I made this as a montage to music, since I didn't have much time to complete this project. I tried to convey the theme by showing different phases of flower life cycles.
Hope you enjoy watching it.


Here is a link to the HD version http://www.vimeo.com/923353


Cheers

Adrian,

Nice establishing shot to the close up of the flower. What a great spectrum of flowers you have shots of. color was good. On my monitor the shots all seemed a tad bright to me.
I enjoyed watching all three m inutes of it!!

would have been awesome if you has some shots of the flowers at different stages of opening up, mind you if it even gets cool enough for them to close up for the night!!

Nice Job!!! I love seeing beautiful flowers!!!

I to love flowers, (after 17 years with an avid gardener I'd better), and I thought you has some beautiful ones in your piece.

Thought the colors were perfect and the music was dead on....nice.
I would have liked to see some more wide shots, but maybe that wasn't possible.

Were all those flowers in one location or did you have to travel about?

Bob T.

Hi Adrinn,

Very nice and colorful flowers you show us. And with the choice of music it became a great video/montage.
As has been mentioned, maybe a little more variation in your shots could have made it even better? But all in all you did a good job with this one.
Well done! I'm looking forward to see more of your videos.

Hi Adrinn,
I too liked your montage very much. Colours were great. Maybe you could have shown less different types of flowers & more shots of different stages of the same few flowers for this theme. But maybe that's just what i was expecting to see.

Well done,

Bryce

Adrinn, nice film.
For me it was a bit too much close ups, not enough wide shots. Maybe you could use transition between the shot on the same flower, for me that would give me a better feeling that the flower is transforming.
Nice job…

I am not a big fan of macro. The images were beautiful, but my personal feeling is if your going close get really close, even to the degree that the subjects become abstract in nature. Slashs of dark, brillant color, yet retain the textures so that we know the images are of flowers, not an easy task but one you are fully capable of pulling off.

As Ansel Adams once said "Find your subject, compose, expose, and then take two steps closer".

Jim

A very pleasant piece. Toward the end of watching it the second time, I realized that I was watching with an editors eye and ear, and I believe I caught on to the way the music made your decision to use straight cuts or dissolves. I like the concept.

Great colors, however, some shots were more vivid than others. Perhaps a little color correction was called for. (Something my own video lacked as well, by the way.)

Adrinn:

Wonderful colors a real treat for me to see such beautiful flowers this time of year. My wife the flower person in our house loved every second of the film.

One simple suggestion go with a bit of color correction the next time it can make all the difference in the world.

Thanks for bringing it to us.

brian

A very pleasant piece. Toward the end of watching it the second time, I realized that I was watching with an editors eye and ear, and I believe I caught on to the way the music made your decision to use straight cuts or dissolves. I like the concept.

Great colors, however, some shots were more vivid than others. Perhaps a little color correction was called for. (Something my own video lacked as well, by the way.)

Yes I'm glad someone commented on the motivation, I indeed did use dissolves for soft music during a transition and hard cuts for a beat. The problem I had with color correction lies in the fact that my poor little HG-10 over-saturates and reds especially end up bleeding all over the place. I'm trying to find a "sweet" spot in the settings, since it's a consumer cam there isn't much to do it seems.

I wish I could have used a transition on the same flower I had to go a bit more symbolic though, I had to shoot it in one day. This was an attempt to do an interesting piece in very little time. And of course my camera doesn't do time-lapse at all.

As far as the macro goes, I know it can get visually tiring and I knew some people would dislike the piece for that reason on a technical level. I was pushing the envelope to see how much macro I could get away with. An experimental work so to speak.

Thanks everyone for the responses. I appreciate the criticism, it will only make me stronger next time.


Cheers

Adrinn,

Great entry. I'm not exactly reowned for my horticural abilities, instead of green fingers I've got a mouldy thumb, and I once successfully killed an unkilable cactus, but I digress...

I loved the music, that oriental feel worked well. I actually wanted to get even closer a few times - such as the snail (I presume) at around 0:30, the insect at 1:37 and the wasp (or is it a bee?) at 1:59.

I'm not sure what camera you use, but I noted the depth of field on some of the shots and wished it had been a bit, well, depthier! Maybe I'm not explaining that too well. As a Sony V1 user I can never really get that right (although I'm trying) so I can't complain.

Also, I found msyelf wanting captions to tell me what the plants were. I'm not sure what use that would be for most folks, but I take a sort of momentary pleasure in learning a little fact like that.

Very good.

While watching your film, without looking at who made it, I figured it must have been shot in CA- and the whole time I was watching, I wished I was there! After a really cold, gray winter here in the PNW- we had snow earlier this week- watching this video was just what I needed! The music worked really well, and I liked the way the dissolves and hard cuts matched the audio- subtle but very effective. Thanks for sharing your corner of the world.

Ruth

Adrinn, great flower shots. Color and music blended well. One thing I may have thought of was instead of the transition of each flower, maybe do lots of flowers opening, full open then dieing. Just a thought. But also as an life long gardener, I just loved the flowers. Bob

Hi Adrinn!

I too, loved the flowers, the timing to the music, and the general flow. Wow, what super-saturation of color and life! Thanks for bring us in Colorado so much life!

Cato

I lovely display of flower shots and I liked the use of the varying stages. I think a few pans and reveals and maybe some clever use of composition to cut from one shot to the next might have added some more variety though. Nice choice of audio and the best display of colour in any uwol film to date I think.

Cool stuff.
Mat

Great colours everywhere.The eastern type music goes so well with the pictures portrayed on my screen.You said you never had much time to complete this project? cant wait for the next round, when perhaps time will be on your side because your shooting skills are right up there

Hi Adrinn

What great colours you give us and I also like the Asian feeling in your choice of music.

I would like to see some wider shots though and some variation. Just close ups or one type of shots, will easily give the impression of something boring (no offend please). You give a diversity of different stages of the flowers and it show us the transformation in some way.

At the end I liked the bumble bee/insect coming out from the rose, that was cool :)

Untill next time in uwol#9, I wish you all the best.

Geir Inge

Hi Andrinn - sorry I’ve taken so long to do my feedback - can only do one or two a day at the moment.
I enjoyed your colourful flower video set to oriental music - very relaxing to watch.
Your transitions are timed nicely to the music, although I had a thought . . . there are a couple of flowers there - the yellow daisy and the trumpet-like Bignonia cherere that have four clips each showing the change from bud through to dead head - possibly they could have worked quite well with longish cross dissolves between the clips to tie them together and reinforce the feeling of the change they undergo. Okay, I know, that messes up the music bit.
Watch out for your subject framing. Sometimes symmetry can work effectively in a composition but generally speaking it is less interesting and dynamic than one where the subject is positioned slightly off centre.
Your images are clear, the lighting is good and the colours are true to life. I think this is very well done especially considering your time-constraints.