Meryem,

Was curious if you sent out the uploading details as yet? Not that i am ready, but i am getting there.

HAVING A TUFF TIME WITH A NARATIVE!!!


AND YOU WERE GOING TO MAKE THIS AN EASY ONE!!!!!

Well, Robin and I have wrapped up this challenge, since we are off later this week for a few days as part of her mid winter break to visit an old friend of mine in CA. He and I used to do recording trips around the world, making environmental albums and wildlife sound installations. So we will reminisce, while Robin can hopefully avoid being bored :)

I also wanted to let everyone know we were busy during the UWOL break the past few months. If anyone wants to see our videos, they are posted on our rockfowl.com and naturepalooza.com sites. We posted them all to revver.com starting last week, and I am proud to say that as of today, Marvelous Mammals is on the first page of their editor's picks. So our UWOL entry is being seen beyond the contest!

I'm looking forward to seeing all the video adventures here on UWOL soon-the anticipation is building with all the exciting field reports.


Ruth

Hi Guys,

Per; Yes, like all of us, my son is a big fan of yours, and would love you to visit us down us. Actually, you stay there and we'll come to you whilst visiting my country of birth - Scotland. When in Scotland I practiced the sport of falconry for many years however, it is illegal in Australia. So I haver a real affinity with your Golden Eagle entry.

Meryem; with three competitive young boys, I have learned to become very resilient - especially when they say "Dad wouldn't be able to do that...". Then again, that wakeboard Arran got for his birthday has done something to my back. They might have a point sometimes.

Cat; Hope your entry is coming along. Actually, you probably have adventures on the farm all the time! I am struggling big time, but will come up with something.

Has anyone else ever gotten the eerie feeling while out there shooting, that WE are the ones being watched?

I'm shooting a cute little chipmunk of a bird yesterday when for some strange reason, and spurred on by not one ounce of a sound, I look up over my right shoulder, and....

YIKES!

This adventure is getting interesting

wow Eric thats some close up! Maybe he thought the chipmunk might try and knock you off and he fancied a scrap or two!

oh and is this a secret bird of prey round or something ? :-)

I just had to attach that image, even though it's got nothing to do with my video. For some reason this guy made me think of Per.

Something about big birds with strong talons and flesh ripping beaks will forever make me think of Per.

And if there IS a hidden birds of prey agenda here, I stand to lose my shirt. Any birds that I've captured recently wouldn't even pass as appetizers.

today's tale:

i need bird footage. badly.

so i went to the Place Where There Are Always Ducks.

no ducks.

then i went to the Place Where There Are Always Crows.

no crows.

finally, i went to the Place Where There Are Always Colorado Seagulls Freezing Their Tailfeathers Off.

FINALLY! Some footage. I hope it's enough. I doubt it's enough.

A bonus hawk showed up in my viewfinder.

Hope I can pull this off with what I got...if not, it will be back to the crow place....

BEST PART: My now 14-year-old shooting partner, Violet the Wonder Dog, had a great time, not too much arthritis trouble today...gorgeous day, amazing lighting. Not much footy, though, will have to load it up and see...

Oh well, I just burned out the firewire port on my Sony HDR-FX1 HDV camcorder. I can shoot, but not capture. I was trying out a loaner Matrox RT.X2 and got the connection backwards I believe.

This really sucks. It will be around $550 just to get it fixed. It was my own fault, but still. I have never had a problem with hot insertion before. I guess from now on the firewire cable remains connected to the PC.

oh and is this a secret bird of prey round or something ? :-)

It's beginning to look that way! I don't have a bird of prey per se, but my film does feature a killer duck!

Cat

Three days snowed in with my grandsons and I'd build an igloo. But in my case It'll be high water.

Reviewing the footage I got last weekend makes me realise what a bad camera operator I am. It was blowing a gale and I tried out the merlin for the first time (you get seasick watching it).

I threw most of that out and went back with a tripod and confirmed my previous assessment of my camera skills, still I never claimed to be an operator - just an actor.

