Hey Gabriel…
Just sit back and think about it. Ron won the last challenge and hi shot everything in his backyard. Think about water… were can you fined water that nobody have thought of. It doesn’t need to be a lake or stream… Get up early one morning (before the sun) and se if you can fine some dew… Everything needs water… or is it lack of water? What can you make of that? We are al surrounded of water, everyday, every minute. You just need to fined YOUR view… You got the time… take a hour and relax…

Cheers
Markus Nord

Yeah, i totally second that. At the start of this challenge I got a coffee frother ( a fast spinning thing ) and put it in a glass of water, and filmed all the different types of whirlpools I could create. Unfortunatley I couldn't fit it with the overal thread in the end, which was a shame - but it got me really thinking about water, and how ubiquitous it is in our world........ Good luck Gabe!!!

Gabriel,

You can shoot something in your own back yard. No one said you had to fill three minutes. That's the max it has to be. It can be 30 seconds if you want.

Film an ice cube melting and then speed it way up. Title it "Global Warming".

Fill a pie tin with water if you don't have a birdbath. Move as close as you can to the bath and still be focused. Set the camera down or on a tripod, walk away and let the birds come in. They'll eventually start to squabble etc.
Call it "Water Cooler Conversation".
Spray a water hose in the air with a fine mist and film the rainbow it creates on a sunny day.

Water the grass and catch the drops glistening on the lawn.

Fill up a small aquarium with water and then add drops of food coloring and watch it swirl around and make weird designs before it blends. Heck, you could even use a jar if you wanted to.

Tons of stuff out there that you can do without leaving your property.

You think you got problems. Two days BEFORE the challenge topic was posted I returned home from videoing one of the most spectacular waterfalls on earth, Iguazu falls in Brazil/Argentina. I can't use one second of that video. So here I am in Atlanta, no real rain in weeks. I got about 30 minutes that I shot in NC this past weekend. I may have to get out the garden hose this weekend and "fake it" Bob

Kevin
Where were you at the start of this :)
Those are some neat ideas that Gabriel can work with.

Gordon Hoffman

right on. i'll leave the constructive suggestions to the likes of kevin and others. my job is to give young gabe his bi-monthly shakedown. glad to have netted you in the maelstrom as well, kris. good luck!

Note to Mat...
 

my e-mails to you are back to getting rejected again! just received one back undelivered that i sent several days ago....rrrrr.

Water water everywhere...
 

Well, that rain came through, and i spent most of the morning trying to stop it flooding the house! Check out some of the photos from my town, it's made the national news.........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6908187.stm

Gabriel, that's just "dirty water". Still well within the theme.
So grab your bike, get over there, and get some dirty water for us...

Seriously, hope you get something.
Kevin got some good ideas for you too.
Bring it on!! The shark tank is not supposed to have more visitors yet.

Meryem....not again......Sent you an email about your logo 2 days ago....fonts ect?? Did you get it ?


Kevin....what a creative fellow ;-) I'm liking the time lapse ice melt!

Wow. Thanks alot!

Thank you all for what you have done! I think you may have just took Meryem's roll of getting me back up on my feet. ;)

This is why I love this challenge... It can go from one thing, to the complete opposite -- thanks to the help of all the great people on this forum.

Kevin, wow, great ideas! Man, if you came up with those and offered them to me, then I can't wait to see what yours is. :)

Time to get out some cardboard and my pocket knife to start making a rig to protect my camera from all the dumb sprinkling thats been going on. its not raining, but its not dry either. I guess thats what I get for living in the NW, eh?

Thanks again to all of you! You have all really helped me out with this one!

Rob - thats some serious weather you are getting! Try not to get to soaked out there...

Bob - That sounds spectacular. I hope we get to see some of the footage here on DVinfo some time...
About four days before the challenge theme announcement, I just got back from the Olympic NW. I think we saw four or so waterfalls. One we walked out and practically touched. Well we were up there, we also rented a row boat and went out on the most beautiful lake I have ever seen (thats including pictures of them). You could see the bottom a good 50 feet from the rim.

Time to go get some footage! And oh yeah, I have a 50 gallon fish tank right next to my bed... Now why did I not think of that one before?

~Gabriel

ftp
 

Good afternoon,

I must be lame. I got the password and such and I rtemember how to put the file on the page.

I just can't remember the exact url to get to the ftp page!!

I have mine finished, just need to download.

Ironicly I kept a note page but failed to write down the url!!



Dale

OK,

I think I got it myself. ftp://www.uwolchallenge.com

it appears to be downloading as I type this.


It might be good to make a sticky with simple instructions for first timers and the lame ducks like myself.

Dale,
You're not the only lame one out there. I have tried everything I could think of for two days to try to upload my entry. Nothing worked, including downloading a couple of free ftp clients. What finally worked (I think), was not to drag and drop the file, as in the official instructions, but to copy and paste it. If my entry appears in the next list, I was successful.
I agree, a "sticky" would be helpful.

Steve,

I to found that I had to cut and paste and I thought that was becasue I was working via a network of two computers.

Mine also hung up at the 10 second left mark for an hour or so. I was ready to start over when I glanced back at it and it was finished!! Ahhhh.

I now hope it is there!

So being patient was an understatement for myself.

One more idea. A study of water flowing from various faucets and hoses, or follow a certain quantity of water from the faucet and through the process of it being used in cooking something.

Anything to get an entry in.

Haha, yup! Thanks, Bruce!
I got some footage yesterday (or was it Friday)? Either way, I got some.. Last night I made the score for it. A little shorter then I would have liked, but it works.. Now today, I am going to work on editing.. I have some ideas that will look cool if dumb imovie will let me do it.

