I shot this last week and finally finished editing. You will see a small amount of movement as it's shot from the deck of a bass boat. Much of it is shot at full Telephoto on the A1. The location is about 10 miles south of Washington D.C. The river is the Potomac, the creek is the Mattawoman and the state is Maryland.

I would appreciate your comments. This is 7 minutes and about 250MB so right click and save as, but be paitent. Grab a coffee and come back...

http://www.potomacbass.com/otherimages/mattawomanproject2.wmv

A1/Vegas/24f/Panalook - only two of the short clips are color corrected.

-Jonathan

Absolutely amazing!! The download was/is absolutely worth it. And I appreciate this clip especially, because you didn't use brevises, letuses or other adapters and zoomlenses (or did you?). So basically, everyone owning an A1 or G1 should be able to reproduce this look and feel, right?

Loooved it to bits. Thanks for posting.

That's correct. Stock lens out of the box. This is the first thing I've done with the A1. I had an DVX which I shot my fishing videos with previously. When I shoot with this cam and then put together hi-def images (even if only available in computer format) it really is exciting. This is a whole different level compared to the DVX. The great thing about shooting nature is that your just holding the camera and it's (he's) doing the hard part.

-Jonathan

I love it too. Amazing detail.
For handheld in a boat, it's really steady.
Great work!

Jonathan,
Lovely footage, enhanced by nice choice of music; where did the music tracks come from?
Rgds, Ross.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Extremely well done.

Butifule work Jonathan
I love Wildlife-film

Jonathan,

Very nice work. I was especially fond of the shots where you were drifting by in the boat. These scenes were very smooth.

Regards,

nicely composed. Just wondering what you have for an computer and software set up. I am just getting into video after many years in photography and want to get an idea of how long it took to produce this wonderful piece. How many hours were you on the location and how many hours to make this short film.

Inquiring minds want to know

Gregg

Extremely Amazing!! Really thank you so much!!

I see almost no CA in your movie. What is the magic?

Stunning!

I too would love if you could share some info on settings, editing software, the hardware (computer) you're using, etc.

Great work!

Johnathan,

A truely beautiful film, all the elements blend in so well together.
Congratulations

Bob Thompson
Hong Kong

Thanks guys.

Here are some answers to questions asked...

It took me one morning about 3 hours to shoot. All done on the same morning. I shot from the deck of my bass boat with a tripod. Some of the shots were zoomed in at 20x and they are the ones that pick up some of the rocking action of the boat. I also had some bad pans and blew a few great shots that I wasn't able to include in the final edit. I used the Panalook preset that Steven Dempsey has so nicely created. That preset is available in this forum under the presets thread. I will be using his VIVIDRGB preset in the future.

I did the editing in the program Sony Vegas 7 which works well for HDV video. It probably took me about 2-3 hours total to edit to my satisfaction. I had to level a few shots, center a few animals (to make them steady and in the middle of the screen) and steady a few shots. I added a little warmth to two short clips to match the other shots but really the color was just what the camera captured. I didn't white balance the camera that morning as i liked the look I had when I turned on the camera. It looked pretty warm to my eye. The machine I use is an AMD dual core X2 4200 with 2 gigs of RAM. Nothing special by todays standards.

A Photography and printing backgroud goes a long way in giving you an eye for video. I love photography and do large format printing for artists. I'm no video expert for sure... But with the new HDV cams it sure is fun.

-Jonathan

..and where did you find the music tracks..?
very appropriate, to my ear..
Thx, Rgds, Ross.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ross,

Sorry for missing your question.

The music is created and recorded by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in Brooklyn, NY. The music and other literature they put out is not for sale. As a matter of fact I got the disc on a voluntary donation basis through my religious organization, but the two tracks I included are favorites of mine. Since these tracks are not sold anywhere I'm sure it would not be approved for any paid video work.

-Jonathan

Hi Jonathan
excellent work! Very beautiful movie.
I know this music!
Bye bye my 'brother'...

Lino

Jonathan,

Very nice piece of work, reminded me of some of my own stuff. I hate to be critical but I will offer this one piece of advice... Many of your shots were way too long in my opinion, particularly with the music. Maybe it's just me but there were a few instances where I just heard musical cues where I thought an edit should be. Anyway, that's just a personal thing and not to take away from the lovely camera work.

Keep it up :)

Thanks Steven

Yes the music was a bit of an afterthought. I had pieced the cuts and shots in the way I thought they flowed best visually and then threw the music over top. Then made a few adjustments to the lengths just to get the music and video to fit. I really threw it together pretty fast.

I may go back and do a second edit with more regard to the music.

Thanks for the good advice... I'll post back if I modify the edit.

-Jonathan



Jonathan,

Very nice piece of work, reminded me of some of my own stuff. I hate to be critical but I will offer this one piece of advice... Many of your shots were way too long in my opinion, particularly with the music. Maybe it's just me but there were a few instances where I just heard musical cues where I thought an edit should be. Anyway, that's just a personal thing and not to take away from the lovely camera work.

Keep it up :)

Hey man this is some beautiful stuff.. i really like the fog in a couple of those scenes its really nice how the cam can capture that stuff so well...


-Sam~!