Here is my film for UWOL 18. In this one I was experimenting with with the Canon T2i.

A Wetlands Portrait on Vimeo


YouTube version here:

YouTube - A Wetlands Portrait (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVo4gjLH0tk)

Chris, very nice scenes from the wetland. I liked best the sequence of the Heron and the Cranes, reminds me of Hornborgasjöen in Sweden where the Cranes stops for a rest on the migrating during the spring.

Your footage is very rich saturated and colorful, did you color correct any in post?
I would have liked some slow pans and tilts in the scenery sequences in the beginning. It was a bit stationary.

One more thing, what kind of lensed did you use?

Nice color Chris, is that straight out of the camera or with correction? I see Per is asking the same thing.
We have some Herons over here, they make the strangest noise when they start whooping.
A nice relaxing film.

A lovely portrait, Chris. You really give a feeling for the place. I especially liked that you shot most everything at close to ground level. A little less color saturation would have been good.

I shoot most of my stuff in a real flat setting on the camera. Normally I use adjust levels to get the image where I want it. I used Cineform to convert and edit in. And this time I used Cineforms FirstLight to give the footage a color treatment, selecting film style 5246 from their LUTs. I tried also had to correct the Blue Heron shot, as I accidentally had camera set for indoor lighting...

Hi Chris,

Very much enjoyed watching. Have to agree maybe slightly oversaturated, but it does make the scenes vibrant

Mick

Nice portrait Chris!

what type of lenses did you use? that would have been nice with some closer shots and pans...
I never been much of a birdman, but as long as the shot contain water I'm happy ;)

Hi Chris. Another great video from you. Thanks for sharing your post production workflow, maybe we should make it a requirement to state exactly what we did when we post the thread. I always learn a lot from that and I certainly have a lot to learn from you. Perhaps you could expound on your real flat camera settings? Thanks.

Chris,

First, I love the color. Also, I have seen lots of natural light that looked as rich as your video. In this regard I think it is spectacular.

The start seems a little slideshow like, but at 42 things start moving real nice. I loved the great blue heron.

The cranes, I get thousands of them here every fall. I love them and spend a lot of time watching them. I have seen them establish pecking order etc., but I have never seen them doing the jumping game that you have on film!! Are they resident young birds or are they fall migrants? Is the jumping a preflight warm up???

I thought the duck/coot flying off into the black would have made a cool ending!!

First rate as usual.

thank you for taking the time!!!!!

1. For the wild life shots, most were taken using a Vivitar 80 -205 mm zoom lens, Nikon mount, doubled with a Nikon 2x adapter. In 35 mm camera terms, considering the APC sensor on the camera, the zoom was effectively 240mm to 700 mm or so.

2. For most of other shots, I used a 28mm to 80 mm Takumar zoom, adapted from the Pentax K mount on that lens. For the wide shot at the end, I believe I used the kit 17-55 mm a full wide.

3. For the flat camera setting on the T2i, I used the Neutral picture style, then from there, ramped down sharpness, contrast and saturation to. I don't have camera here, so I can't check exact settings.
Its been my experience that by doing this, I can preserve some additional shadow a highlight detail.

4, What the cranes were up to, I am not sure. I just started following these birds in the last year, and this is first time I had seen it, but this is also closer than I had ever been. I assumed it was some sort of mating ritual or a means of establishing a pecking order, but have not researched it. They were not getting ready to fly off. The cranes were filmed at a privately funded refuge near Lodi, California from a designated viewing area.

Hi Chris

Looks like a nice wetland habitat and some lovely views of it. I'm a little unsure of what to think about the editing on this one. On one hand you had lots of very similar types of shot which I wouldn't usually think was good. However in the context of your multi-facetted 'portrait' it did kind of work. I think it could have been made stronger with the use of slider shots for instance, blending into one another and creating a sort of travelling view of the place and looking at things in more detail along the way. I think it also lacked close-ups and this maybe down to available reach. I really liked some of the Crane footage and I'd have loved tighter close-ups on these guys. On the whole a nice piece with a flavour I can't quite put my finger on but having the basis of something I really like. Sorry....I bet that sounds really confusing :-/ !

Hi Chris,

This was so pieceful and I enjoyed watching your video.
Personally I like the rich colors you have.
A little more close ups of the birds would be fantastic, and maybe a bit panning or tilting in the beginning to give a feeling of a little motion would be good.
I like what you made! Looking forward to your next video.

Matt: Yeah, I threatened to take the slider out there. I had just built one of the IGUS DIY versions, and should have, but a few things mitigated against it. ( Like a very sore back not letting me carry much into the field.)