I was going to jump in the shark tank but I thought .. no I should at least put an entry in, no matter how bad it is. I know.. I'll make it 4 minutes so it's too long (that was a particularly silly idea)

So I added some music and swapped it around a bit and realised it's not about the end result - it's the process. I actually got off my butt and went somewhere I've never been and did something I've never done and learned a lot.

There are actually a couple of snippets that have potential or that give me ideas for something else. I've got a huge amount to learn but I'm in there trying.

this is fun!

Paul,

The day you quit learning is the day you quit improving!!!

I learned so much last year it is a joke!!!

and, you are right it is about the process!!!!!!!!

Look forward to seeing you effort!!!

Well, the wonder and woe did not stop in the editing process. I decided to edit at home with Cineform/PPro2 vs edit at work on my new dream machine with FCS2. Something about stopping to eat between 8 hours of editing at work and 6 hours of editing for play.

Apparently it knows I've been cheating on it. I can't so much as look at PPro without it crashing. My roommate has had to put up with me randomly storming out of my room, miming punting a computer across the room, and storm back in to try again. 4 times tonight, trying to finish a piece all of 2:45 long! CMON! I've edited full-length broadcast television on this goshdarned piece of machinery.

End result - I've got the first few minutes on the timeline, with a LOT of correction work to do. For me to put it on television I'd probably want to manually stabilize most of the shots in AE, but it's looking like I'll be happy to get the right clips in the right order. I'm almost to the point that the metric editing is farfetched - "No, I don't like it when you click me there" is my NLE's motto at the moment. Bah.

Finally some good weather (as in no rain), so I shot my entry yesterday.
Had good help of my sister, and we went kinda crazy. In about 2 hours I got around 20 minutes film, and she... well she got 200 photos!!
Yes, we had very much fun. Nope, it does not include any birds. Didn't even see one during our adventure out in the woods.
Now it's off to editing. And this can almost be an adventure itself.


Steven,
Anyone you could borrow a camera from, so you could capture your footage? Really bad to get such an accident when you finally got something on tape.
Hope you manage to make a film in the end. We need your entries!

Steven, I'm waaay up here in the northeast corner of FL, but if you show up with a hard drive and a tape I can take care of it for you? I'm moving (and editing my entry) tomorrow and monday, or I would offer to meet you half way!

C

not many brits posting here, hope we are still all on track!

well I've done my filming in between having to cope with a family holiday
( aaaarrrghhhh!!! - sorry needed to get that off my chest, family holidays with the wrinklies, I love 'em but good grief! ), didnt get the rough weather I wanted, weather here in the UK this week has been glorious for Feb or thick fog, still I'll work with what I've got and hope for the best. It was just great being behind the camera again, havent done it for a while.

So it's down to the editing, I'm glad I did a script, it's kept me pretty much on target for the shots otherwise I could have been badly distracted.

All the best to all

David

OK, bird experts. I shoot video of the duck shown in the image at the link below. There was a pair of them. Is it some kind of mallard?

At first I thought it was a molting mallard, but it larger than the other mallards and there are two of them.

The location was Spring, TX, on the north edge of Houston.

Since it the star of my challenge video, I'd sure like to know what it is.

http://www.wilcoxvideoproductions.com/TheImage.aspx?ImageUrl=Photos/Fauna/Birds/duck_name_unknown.jpg

Hi Victor:

Nice to hear there is another duck movie out there brewing! I was unable to connect to your web site or your picture for some reason so I haven't seen the duck yet, but if it looks like a Mallard but is bigger than a Mallard it could be a Rouen. They have similar coloring to Mallards but are much heavier birds. It's a wild stab, because Rouens are domestic birds raised for meat.

Hope I can connect successfully and see your picture!

Cat

OK...wish me luck....It's almost 25º and the sun is shinin'

I've got some 5 year old aerial photos, vague discriptions and very rough directions to what I'm looking for....
I have a compass, cell phone, warm clothes, a lighter and plenty of batteries....(Oh...and my camera)

If ya don't hear from me in a couple of days, call my wife and tell her I love her.... :)

OK, I'm finished shooting my uwol adventure and can't wait to get home and start editing. I only have my laptop pc with me to the mountains and it is no good editing on. Here's a picture of the stars in my uwol film, from the right:
Elisabeth, Iselin and Stian. ready to go down hill on snowboard.

