UWOL #13 "In Perfect Order" - Marj Atkins
 

This video was really fun to make after working on the Uwol long form movie. It seemed to go so quickly for some reason.

It is related in a way to the long form film, because I need to put every bit of time towards finishing that project. However, I will only be using the video footage from this - not the narration and graphics.

When I first started it I thought it really would have been useful if I could have used some of the footage of bees that I took for the Long form video during the summer. However, 'rules is rules' and I had to make do with what I could get now. As it turned out I feel I ended up with a more interesting story because of the limitations of winter - or rather a story with a slightly different angle to the norm. It is a bit tight for my liking but hopefully not unnecessarily.

The compression process did not like my graphic for some reason and there is a slight crackle on the sound at that spot. Not sure how to solve that problem other than take it into Audition at some stage and sort it there.

I am currently experiencing trouble with uploading my work to the Uwol Challenge site but hopefully my video will be there a bit later via the long route.

In the meantime here is a link to the Vimeo version - please view # 4 version "In Perfect Order" - not # 5 14_UC13_Inperfectorder" which is a smaller version I have put up for Kevin:

In Perfect Order on Vimeo

Marj, beautiful and very well done! You got so good narrating, very easy to understand and well explained! Your footage is very nice and razor crisp. The graphics part was very nice too. You have teached me a lot of your secret world of patterns and behaviours of different species.

Very well done!

Marj,
I love your macro work. Your editing skills are really good. There were a couple of spots in the voice-over where you sounded rushed to get through the material. This was very enjoyable to watch. The Buzz is that it’s a contender!

I love it! I am a sucker for macro work. What did you shoot this with? You got some great shots! There was a jump cut at 1:25 or so that I noticed, and the audio seems to clip for me (it may be vimeo, or my sound card possibly, not sure) and those are my only two little constructive criticisms. :)

I love your narration voice as well, and the choice of music. Also, using the graphics to illustrate the shapes was a very nice polishing touch. Great job!

I am relieved to say that my video is finally uploaded to the Uwol challenge site. My thanks to Kevin and Mat for sorting it.

Appreciate your comments Per, Mike and Carl. Glad you like it.

Carl - I used a Canon Macro lens - 100mm, 1:2.8 attached to my XL2.

It's Marj, so it has to be bugs, I thought! And I do love bees.

There's some great macro work in there Marj, and the story is well told. You have started with a good script and the footage matches it well (either that or you got very lucky), and it is very easy to watch and be informed - and the quality of those close-ups is remarkable, I love the colouring.

Looks like Finn MacCool had the same idea as the bees when it came to building the Giant's Causeway from my video - hexagons rule! I find it remarkable again that nature can make such regular geometrical shapes.

Nice film, very well done.

Marj,
As always, your film is clean, well formed and informative.
It is easy to understand and the macro footage is impressing.

Thanks for your kind comments Mike and Finn-Eric.

Mike I haven't watched any of the videos yet - but will do so shortly when my bandwidth is replenished. Funnily enough I was looking at pictures of the giant's causeway a couple of weeks back and was wondering how I could fit in a trip to Ireland - perfect for my long form video - and here you come with a film on it! I think it will be the first one I'll watch- even though I know it will just make me green!

Marge,


Great job!! I see a 26 minute documentary for discovery channel in the works!!

You have an exlim ex1 as i recall, right? Was thinking some of them flying in while shooting super slow motion,set in a pip would be great addition!!! I am not saying anything was wrong with it!!

the opening shot was refreshing to me!!! beautiful and someone else with a little wind effecting the image.

Very much enjoyed!!! some fabulous shots to be certain!!!

Excellent example of how to pack a lot of information into a short time. Some nice long clips of the bees that gave the narration space to give all that information - I think too many short clips plus that narration may have overwhelmed the viewer. Looking at it a second time (I got interrupted a few times) I wondered if there were perhaps too many shots of the empty cells, but I don't know what else you could have shown while talking about the shapes.

Great stuff.

All I can say Marj is Wow!

Add any word that means wow, great, fantastic and add a few !!!!'s to it and that's all I have to say about it!. :)

Thanks for your comments everyone.

I have come to the conclusion, however, that some things are just not meant to be. It suddenly dawned on me last night that not only did I make a total mess up of my upload but that in the general confusion (mine) around it I compounded the problem even further by accidentally uploading the wrong file to the Uwol site - I uploaded the 80MB file I had created for Vimeo which takes into consideration the compression they apply to it.

I have uploaded the correct one now and asked Mat to swop them out so that folk don’t have an unnecessarily big file to download but basically I have disqualified myself from this round.

The moral of the story - don’t do things in a hurry because you are sure to make some really silly mistakes.

And silly mistakes rarely come singly, do they? Yesterday I had the opportunity to go out onto an army training range, and grabbed the two bags that should have had all the camera (stills and video) gear. I got dropped off at one end of the range, and just took the video gear. First time I went to use it, i discovered the battery was dead because I hadn't turned the camera off last time I used it. Put in the spare battery only to realise too late that the velcro had come off (non-Canon batteries aren't easy to get out of a Canon XH-A1). I did some filming, and then much later discovered I'd switched to full manual instead of shutter priority, and everything was over-exposed. I hadn't noticed because of the glare of sunlight on the LCD screen (eye problems mean I can't use the viewfinder easily). At one point I noticed a zip had worked its way loose (I hadn't done it up properly) so I closed it. When I wanted to record skylarks singing I couldn't find my recorder, so had to assume it had fallen out and therefore I had to retrace my steps to look for it. The recorder might be replaceable but it contained a card with recordings (including two days of survey work) that hadn't been downloaded yet. And also I wouldn't have another chance to get back onto the range for some time. I didn't find it until I got home - it hadn't actually got as far as my camera bag.

ok, Marj, now I've got that off my chest, I hope you don't feel too bad about your "silly mistakes". And I hope I don't get things quite so wrong when I get to South Africa in September - in theory I've plenty of time to plan for it!

I switched the files Marj. I would think as long as they haven't gone to judging yet you should be ok.

Oh boy Annie - what a day you had! At least my silly mistakes wern't work-related and critical.

Thanks Kevin for doing that - I will be happy with Meryem's decision either way because this was entirely of my own doing.