Trond: Actually did some panning shots, but none of them good enough. As far as closer shot of birds, I could have taken a 400 MM Vivitar that I had, but I my original thought was this was going to be generally a wide shot detail of the wetlands. When these opportunities showed up though, I had to take advantage of them.

Hi Chris:

Nice to have you with us this round!

Beautiful footage of beautiful wildlife, a statement of what God has laid before you and the equipment in hand. But with all the love I can muster I have to say that for all its wonder, it fell short of what I have seen you do in wildlife film. I have been a student of your passion in film. I have taken some of the techniques that you have come up with that so moved me and applied them when I could to my own work. You are someone who weaves emotion and story into their films! I felt little connection between one clip to the next, as if you were laying on a table very beautiful post cards of a wild and exotic place but without a thread, a connection, a theme, a passion. It wasn't a Chris B. film that I have come to know and love.

I am an encourager at heart and spread lots of grace, but I also cannot write what is untrue in my heart.

Thankfully, I am not the judge of these films. Just a friend who wants to see the best of what I know you can do!

Beg to differ? Lay it on, I'll listen to everything you have to say!

Cat

Chris,

Very beautiful footage. The music selection was perfect. In one scene I think I heard the faint sound of some birds; it would have been nice to have a bit more of that. Overall I liked the colors they were definitely punchy, but I think it fit well. I did notice (I viewed the judging copy) that at about 2:38 the scene is not cropped the same as the remainder of the video.

As I recall you use Sony Vegas. Have you upgraded to Vegas 10? It does a nice job with the Canon footage without transcoding.

Cat: Ultimately, with a lot of the shots, I stuck with a portrait theme to follow the intimate detail theme. I went with static shots to give the viewer a chance to see the detail in the wetlands, rather than go with heavy panning and zooming. Each shot had some minute motion, but it wasn't obvious, and the viewer had to actually look for it in the scene. A ripple of water here, as slight movement of a reed, etc. The bird life was something that caught the moments too, so I included them. Probably a bit to disjointed for you, and in retrospect, I could have arranged the scenes a bit different.

Rich: I do have Vegas 10. But what I believe Cineform has on board adds to my editing experience. For instance, treating all the footage with film look was as easy as selecting all the footage and applying it in first light. After finding the look I liked, I applied it in ten seconds. No rerendering. ( If you do that in Magoc Bullet Film Looks, your render takes half a day.) Then it was there on all the footage when I went into Vegas. From there I did my edit. Cineform also holds up to additional color correct better that the capture codec, and that has always been the prime reason to convert to Cineform. You can get a free trial of Cineform. FirstLight comes with the NeoHD version and better, so it isn't in the cheapest version, NeoScene. Give it a look.

Chris,
I enjoyed your relaxed T2i video. The best part is the two last minutes. Choice of music and the lack of close-ups preserve the tranquillity. It is not always necessary to exploit all technical possibilities. Maybe it is a bit oversaturated, but that is just my personal sense.

Well this was a wonderfully relaxing film to watch. I am a real sucker for the wide format and shots of landscapes with horizontal bands of colour and texture - especially saturated colour like you have!

Some really stunning views of the wetland Chris. Really enjoyed watching this.

Hey Chris

I'm sure I've seen better flims from you, so I'll put the occasional judder down to the experimentation with your Canon. Because people have commented on my tendency to use static shots, I now notice when other people do it too. But from other comments, I get the feeling that static shots are better than panning shots from a DSLR. Some natural sounds would have been nice, but the music was relaxing. However, there were a couple of transitions near the beginning that jarred a bit, and would probably have been better if they had happened at a beat in the music instead of between beats.

Your answers about workflow are interesting, and as Mike said, perhaps we should all be expected to provide such details on our feedback threads.

Overall, a nice piece.

" I get the feeling that static shots are better than panning shots from a DSLR "

I'm not sure why you'd think that ? - You can put a DSLR in motion fine, just keep it fluid and make sure your output is ok!

I don't have any doubt that I can put my DSLRs in moition, whether on a slider, a jib, or a dolly track. I have done it successfully in past. I considered it for this film, and I have a jib, a slider and a dolley, but then, that would make it look like everyone elses.

My apparently failed attempt to to give most of the shots a static portrait feel, with relatively little motion. The still waters were somewhat in motion, the reeds and leave bent by the winds. The late evening shots captured the stillness of the approaching evening, with just slightest movement.

It been pointed out that my camera was shakey in a couple of shots, and I agree that I should have taken better precautions with the wind. That didn't help things in this film..