Geir Inge

Hi Kevin

Are you making good proggress,I realy look forword
To your entery.You have some realy nice photo arliare

VJV

__________

Well, I'm realizing that with another nine inches of snow and half an inch of freezing rain coming my way tomorrow, there's no way I'm going to even get close to where I need to film my final scene.

So, I'm headed out today to see if I can find a way to stay on topic while not having the shot that wraps it all together in a nice tidy package.

Hopefully I'll find something interesting to film that will work with the footage I've already shot.

Maybe I'll try a different portion of the Sac-Fox trail today.

My DSL has been on and off due to storms in the area.

I've got most of my video except for some narrative shoots. Just need some more sun to finish.

It's a hokey adventure, but it's been fun was fun.

Hope you get what you need Kevin,I agree whid David you
make greait entery so good luck for rest of the clip.
I think this round will bee a werry exciting.
And lock forword to all the adder enterys to.

VJV

______________

Well...I learned a couple of things today....

Leveling a tripod on snow is a pain...
My LCD is pretty much useless at 24º...
And my boots aren't waterproof...

I think I got what I wanted though....
As soon as my camera, (and my feet), warm up, I'll capture what I took and see....

Didn't see any birds of prey....though I did find something pretty cool....

Bob T.

Finished my footage today in a real cold weather -15 degrees Celsius or 5 degrees Farenheit. It was cold especially when I had to mount my Jib with my bare hands. Tiny bolts and thick gloves are NOT a very good combination!

Tomorrow is the day where all this footage gonna be puzzled toghether for hopefully a great story and some amazing pictures!

Picture below hopefully show a bit of the cold action we got today. The actor Guttorm dressed in white almost look like he's dressed for outer space.

Per,

It sure looks like yours is shaping up to be quite the adventure story!

We've had another bad bout of freezing rain and significant snowfall again today. Sadly people have already been killed in this latest storms due to bad road conditions.

I'm torn between attempting to go out and get what I know will be spectacular footage in the storm or hunker down and make due with what I have.

Not sure if I have enough to finish as I was planning on getting that one last final shot that would have wrapped it all up in a nice tidy bundle. But on the other hand, I'd like to live long enough to see allot more UWOL challenges. :)

The wind is supposed to pick up to around 45MPH sometime today making for blizzard conditions.

I may just venture around my neighborhood testing out the road conditions and go from there.

Wish we would have had a normal winter as it would have been very likely I could have been able to get my final shot.

Hopefully UWOL 8 will have better weather conditions!

Oh well, I just burned out the firewire port on my Sony HDR-FX1 HDV camcorder. I can shoot, but not capture. I was trying out a loaner Matrox RT.X2 and got the connection backwards I believe.

This really sucks. It will be around $550 just to get it fixed. It was my own fault, but still. I have never had a problem with hot insertion before. I guess from now on the firewire cable remains connected to the PC.

I'm just getting caught up on reading here so with 2 pages of posts yet to go, someone may have already said this:

Firewire is supposed to be hot swappable but in reality often is not. Many camcorder manuals instruct both computer and camcorder are to be powered down before a firewire cable is EITHER connected or disconnected.

On the forums in one thread several folks have fried firewire ports, mostly on camcorders but sometimes also on computers. In the OPEN DV DISCUSSIONS on this site I read where one outfit had someone fry the ports on FIVE high dollar camcorders.

While it is a pain in the butt, I now power down both computer and camera before connecting or disconnecting.

The Panasonic PV GS500 manual covered this and stated both should be off, but the Pana3ccduser.com forum "wisdom" was the camera should be powered down and the computer could be left on. This was the way I did it for a year and I had been lucky.

So what happened to you may have not been plugging something in backwards. Simply hot swapping is not safe.

