UWOL 17 Tales of wonder and Woe!
 

(Just don't want to clutter up the sign up/theme threads)

My biggest tale of woe is I can't take part in this, I am off travelling in a couple of days.

Meryem, I would just like to thank you for all the hard work that you have put in for UWOL over the years. You and the participants have inspired me to get out there, make films, and generally improve my techniques, so I am now "less amateur" than before.

You deserve a break and from the looks of it you have plenty of exciting projects to work on.

UWOL has brought tears, laughter, plenty of "wow" moments, jealousy of other people's skills and environments, and an over-proliferation of incredibly talented and good-looking Norwegians. Where else would you get it? And for free, as well!

Thanks again, from the Emerald Isle!

Glad to see Wonder and Woe is already up and running...

You're welcome, Mike. I'd also invite you and anyone else who already has played the game to submit a non-competitive entry, if you just want to play along...the more the merrier.

In my nostalgic review, I should have also included all the UWOL-induced injuries - infected foot, sprained ankles, shoulder injuries...you people play to win.

UWOL #16 gave me a nettle sting that took a month to go away completely.

Never send an Irishman out in shorts!

I woke up early to read the theme, clicking on the link was like opening up a present on Christmas morning. Then I went out back to watch the sunrise. Renewal. A great theme Meryem.

Began new job today, well same job as before, just different airport. Got tons of stuff to read and learn the next month. Hopefully I find time for this interesting theme as well. Can't fail Meryem's last uwol.

Mike, bring the camera with you. Maybe you find a minute here and there to shoot something.

Mike, sorry to hear that you can´t participate! And thanks for your comment about good looking Norwegians. At my age comments like that is heartwarming :)

Well, I have been thinking very much the last day about this mysterious theme Meryem picked for this round! As english not being my tongue language, I have some difficulties finding what RENEW means to us uwolers! Could someone please enlighten me?

Hi Per:

Ah yes! Playing in a second language gets challenging sometimes! You Norwegians are so good at writing and speaking English, we forget this.

Our English dictionary gives some other words for renewal: revive, restore, renew, refresh, renovate, rejuvenate. Does this help at all? So renewal is like making something new again. It is also like starting again on something, like to repeat over.

So Meryem has handed out quite a wonderful theme, because there are many different ways you can approach it! Nicely done!

Hope this helps Per! If not, shout out and we will try again!

Cato

P.S. Come on Mike! What could be more "renewing" than traveling! We know you'll have your camera along, so just fire back a little something for fun!

Also, in response to some comments in the now closed sign up thread:

1) Victor, the goats are doing well! Zac, one of the twins, was bit on the ear by a rattlesnake earlier this summer but is doing fine! I'm afraid rattlesnakes are a part of summer life around here.

2) Ruth! I'm thrilled you have signed on! We have so much catching up to do, don't you think? I've missed you!

3) Bill... don't you think the shark tank is sufficient humiliation than also having to wear a "scarlet letter" of "bark is worse than bite"? Where is your mercy? ;-)

I hope we don't need too many of these...

Well I'm travelling light, so editing and uploading is the problem. I'll miss the deadline, but if I can manage something then you never know - better late than never!

Mike, all kidding aside, we don't want to miss out on a good Irish tale, so here's hoping you can get some footage from your travels to share. The film 'A Volcanic Journey' was a good one.
By the way there is a photographer on the west coast of Ireland you may know, and there is a short film about him posted here you might enjoy:

YouTube - Short Stories - DARK SIDE OF THE LENS

HA! ... and what an adorable pooch! :)

Well, I've come up with a story idea.
I've also come up with a shot that I think would be super sweet but very difficult to pull off and have it look right.

So, I guess this weekend will be spend seeing if it's even possible to shoot what I see in my head.
I've seen it in mainstream movies before but I haven't seen any "indie" type films pull it off.

Will try to think of an alternate shot that will convey the same idea but not as complex to pull off in case I can't figure out how to do this one.

Might have to call in some people to pick their brain on how to pull it off.

But I think it's a solid story, something that a lot of my fluff pieces lack. So imagine that, a fluff piece with a story. Huh, who would have thought? :)

Thanks so much Cato, that helped me a lot :)
Time to go into the think-tank, I´ll be at work this weekend, but next week is laying ahead just waiting for some recording options!

Nice pictures, Bill!

I'm busy with work the next week. Hopefully I can find time to start thinking about uwol by next Friday.

Good luck to everyone!

Good Evening,

Leave it to Meryem to come up with the toughest theme in my book!!

I have only thunk up one idea and it would be far to familiar for the crew to have to watch.

