UWOL#15- Silent Kingdom- by Kevin Railsback
 

Kevin- Leave it to our favorite camerayeti to sneak in there with a moving piece that has both a poignant message and a call to action. All I can do is applaud and say- “Hear! Hear!”

Well done, Kevin. I hope things are soon well for the Railsback family.

Kevin.... beauiful imagery and a powerful piece. I would think if you could shorten it this could find a home as a PSA somewhere. (thinking UWOL X).

As ever, a higher bar to achieve to. Thanks !

Chris

Beautiful as usual. What a unique way to convert a lack of animals to a moving piece - well done!

This is one time where a voice over would have hurt the piece. Using just music and text to convey your message was really nice.

I was thinking the same thing about the PSA and UWOL #10 - a bit shorter and it would be a great PSA.

You guys just can't ever let me slide under the radar can you? :)

I've just finished watching everyone's films so hopefully I can start posting some feedback on them tonight.

Ok, since you drug the Yeti out of the cave again, here's the scoop on this one.

As you know, my wife had surgery and has been laid up these past few weeks. At one point we thought she was doing well enough that I could have her mom stop by for a few hours so I could go out and film. I left instructions to call if there were any issues.

So, all the sunshine stuff was shot on that morning.

Then she ran into some complications from the surgery so I didn't want to leave her alone or have someone else looking after her.

The complications weren't as bad as we thought and she encouraged me to go out and try to get more footage. That was the last day of the challenge.

I try and scout out areas when a challenge is coming up just to see what's going on. Well, like most of you, there wasn't much of anything going on. No wildlife anywhere.

So, I put on a few hundred miles that last day driving around trying to find anything. All the non-sunny shots are from the last day.

Sat down about 9:00 that night and tried to see if there was anything I could piece together.

I told Meryem earlier about my idea for a Silent Kingdom since the one day I went out I didn't even see a duck let alone deer or anything else we have around here.

So I thought the only thing I could do was to do a film about not having animals in it.

As usual, I picked out my music track and laid it down first. Then I tried to lay some tracks starting from early morning fog/frost to sunrise. Along the way as the hours dragged on I got lost, tried moving things around, made them worse, made them better and then back to worse again.

I had originally wanted to do a VO but then decided A.) I didn't have enough time as it was getting late and B.) It wouldn't be a silent kingdom if the Yeti was speakin in the film.

So then I sat there trying to figure out what text to put down. I laid some text down, changed it, added more, changed it and finally it was 2AM and I felt I was making things worse instead of better. I closed my eyes and listened to the music and just wrote how I felt.

It's not perfect, it's not slick but it's what I was feeling inside at 2AM the night of the deadline.

So, that's the story behind the film. Wish I could have put in the time to make it something. Hopefully next challenge I can do that.

I got to say this is a another triumph of imagery for you Kevin. I always love to see what you come up with ! In every one of the these challenges, there are those that give the rest of us new goals to work toward, and you are always on that list. Thank you for that.

Kevin, you did it again!
Yet another very good video from the yeti ;)
The message you deliver is a strong one. This should have been made into a PSA for tv!

Suggestions:
What if you fade out the sound of the wind in the very end, to really give the image of "Silent Kingdom" stronger effect?
Also, maybe fade the colors to black&white in the end to symbolise the species (and the world) extinction?

Well done!!
Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I'm glad you thought it was ok.

I thought about doing it as a "legal size" PSA but was getting too late to work on making the point in 60 seconds and getting the edit to fit. So I took the easy route. :)

Trond, I actually thought about doing it in selective color at points where everything would be b&w except for certain colors. Time constraints prevented me from exploring that.

I'll have to look at the timeline. I did fade the wind out at the end but didn't have my headphones on to really hear how it was fading. But you may be talking about fading the wind before the end of the visuals before the credits. I can certainly see how that would strengthen the piece. It would almost be uncomfortable to have to watch in silence. Great note. Thank you sir!

Kevin, I was thinking about fading out the wind during the image of the text "Is the wind " and reach total silence as the text changes to "Silent Kingdom".

But now I watched your video again with absolutely no sound at all for the last part to see how that would be, (after the text about pollution..., and to me that gave a strong effect too.

Trond,
So many possibilities. It's hard to choose which way to go.
Certainly one of the benefits of UWOL is how others see things that you may not.

I know I get on such a single track that I leave little room to see other options on my own.

Yet when I'm not happy with a film, which is most of them since I'm my own worst critic, I tend to want them to go away instead of reaching out to you guys to see how I could improve.

Maybe I can make that my New Years resolution to ask for feedback. That's a hard thing for me to do which is why I don't make feedback threads for most of my films.

I hear you about being we being our worst critic. I often end up with version 5 or 6 or 7... before I am happy (enough) with my videos.
Let 10 people see something, and they all will see it slightly different. And that's the good thing about feedback. To give us ideas we don't notice ourselves, and hopefully the feedback can help us improve our skills as film makers.
I have learned a lot from the feedback I have received from you and the others. So keep that New Years resolution. :)

Kevin, Kevin, Kevin.....Have you ever shot an image that was not just flat out beautiful??

