Day in the Life of a Refugee
 

Good Day,


Here is my entry: We started during a barage of harsh weather. I shot most of it over ten days. Then it turned spring. I couldn't shoot more footage or get retakes because it would change the atmosphere I wanted to portray. I chased after two shots, wild gyrfalcons and eagles. The Eagles were to far from any roads to get footage. the gyrfalcon is a wild adult taken with a dslr by my freind Jonny. We had numerous road blocks on this round from computer viruses on two machines, software gliches. and it went on!! I feel real fortunate to get it done at all. Really, being I kind of promoted this how could I not get something in? I almost had to go to the public library and use movie maker.

Rule 11 prevailed out in the field!! 100 miles one way to the eagle/gyrfalcon spot and we made four trips. Saw some amazing birds.

I hope you enjoyed the short story. I had a lot more I could do but time is the primary barrier so we kept it simple to a single plot.




dale

Hi Dale,
Yet another nice bird film from you. :)
I like the story you tell, interesting to learn about your part of the world too.

The clip beginning at 0:43 of the bird on the ground appears a little "washed out".
As if the contrast is a little low. Have you tried playing with the levels? Maybe this could help a bit? Anyway, just a detail, no big deal.

Loved the shots of the deers and the rabbit running in the snow.

Well done!

Good afternoon Dale

Great piece you have in this one.
I have always admired people who can tell a story, and you have a good story.
Is that a Snowy owl (Arctic owl)? If so you are some lucky guy being able to see those beautyfull birds. I envy you the posabilaty to capture them on tape - just awesome.
They also apears in the norwegian mountains but for the last years there have been fewer and fewer of them. I guess it has to do with food, how much mice and lemmings there are in the mountains?

Best of luck
Geir Inge

Trond,

the image at 43 is in farely heavy fog. I messed about with gamma and curves but they did not help the picture in a manner that stayed with the atmosphere, cold a bleak. I actually shot about 30 minutes of footage with differing exposures to get that one shot. Definitely low contrast stuff which i decided to keep throughout the video.
You must work at a really nice spot!!!!
Geir,

the owl is assuredly a snowey owl. It took quite a few miles and time to finally get a shot of one hunting and with the kill, of course it was mid day as you could no doubt tell!!! Go figure, those birds do not do what i want when I want, or at all at times!!! Of course that is the challenge of shooting truly wild animals.

thank you both for taking the time!!

Dale

Dale, first of all thanks for coordinating this event. I would say that I was a little shocked at the beginning of your film. However it all came together, and the birds finding their nook and cranny, surviving in a very harsh environment was humbling. One of my kids wondered why the raindeer weren't flying. I especially liked the slow-mo of the rabbit, it was like a Disney show.

Ah, the fog explains it all. I didn't realize it was fog until you mentioned it. Makes what you did impressive. I have tried filming in the fog a lot of times, but the results have varied a lot.

Dale:
I have watched your video several times. I know you have a good story, but it is hard to comprehend.
The last section about the Grey Partridge ("rapphøne" in Norwegian) I totally understand after realizing that the animals were shown because they were helpful about the food.
Interesting and well done.
I will be appreciated if you can explain the connection between the Hungarian refugee in the beginning and the Grey Partridges.
I think my Norwegian brain needs some help here. Is that just a game with words?
According to Wikipedia, this partridge is not named Hungarian (...) in German, French or Swedish. Hungary is only referred to by those who speak English.
The text at start: Who are those who saw and who/what are those who died?

Are your slow motion shot with your HDV camera?
I am not able to get that impressing result from my HDV camcorder and Final Cut.

As a guitar-player I like listening to your playing.
My honor to you because you instead of making a sunny Sunday film made a film in hard winter time with no sunshine. That's realism!

Finn-Eric,

The Partridge in Hungary is where our partridge originated from. I call them refugees because of the fact that due to farming practices and other abuses the Hungarian Partridge does not prevail there like it did in the past. Hence, the 25 sent this direction (displaced partridges) have prevailed here in spite of hardships, like weather and predators as well as other abuses. geneticly a "Grey Partridge" is a Hungarian Partridge. Some gentetic pools do not have the red Belly patches, hence the term Grey partridge. Our Huns geneticly have both types in the same covies. Some people think it is a sex thing but that is incorrect. Also some people call birds Partridge that in fact not partridge at all. It is all confusing to the uninitiated.

The slow motion was not done in post, it was done in camera (Sony fx 1000) the flying shots were shot the same way as well. the camera only allows for 6 seconds of footage to be shot at a faster frame rate, I believe it is about 240 frames a second. that is why I did not get the owl killing the Partridge, ran out of time. It is still a nice feature even if limited.

As for the music, I was going to smart sound it but could not get a consistant sound though out that pleased my ear. So I just sat down at he computer and tinkered around for awhile and just tried to make some ambient background music to cover lulls in natural audio (was not much) that did not overly distract from it, and it is also copyright free, eh? I have always had trouble with audio as I am slightly hard of hearing from my miltary days and a career as a shop teacher. I worked harder on this one with the audio. For fun at the end (credits) I put in Dale's recent ( took me a couple days to pick out) improvisation of "fiddler on the roof" which I thought was kind of fitting for the life that these little birds live. Everything I played I played in the Key of D and some of it is just nonsense music I pick out spontaniously. Hope I didn't abuse peoples ears to much!! For some reason the way it sounds in my head is always different than it sound when recorded, go figure, eh? LOL!!!

It was quite cold when filming.

We did have lots of fun building it.

It has inspired me to make a fully featured video on the Partridge. Starting this spring and will try to do a year in the life of a Partridge. This will allow me to get better footage and not just what i can get during the challenge.


Dale