You people in the northern hemisphere deserve a gold medal for even attempting to do a movie - never mind an adventure movie under those weather conditions. I couldn’t think of anything worse!
We have had the wettest summer in eight years in my area of South Africa and when the weather bureau predicted a window of five days of sunshine at the beginning of the month I grabbed my camera and made the most of it. As it turned out we had a lot more sunshine than that and I could have had a bit more time but better safe than sorry I guess.
Most of my footage was done in temperatures between 30 and 40 degrees C! (I had to protect my XL2 from the heat.)
How, Brian, do you avoid freezing in -69 degrees?!!
I cannot wait to see your wonderland movies.

You people in the northern hemisphere deserve a gold medal for even attempting to do a movie - never mind an adventure movie under those weather conditions. I couldn’t think of anything worse!
Well, the worse is that we do LOVE to live here! I can not think about any better conditions than real cold winter weather at my place this time of year. Think about how beneficial we are who can film in 4 different seasons. The same scenery change dramatically in a couple of months.

Ok, my entry is almost ready for the final small adjustments, which often take too long time! I've screen the entry for Anne-Kari and Guttorm, the actor and wildlife peer this afternoon.
Observing them through the screening was interesting.

The rough editing is done. But there are always some details to be improved. And then finding the right music... Will have mine done in a day or 3.

The big challenge this round:
To get my star doing at least one of the things I wanted.

With all the different challenges (weather, equipment...) many reports here, there must be many great, interesting films coming up this round. Amazing what we go through to do what we love... to make film, and to have FUN! :)
I can't wait to watch all of them.


The photo is a "behind the scenes" shot taken by my sister while we were shooting the film.

Well, rough edit done here as well. It would have been suicide to go out today so I tried as best as I could to transition the footage I had to make something work.
The transition still isn't right and I think it ruins the whole pace of the film at that point but unless I can find time to get dug out and shoot more footage it'll have to stand as is.

I'll put it away for a couple days and come back to it with fresh eyes and see how it looks then.

Good evening,

Spent another 4 hours behind the computer editing today. Had it all finished, Burnt a dvd of it, played it and it played well on my 54 inch plasma.

I made a quicktime rendition and disaster. two of my clips do not play in the same aspect ratio for some reason, My three freeze frames are widescreen but recuced 20% in size!!! I have never had these problems before!!!

I went out and shot a new establishing shot as I can't repeat the original which I loved. Did the other clip and will cut it in tomarrow.

I am comtemplating doing something more stoic instead of my action video.

Frustrating!!!

You know something Dale, sometimes things like that happen to me as well. And when they do I'm heart broken - "it'll never be as good.."

But you know what? Every single time it happens I come back stronger and create something even better.

Take a break, breathe a while, charge your batteries - and then make it happen!

All these ice cold tales of wonder and woe have me feeling a little "left out in the warm" over here on California's Pacific coast. Maybe I'm lucky to not be overexposed, but then, maybe I'm not. I grew up in the cold and I do remember how well a snow covered landscape captivated me. Biggest change the winters give here are we finally see green again. Green comes with the winter's generous rains which serve us much needed relief from the stingy dry climate of spring, summer, and even a good bit of fall.

Shooting for me this past week has been very exciting. Mind the fog, which I will somehow turn to opportunity, the bright sun has shed light on many new discoveries - all of which I have this challenge to give thanks. If I never tried, I never would have discovered Adventure's new meaning for me - embarking on an unknowing journey with no expectations, and no limitations.

I spent today learning about royalties, and searching through libraries of song for inspiration. I now understand, and have found, both. And just in time too because this winter's rains are about to return.

From somewhere in this can, and only in this can now, my short film will soon be born.

I hope...

Woe: Finding out a lot of your audio is junk....

Should have put fresh batteries in the wireless...lost reception on everything I did over 15-20 ft from the camera....

But...but....you can't see it, but I'm doin' the happy dance here!!!!!
No shark tank for me...finished up last night...
I'll give it one last look tonight and then upload time!

Bob T.

You guys all have such big cameras - I'm jealous ;-)

Decided to switch to PlanB after reviewing my footage on friday night - since then have captured 8 hours of footage !!! This challenge has once again made me look at the world in a very different way!!

Dale
What happens if you put a filter (such as Brightness/Contrast set to zero to force a render again) on the clips in the timeline that are not rendering out properly as a quicktime file?

