FINALLY.. Our first wildlife documentary...
 

Whaleshark - Lord of the sea

http://www.docuwild.com/feature.php
or direct link

http://hubba.is-a-geek.net/video/wsdonedv.wmv

15 min, 150 megs WMV (though it will stream if you just click on it =). Im adding smaller versions as soon as they are done encoding.

Some production facts:

Shot on a TRV900, Ikelite UW housing at the Ningaloo reef, Exmouth, NW Australia.

All shots featuring whalesharks were shot by freediving (thats without scubagear) and acompanying a normal whaleshark tour. Ie. no rented boats.

Total crew on location: 1

Audio commentary is by the photographer (and producer) who is not a professional voice actor (which will show :).

Total footage was seven 60 min Mini-DV tapes.

It was edited on FCP 3, Run through Magic Bullet for 25p plus i rented a little Combustion time aswell for some grain removal.

3D was done with 3D Studio Max and the whaleshark model was built from scratch by the Producer and our 3D artist. Its quite detailed.

Hope you enjoy it and please add any comments here :)

I know i personally would have loved to get some more human connections (interviews, location footage) in there. But alas the cameraman / producer never thought of that when he was down there.

(and for you who don't want to watch the 15 min and wait for the credits, i did the editing, audio, post and general packaging)

Regards,
Henrik

Added 3 new sizes, lowest weighing in at 67 Megs followed by 97 and 127 megs. All quicktime Mpeg4.

http://hubba.is-a-geek.net/video/wsdonedv3.mp4 (67)
http://hubba.is-a-geek.net/video/wsdonedv2.mp4 (97)
http://hubba.is-a-geek.net/video/wsdonedv.mp4 (127)

Comments appreciated (for those of you without 56k's =)

/Henrik

Hi Henrik,

I really would love to see your film, but when I tried to play it I only got a window stating that I downloaded a text file. What am I doing wrong here, can you help me out please?

Ivan

ok. that may happen (especially on the mac for some reason). You can either right click and select "save source as" (ctrl + click on the mac) and save it to disk.

This means you have to go to the site (and not use the direct links i provided above).

http://www.docuwild.com/feature.php

Use that one.

/Henrik

Hey there... I'm downloading your 170 mb version, but this isn't
going very fast (10kb/s on average). Already 5 hours into download
and 2,5 hours remaining (according to my download program).

If you want to stream this you are in for a long wait. Unless
something is wrong on my end...

OK Henrik,

Thanks for the reply. I will try to do it like you said to me, but I hope it won´t take as long as Rob told in his reply.

Ivan

The stream part needs a very fast connection. Which is why i put up some smaller ones aswell. The 170 meg is of course the best looking, but the smaller mp4 versions are not bad either.

And even with 67 megs its a hefty download. I dont have the means of producing anything worth looking on that is smaller than that though. And to see 2 blue pixels blob around and call it a whaleshark isn't exactly enjoyable :)

Thanx for downloading it =)

/Henrik

I downloaded your documentary last night (170MB in little more than 2 hours), and I had the opportunity to watch it this evening.

Jag gillade den mycket! (Swedish for: I liked it very much!)

Beeing a man who loves watching wildlife films, I enjoyed watching this production. Beautiful film and great editing, and I thought the animation sequences was very well done too.

You mentioned the narrator was not a professional. Based on that fact I think he did a very good performance. You also wanted more human connections, and I think that would have been great, but this is just a minor lack.

Well done to you all, and good luck in the future!

Ivan

I tried downloading the smallest file and it was going at a steady rate of 3 KB/sec. Which would take 9 hours or so. I would love to see it but this was just too slow for me to bare on a 93 MB file. Maybe I will let it download over night!

Very nice. Lovely colours. The shot selection is good. Impressive video quality.

You are right about the narration; it is flat. I don't think the problem is that serious because North American viewers might find the accent interesting in itself.

I found the music was a bit much. I don't mind the melody but I thought it could have been cut back by half.

Henrik,

I'd love to watch it...and have tried downloading all the links above. All I get is pages and pages of code when I click any of the links. Any Mac users out there have any idea how I can watch this?

John,

Go here and you'll go to his site. Then right click and hold on the link you want to download. A pop-up window will appear and select download target (or something similar) and save it to your desktop.

OOoooo Comments =)

Thank you all for commenting on it. Some more info on the creation process:

Just about every shot was slowed down to minimize jittering. Since we shot it without scubagear and Whalesharks are very fast swimmers, it was a matter of constantly swimming to keep up. This made a lot of shots quite jumpy and had to to be smoothed out.

The voiceover was recorded in my apartement (in the hallway actually) since i did not have access to a soundstudio at the time. I used a rhode NT3 microphone and captured into Logic Audio. It was then cut up into the parts we wanted to use, and synced with the images inside Logic. The audio was then exported and used as a separate track in FCP where we then added the music tracks. Everything was then exported back out and run through the mastering plugins (Waves) to get the levels right.

There is a shot (which occurs twice) where there is another fairly large shark just beneath the whaleshark. This second shark is not a Whaleshark (maybe some oceanic spieces of shark, its a bit hard to tell) and the people in the water (including the cameraman) had no clue it was there. It was discovered when we looked through the footage back in Sweden :) Kinda sobering.

I have not tried to pitch this show to any networks or distributors yet. We see this more as a good first try and have learned a lot in the process of making this.

For you who cant download with the links above; please go to http://www.docuwild.com/feature.php to download. The direct links i posted above only works with PC's apparently. Us Mac people have to ctrl click / right click and chose save target as.

Again, thank you all for the comments.
/Henrik

I don´t agree with you Keith, I like the music just as it is. But, I think you are a great guy anyway, because I noticed on your Web site that you are listning to norwegian music (Royksopp) ; )

You must reconnect your hyperlinks again, so that we can look at your films as well, Keith.

Ivan

<OT>Once I get off my butt and finish editing the music video I will be sure to post links.

Royksopp are coming to Vancouver next month. I will have to see if they are sold out. :)</OT>