You are the king of gorgeous....seriously....

Nicely done, nice message...the text was perfect! Good choice to go with no VO.

The music fitted very well....

Did you do a HD version...if so, I'd love to see it...

Kevin,

You have an eye for beautiful images. I loved the mist shots. I would like to capture some of those myself. Great thoughtful message. When you made the animals disapear I was looking to see if I would notice a change with the surrounding images and I could not. Very well done.

Kevin,
Again a strong message from you. It is much to learn from the simplicity in your form.
Your pictures are a pleasure to watch. Maybe you go a bit to far in saturation,
but I know many don't agree with me.

Kevin,

Not much to say other than the usual tie it togther great piece of work!!!!! I truly enjoyed the imagery, as always !!! I really like the way you moved the subtitles in and out of the scenes!!! You use a Mac??

Great job!! I can appreciate exactly how you felt about getting out, not having the shots you wanted and all the anxiety based around that. You, as usual pulled it off!!!

Yeti, you are an inspiration!!

Bob,

I shoot tons of crappy footage all the time.

When I was in Africa I was so depressed with the footage I was getting I was ready to hop the next flight out of there. Next time in in the Glennview area I'll look you up and show you all kinds of horrid shots. :) I'll see about putting a HD version up somewhere.

Oliver,

I worked on the fade shots to try and find the best match between the shots so that they would match up better.

Also a long dissolve with the wind blowing lets everything blend in so you don't really notice if any of the grass etc is out of position. Watchin it in HD and just watching the grass blowing, it's pretty hard to see any change in the shot.

Finn,

I'm a child of the Kodachrome generation. I love punchy colors. Always will. Everything is in camera, no color correction on this. Just trying to duplicate the look I had when I used to shoot slide film in my still camera days. Sometimes I'll use warm cards to white balance to get a warmer look but I'll always have vivid colors. I guess it's a calling card that people expect to see from me. Well, at least my wife does. :)

Dale,

Been a Mac user since 1987. Bought my first Mac II with a 100 MEG hard drive and like 18MHz clock speed and 512MB RAM for $4700. Before that it was Atari's. Never bought into the Commodore 64 thing. I think my first computer was an Atari 400 with 16k of memory or something. I drooled the day I got an Atari 800 with like 48k of memory. :)

Kevin,

as usual when I see your videos, I am left speechless, and no change on this one.

I loved the saturated look of your films, something I have asked before, is how you all get it that way.
Some do it post, but you do it in camera, something I will have to try, with your technique.

Thanks again for an inspiring video.

Sam,

Every camera's settings are different so you're going to have to experiment with yours.
But all I do is pump up the color and crush the blacks.

I never change the settings on my camera for anything I shoot. Every UWOL entry has been shot with the same exact camera settings.

I'll change them if I have to for some corporate gig when they want a specific look. But for me, I've never thought about changing my settings.

I know that may limit me in some way but it's the look I like so I don't see any reason to change it.

Kevin, I checked out your film a couple of days ago, and it's still in the back of my mind. It's not really subliminal, but more in your face with a delayed slap to the back of the head at the end. I read Silent Spring back in the 70's and it brought back memories of that book, though this is delivered with moving color and sound, and quickly.

Classically from the Railsback stable! It has all your hallmarks fella. I think there was maybe a touch too many text points...less might have been more in this. The premise was strong and the images were as good as always!

Hi Kevin.

I like your video very much.
It’s a very well told story, it’s informative and at the same time do raise an important issue.
If I’m to put a finger on anything at all, it has to be the text starting at 1.36 and the text at 1.48. In my opinion there is too much text according to the other messages you give. But this is a minor issue and just my personal opinion :)
I guess this film can be used by, or sold to an organization like WWF or something similar, as a PSA? It sure did make me think.

Wish you all the best and good luck.
Geir Inge

Wonderful imagery as always. The words short and to the point. Having watched several short environmental films on a big screen last night, I can say this beats the pants off all of them.

Maybe bringing the wind in before the music stops, then going down to silence while the words "silent kingdom" are on the screen would increase the impact - it would give the viewer a few seconds of silent contemplation before the end.

I'm proud to announce that Silent Kingdom is now an official selection of the 2010 Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival April 9-10, 2010. Collins Road Theatres
Marion, Iowa.

It'll be interesting to see how it looks on a full size movie screen.

Congratulation to you Kevin.
The messsage in your video is so strong, I hope you win.

Best of luck.

Geir Inge

Hey Kevin, that's great! What format did you supply them for projection? Let us know how it looks.

Just a standard def DVD. I don't think they have the ability to handle HD.

The film moves on to the award stage now. Maybe with some luck I'll come home with an Eddy.

Some bigger films there this year. I think the biggest one that I know of had a $9.75 million dollar budget. So, it'll be interesting to see how my little tank of gas and a burger film goes over. :)