of some footage.

Most of the shooting will take place may through October, so it has been important for me to get some winter footage for the last segment.

When I finish it is to be run as a short series on a canadian station.

This is a password protected video on Vimeo

password: uwoluser


The above is a link to three my three minutes. this is a 66 mgbyte file, the one I am trying to upload is 50.

I have four hours of footage to choose from so I submitted these.

they are only rough cuts and the music is just thrown on to make silent film more amusing for you.

these clips are for part three.

will not start filming part one until April at the soonest.

I hope these are found amusing if nothing else.

Dale, facinating to watch the hunting falcon. I believe that this is not a easy task in this tough and cold environment. Could almost feel the biting wind from just watching.

How is your equipment working in these conditions? I've provided you with some preset for the H1 in my feedback thread - http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/1015885-post12.html

Stay warm, Dale!

Hi Dale.
Great footage of the falcon.
Also like your plan as I read your script (manus).
Congratulation with the deal, showing the serie on a local TV station.
Looking forward to see more.

All the best.
Geir Inge

Hi Dale,
That footage looks great. As Per has noted, it looked very cold! This will certainly be a great insight into falconry for me as i don't know very much at all on the subject. Cogratulations on the tv deal, that must be very exciting for you! This is certainly a project i am looking forward to seeing in its final form.
Regards,
Bryce

Good afternoon,


Per Johan:
The H1 is another learning curve, not to bad coming from the xl2. I love some of the images I have got with it, unbelievable to be honest. I was having trouble trying to get a preset that was as solid as the one in my xl2 and just could not get it.

Today I put your preset in, went out for some test shots and I am totally pleased. It is much better than my other efforts and is a little richer than my xl2 which suits me just fine!!! thank you ever so much, once again.

I had not shot with my fu1000 on it as I had it blow the fuse on my xl2 (cord got pulled ever so slightly moving it). My winter shoots for the long form were all to be one shot affairs with no repeats, so I went with the standard evf until today, I just could not afford to not get the footage due to a mishap!! Today I put the fu 1000 on and boy what a difference!!! I am still not sure about the combination of both peaking aspects.

focus is ahuge issue I have to better master. Particularly on high flying falcons stooping at horendous speeds. My biggest issue is the pixelating of the sky when I compress it!!!

do you shoot 60I or 30 F?

Curiously: what frequency and brightness do you use on the peaking 1? I have not found 2 to be of use yet or i do not know what it is about. the magnify works just fine for close and static shots.

The idea of running the two mics and setting for different audio levels is a great idea!!! Select the one track and delete the other. I will try that one on when I go to the Leks in a month.

Yes it was brutally cold at time out filming, unrelenting wind has made it real difficult even when it was a balmy -10.

the Polar bear while expernsive new, I just happened to stumble into one for sale in our classifieds!! Score!! and it is heaven sent!!

thank you for sharing!!!

Geir: thanks for the comments. I only hope I can complete with enough good footage to do the job.
We are having fun!!! I think, at least when I get out of the cold and look at what we got.

I heared about your blown fuse. Luckily it have never happen to me, knock on wood!
What I do when using the FU-1000, is to turn peak OFF on your camcorder. Instead set your zebra levels to between 90-100. The zebra levels help you to expose your footage in a good way. If zebra levels is set to 100, all footage with zebras is burned out and you cant't resque it in post. Therefor I set zebra to 90, when zebra occure I know that those areas are about to burn out. Then on the FU-1000 you got a peak knob which you turn to adjust the peaking levels. This require some practice to get used to!
There can be a bit diffucult at once when you're looking into your evf, with zebras and peaking set both to ON. But after a while you'll not shoot without them!

I do mostly with autofocus set to OFF. I'm not happy with this future at all. If your target is a bit out of centre the autofocus start to hunt. I think I could see a short sequence in your footage in the flight scene of the falcon that focus was very soft!?
Well, I'm in PAL-land so I shoot mostly in 50i I dont't like 25p. Some complains about compression interlaced footage for the web, but I don't have much problem with it. Think my films are pretty well, without any interlace artifacts?