Now, is the deadline 12:00am Tuesday (the 24)? Or is it 12:00am Monday (the 23)? I have been thinking about this for the last couple of days, and I could not figure it out...
Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thank you in advance!

Talk about last minute..
~Gabriel

Gabriel,

Glad to hear you got some footage!

Here's a little teaser of some footage I shot just a couple minutes ago.

Wow! Thats beautiful Kevin!
Did you have to use a macro lens for that shot? Its nice and crisp looking on my screen/eyes.

~Gabriel

Nope, no macro. Just regular lens.

Glad you liked it.

Hopefully I can start editing tonight!

Very Kevin Railsback :) !!!

Wow, thats impressive that you could do that without a macro. Pretty sweet!

I am done editing.. Now I am going to try and upload. I am also going to upload it to YouTube. I know most people on here say to never use youtube, but I for one like it. Its simple - easy to watch, easy to upload.

Time to close everything out. Wish me luck!
~Gabriel

Too bad I have already uploaded my UC4 entry. This could have been a cool end sequence.
This sunset was shot yesterday evening, and I just had to share the view.
The colors are natural ("outdoor" white balance), no editing has been done.

Wow, Trond. Those are amazing colors.

You could always add it into your entry and then just add a "2" on the filename, then upload it again. I am pretty sure they accept it like that. You could ask any of "the three" if it could be done to it.

I uploaded my entry to the UWOL site. It says it worked. It looks like it did, but I am not sure. So I guess I'll just have to wait and find out! I got it up on youtube also.

Good luck everyone!
~Gabriel

Naw, I'll leave it as it is. (This is just a reminder to me that it is not always a good thing to upload as soon as the editing is done. We might get some nice shots just before deadline.)
Who knows, maybe next theme is "sunset", haha. Then I'll be prepaired.
But yeah, maybe I should upload some of it to youtube later.

Glad you got your entry done too, Gabriel.

Sounds good!
Ha, wouldn't that be nice? :)

Thanks, so am I. ;)
I can't wait to see everyones.

~Gabriel

You is not allone Trond,I got half of my tape destroyed by the sea waves.
Alot of god clip became usless becuse ruggy waves.The best clip i can not
youse,and som must be hard cut.I save some like this clip.

I finished! Now I am compressing. It is a trial and error situation attempting to get as close to 60MB as possible without going over. I exported a Cineform Quicktime file that After Effects likes just fine.

The last challenge I didn't have enough footage to suit me. This time I could have used 20 minutes instead of 3.

I decided to go with multiple types of audio instead of the one I was originally going to use. When would it be better to use Handel's Water Music? But the price was a little steep for a challenge and it gave me a chance to use some SmartSound I hadn't used lately, as well as some Soundbooth scores.

As I write this my last export came out to 62MB so I am very close. I just want to get it done and submitted so I can export out to M2T and play it on the big screen HDTV.

Edit - It came out to 60,681K or 59.2MB - YES!!!!!! I see someone else is uploading at the same time as I am.

My file is only 18.4 MB... The first time it was like, 14 MB. lol. so I upped the audio and put the video to best looking. Turned out pretty nice. Its only one minute long tho. Thats probably why it is such a small file. It even looks good blown up. And the YouTube version is really good looking. Its like, watchable.

Best of luck everyone!
~Gabriel

I just added the last shot to mine that I shot about ten minutes ago on my back deck. :)

Didn't turn out close to how I wanted it but my plate was pretty full so it was either this or the Shark Tank!

Haha, I know what you mean!
I had two choices, make something work thats not what I wanted, or the Shark Tank! Of course I don't want to be with the sharks, so I made it work. :)

Can't wait to see how yours turns out, Kevin! I'm looking forward to it.
~Gabriel

Don't get to excited Gabriel.
I'm not even going to bother to make a feedback thread on this one.

Ah, come on! You got to have a feedback thread...

I was not really plaining on making one for the last uwol, but Chris (Barcellos) here, called me out to make one!

Its part of the challenge, don't ya think?
Get a few pointers here and there, its part of the fun!

~Gabriel
edit: I broke 700 post.

If I'm not happy with it then no amount of hey, that was a cool shot is going to change that. :)

Didn't post a feedback thread for the first one either. :)

Kevin, don't judge your film too hard. Sometimes when we think our own film is "only crap", others can see how good it really is.
So bring your video, and be proud of what you got!

You know, at least in my opinion, the feedback is some of the best about this challenge. I have learned a lot from the feedback I get.

Kevin,

I reckon your UWOL #1 is one of the best to date, in terms of technical attributes, content and theme alignment/story (for want of a better phrase).

I was wondering what happened to your feedback thread in #1 - as I was really keen to read how others viewed your film.

Reckon you should include a thread...

Kevin,
I am new in this game,but your film Uwol#3 was one of my
favorit.I saw the Uwol#1 today it was fantastic.It`s important
for us new, to learn from you how can make film.

Best regards
v.vedaa

I'm always happy to answer PM's and emails about filmmaking. :)

Still on vacation :)
 

Hello to all of you in uwol4 – 30 water videos – that’s great!

I’m still on vacation, been travelling through Sweden and Denmark, now I’m back in Norway but haven’t reached home yet.
I’m borrowing a computer from my wife’s uncle, but can’t download any of your films on his computer. I can see there are a lot of exciting titles and can’t wait to watch them all.
I will comment your videos in turn as soon as I’m back.

Regards
Geir Inge B. Brekke