We spent 4 hours in the vehicle today and the wife and I hashed it about, nothing yet!!!

Hoping you all have better ideas than I do!!!



Arre you Pondering what I am Pondering?

go find yourself some young birds, Dale, and you can shoot what you love and hit the theme....

My story goes from Point A to Point B. But, I'm worried that the way I get there is too much of a cliche.
I have an alternate way to get there but I'm not sure if I can pull it off without it totally looking hokey.

So, not sure if I can come up with a different way to show what is happening without it looking cliche.

Frustrating because I think I have a good story idea. I've already shot some good visuals. Just don't know if I can pull it off in a new way that looks good and not have everyone say I saw that coming from the get go.

Kevin,

It's not a murder mistery is it? I can alway see those coming.

Anyway, hope you pull it off. I'm still wondering how to turn my rain, rain, rain in to a story. Anyone seen an ark?

If you find one, float by and pick me up too, Vic! We had a foot and a half of runoff in the yard several times today. There are branches down from every tree. When it finally dries up enough I’ll have a couple of days of clean up. Fun. At least I can stop worrying about everything dying from lack of rain for a while! (and just get on with worrying about such UWOL related problems like how do you go about getting footage of a species that has been extinct for 100 years…)

Good evening,


I finally came up with a plan, bt boy have we had a lot of turbulent non filming weather lately!!!


lightening thunder and rain as I write this.

Dale

Lightning and Thunder and Rain you say?
That's some fine footage to get if you can capture it.

Bill,

Clouds so thick you could barely see the lightening flashes, kind of strange really.

My topic has stayed the same and should still fall in the theme, just have gone in a slightly different direction.

I was out for a couple hours in the rain today and have about 15 minutes of footage. some may even be useful!

I lost one camera to water in the past so I am being extremely careful!!!

I am heading out in a few minutes to collect audio.


Dale

Jamming to a local Des Moines band The Nadas and doing some pulldown removal of some recent footage for the challenge.

Going to try and nail my key shot tomorrow. Hope it looks even half as good as I see it in my head!!

Really diggin this challenge. I'll be happy if it's even a little close to how I see it.

I had really hoped to complete this challenge. I'd taken an extended time off from video due to an injury last year, and this was my inspiration to finally get back to it. But en route to the west coast for a short trip, hoping to get some new and different material, my camcorder stopped working. So I will need to get a new one soon before I can get back into video again. Hopefully by the time the next challenge rolls around, I will be well away from the shark tank. I will check back to see the results. And good luck with all your upcoming projects, Meryem. Thanks for all the years of running this, it's been fun.

I'm off to Scotland with my camera and a lighweight tripod on Tuesday... I'll be late completing this, so no judging for my entry, but I want to get a "swansong" for our Dear Leader. Er, but without any swans.

Howdy Doody Time,

can you top this?. Went out to shoot some timelapse. checked everything over, cleaned lens, set to proper setting pressed record and sat down in the truck out of the weather. when finished I loaded up and went home.

when capturing this is what I got:

Nice eh?? Can you san RESHOOT.

Looks like a big hair and some dust, tough luck. Hey Dale I'm filming some timelapse clouds also, got a couple of sequences, and am trying to frame objects like a mountain or tree in the foreground to add some perspective. It's tough with my XHA1 since I have to speed the footage up a few times, and am wondering what would be a good inexpensive camera that would make timelapse easier.

My challenge so far... get rid of a (not so bad) lung infection. Read a couple hundred pages of rules and regulations for work. Feeling like a student again. Lots of new stuff to learn.
Hopefully I can find time to start thinking about uwol this weekend.
(And a big challenge: Try to convince my camera that rain doesn't hurt)

Hope you all are doing well.

Finally getting a chance to work on the story for my film.
Stuck about halfway at the moment.

Hopefully inspiration will strike soon!

Hi Trond,

Feel better soon! It sounds really challenging getting up to speed for a new air traffic control position at a new airport... I can see why filming might take a back seat this round. Hope you get something in!

Hey Dale,

Have you ever used the software called Mokey? It is a state of the art object removal software that could take care of the hair in your video footage. It happens to be really expensive, but they let you use a free trial version which is the full software with a water mark. You might want to try it out. I've tested a few things with it... there is a high learning curve, but oh well, what isn't?

Kevin! You are the mystery man this round. What ARE YOU UP TO?

Ruth, I am so sorry you won't be able to participate this time. I'll fire off an email soon to catch up with news. It's been so long!

Okay, I have a major question for all of you UWOLer's, but I think it warrants another thread.... so I'll post a new one now.