I don't understand your question her Dale? Also see my answer above about peaking and zebras

Your project looks very interesting. I am looking forward to your lessons for learning.
Your three minutes foretaste is fascinating. The shot where you follow the diving falcon down to the man and the road is fabulous.

Finn-Erik

i love the falcon concept, i'd probably shorten up the long shots, we want to see their faces! good start...

Good evening,


Meryem, I promise to have lots of close ups and some unique shots of cute to deadly behavior.

Fin, I am glad you enjoyed it, when I am finished it will have all the fundementals in it and I hope people will better understand the links between man and beast, so to speak.

Per Johan,

On the camera peaking you can go into display set up and set the brightness of the peaking and also set the frequency to make the peaking far more obvious. I am not sure what Frequency does however. I tried what you mentioned and i do not get as visible a peaking as the camera peak. I may not have it adjusted properly yet, still tinkering at it.

Falcon filming is over for the winter here. I will be practicing a lot to make sure I get far better footage this summer and fall!!!
I was trying to film a white falcon a week ago and focus was nearly impossible in the sky!!! Darker birds are much easier.

I have worked with falconers from time to time, especially for stills photography. It's quite a challenge to film such fast-moving birds - I have only tried it at a falconry display when the birds were flying to a lure and so not going great distances.

I also watched your video on Vimeo showing the different time stretches. If only there was a guaranteed way of losing that wing-flicker!! I think the speed of wing-beat has much to do with it, and with falcons changing their wing-beat rate according to what they are doing, there will be no easy answer - unless your camera will do a faster frame-rate than 60i or 25p.

I like you idea Dale and look forward to seeing more footage.
For me some of the wide shots are a bit to wide especially when there is only blue sky behind.

Dale,
I admire you for this one! I think you must be braver than me for taking on a project of this scope with a new camera and a deadline. More power to you! Actually, I’m watching with great interest on the new camera front because I hope to be in the same boat soon. I really like your falconry topic. Besides being interesting and just plain fun to watch, people tend to forget how important falconry has been to science. So many problems could never have been looked into without the help of a trained and patient bird. If you can, tell us more about the broadcast deal. I think we’d all like to hear the “inside” story. I wish you could broadcast it down here. Falconers have taken a bad rap around here because of the antics of a couple of “bad eggs”. (Sorry about the pun.)

Mike,

I met the producer two years ago when he saw some footage of mine at a wildlife expo. We talked about making a 15 minute spot which I more or less let go. when the long form got started I contacted him (he was still keen) and he put me in touch with the guy in charge of programming and I laid out my concept for him. Pretty straight forward.

Yes, every endeavor has its unethical individuals that mess it up for others!!

Without falconry and Falconers the recovery of the anatum Peregrine would have never happened. That is an entire story worth producing at some time!!


Mihali: I will definitely be reducing the amount of shear climbing in the sky. I will also be working at closer shots while in action but this is extreme shooting!!! a blink and you miss it all, no shot!

Annie,

Filming falcons in pursuit is the hardest thing I do!!!

The speed of wing beats makes proper wing movement more difficult to get right.

new camera thoughts:


I thought about the ex 3 as it can be over cranked to 60fps (only in 720 p) but after much research I decided the cmos ccd's would not be optimal for much of my filming. In the end I went for the xlh1 and I do not regret it for my wildlife filming. I do not like it for filming in underlight sport arena's!!! I still use the xl2 for that!!

Per Johan has been helpful in my getting things right !!! as well as an inspiration.



thank you all for taking the time and sharing ideas

My god it looks cold there! It cannot be easy filming in the cold like that.

How is it following the falcon with your camera? It seemed like you were able to keep up with the flying bird no problem. Are you using a big monitor? You must have a nice tripod and head as well because it seemed really smooth.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with for the final piece.