Gordon

You guys all have such big cameras - I'm jealous ;-)



...thus spake the guy who won this in the first round that he ever played, by shooting in his own backyard, ahem!

...just keeping you honest, rob! or should i say, "Mr. Winner's Circle #3!"

OK, bird experts. I shoot video of the duck shown in the image at the link below. There was a pair of them. Is it some kind of mallard?

...

Since it the star of my challenge video, I'd sure like to know what it is.

http://www.wilcoxvideoproductions.com/TheImage.aspx?ImageUrl=Photos/Fauna/Birds/duck_name_unknown.jpg

Whoa Victor! back to the duck question.... Your server was back online and I just got a chance to look at your duck picture. In my opinion, that's not a Mallard or Rouen.... he's downright scary! I'm intrigued and will attempt some research on this guy. He kind of looks like he's in the ring neck family but wow the coloring fits a good Halloween story for sure!

Cat

Egyptian goose ;-)

http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-guide/egyptian-goose.asp

We have quite a few in gravel pits and on the mid-thames - introduced and gone feral. Actually can be quite pretty sometimes!!

Victor,

I am fairly expert on North American Waterfowl. If this duck is of any wild origin it is definitely a hybrid. It may be a domestic/wild hybrid.
Color of the back has much of the grey and fine baring of a drake gadwall. The coper color is also a gadwall color.
The clear ring on the neck is of interest as it is where the green color demarkation is on a Mallard, hense I see you first thought. The head shape actually resembles a mallard.

I have seen numerous duck hybrids in the wild, such as mallard pintail, Mallard gadwall and bluewing/cinimon teal hybrids. you can also find wild domestic hybrids in various park and zoo ponds!! I would wager it is of this last type.

Intriguing.

Dale:

Take a look at the link Rob just posted... I think he's got it, an Egyptian Goose! I've never even heard of them before. Wow quite alien looking.... he would have been great as my alien killer duck in my movie!

Cat

Well,

It is definitely an egyptian goose. I suspected it was something exotic/domestic origin.

What a beautiful bird nontheless.

Dale

Catherine; - thank you for your nice words (13th of february). The UWOL-family is really an including one, and I really would liked to participate the contest. May be there will be an opportunity later. You know, when you're IN, you really want to be IN, not just in a border position. I don't like sharks...!

In the moment I'm spending a lot of time outside, with my two dogs, in the nature. Sometimes I'm trying to make some videoshots at same time. Whish I had more than two arms... Like the day we met elk in the woods, and the dogs was running to check the strange smell... Suddenly we stopped, all of us, and glanced at each other at a distance of just 50 meters.
The dogs need training for about 3 hours a day, and the youngest one (13 months) is a bit turbo... puuuh.

I think my dear, little turbo-dog, Raijo has to be a little more "adult" in his head before I get some peace to get out make some stunning footage of my own. Or, - he is able to act in my films... But! - he was very clever in Per Johans "Art of the Night!"

Thanks! I'm happy you want me to take part in the UWOL contest!

Good luck with your UWOL#7!

alright, could somebody please clue me in on the "shark tank" thing?

Eric

Sign up and fail to produce........and you guessed it we all show up and cart you off to "the tank" to be manhandled and molested until the next challenge.

So sorry I did not get back in time to get in on this one. I wanted a TShirt so bad this year. Spent the last few days getting When It Rains ready for the New Mexico film festival. Thanks Meryem for the heads up.

Jim
www.sfgmedia.com/wir/wir_film_festival.mp4 (rt click Save Taget As)

Oh that's comforting. Thanks for the heads up.

What do they say, "Be careful what you wish for...?"


I thought Shake was bad. Now there are sharks.

Was waiting for approval to use a song by a Canadian singer.I had to go to plan B and use another musical piece for my video as it seemed that I was not going to get permission to use the song.This morning I checked e-mail and lo and behold The singers management had aproved my request....I hurried off to upload only to have a power outage destroy the power supply on my pc......Oh well will try again in tomorrow

Ouch, that's not the way you want it to happen. Hope you get it straightened out in a hurry.

At least you got the song, I had to settle for royalty free myself. Since I'm not the best musician lol.