Have fun, all!

Cat

Colorado has been ablaze with wildfires and I thought that would be a great subject for RENEWAL, but they shut down access for many miles. All I could see was a lot of smoke. So that didn't work out. I did manage a couple of stills from the plume of smoke engulfing my studio.

...my tale of wonder this round has nothing to do with shooting anything yet...but I did manage to take a trip to Cat's ranch and meet her 42 animals and get head-butted by several love-starved goats. Cat clearly needs to pay more attention to them and doesn't spoil them enough. Fun times. Don't let her bantam rooster hook you in the leg, if you go.

UWOL is all about the journey.

Ha Meryem!

The joy of your visit was all mine! You failed to mention you barely escaped the fierce attack of our two love starved Chinese guard geese, Yin and Yang ... but I understand your grace in not having me look too callus to a group of tree huggers ;-)

Sorry you missed a visit with Cloe, my crippled chicken, who was detained, basking in the shade underneath the sunflowers in our garden.

Sheesh! No one gets old on this farm but me and Ed!

You are going to have to visit with your comments on this site in the future, you are just too much to lose all together!

Cat

P.S. Wow! What a photo, but for heaven's sake who named it????

Another great UWOL get-together!

I'm out of this one - absolutely no time to take the video never mind edit it.


Bill - You already own one! Use the GoPro. It has an intervalometer and the GoPro will give you a super wide angle shot!

(Set it to take photos every 5 (or 10) seconds. Leave it running approx 20 mins for every 10 seconds of video required. If you don’t have a tripod mount for the GoPro use your home-made handle and cable-tie it to a tripod or other fixed object. Because it has such a wide angle watch out for moving branches etc. towards the sides when setting up. It would be better to use a still object in the frame for your perspective.

Bring the images into your timeline as a series, resize it and render as a movie. You may have to interpret the footage. You may also have to experiment to get good results. If your movie flickers, Virtual Dub and Deflick (free software) should sort it out.)

Dale – something worth trying if you can’t recapture similar footage – Import the footage into After Effects then duplicate it in the timeline. On the top layer draw a mask around each problem area (keep it very tight). Feather the mask a small amount to soften the edges slightly. Move the bottom layer a fraction to the left or right to fill in the missing bits. Not sure if it will work but would be interesting to find out.

Marj

I am also out of this one.

I had a great idea, but the weather would not co-operate.
I may still shoot it a little latewr and post it afterwards, for some critique.

Sam

Thanks Marj, you are absolutely right. I've been thinking of using that camera for a time lapse, and I think I'll give it a shot.
I'll have to figure out how to 'import as image sequence' in Vegas.
I'm trying something a little off the wall to tell my story, which could be a good thing.

Woe!
 

I was feeling pretty good because I was almost through. I came in after shooting my last shot this morning ready to finish editing when my system drive failed. It’s a WD Blue caviar less than six months old. Hmmm. I have a disc image (and all the data drives with the project are OK) so if I can source a replacement locally tomorrow I might be able to finish, but I’m no longer feeling good. It seems like my hardware failures always correspond with looming UWOL deadlines! I hope no one else is having difficulties and everyone is on track to finish. Good-luck (and no stress) all!

Hi Mike:

Sorry to hear about the drive .... I hope things get worked out tomorrow. Looking forward to what you have brewing! You always have neat things to serve up to get us all inspired.

Cat

Now I'm in over my head. Took the GoPro out and got some great timelapse shots, set the timer for 2 seconds per shot and let it run. Now I have my first sequence of 380 JPEGs on a vegas timeline with no idea how to resize so they run 30 frames per second. Currently they are each 5 seconds per frame. Here comes a learning curve.

Hi Bill

I am not familiar with Vegas but in PPro you click only on the first .jpg of the sequence and then tick the little box that says "Numbered stills".

This brings all the images that are numbered consecutively into the project as a clip not as a series of 6 second stills.

As the dimensions of the .jps are very large I usually scale this clip to the correct size in the effects control panel (you can do this before you import if you wish). I then render it as a movie and get rid of the original .jpg clip. Hope this helps.

You may have to squeeze it a bit if you took the frames at 2 sec interval rather than 5-10 sec interval for clouds. People walking are fine at 2 sec. interval.

Marj

Yes, the amount of theory (local rules and regulations) I have to memorize is huge. Imagine a couple hundred pages. That's basically all I'm doing these days. But I enjoy every day at work anyway.
Forecasted lots of rain the next days as well, but I haven't given up the hope to get something/anything on tape yet. Maybe the renewal theme is my eyes turning square from all the reading?