All I can say after finishing this is "Aww Crap, not another learning experience" (saw that on a bumper sticker once.)

Anyway, I ran into nothing but "issues" making this film including the final compression which you will see a few glitches. So I will post a better version after the official ones are up and hope that you choose to view that one instead.

Hope you enjoy it anyway.

P.S This is just a guess but I think Cat and I may have been thinking alike on this one...we will see.

Hey Jeff:

Great minds think alike, no? ;-)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you decided to do and I will watch both of your postings, a before and after to see how you managed to get those darn kinks out... and digital video is rife with those nasty kinks. We have chosen a tough hobby!

Cato

Pretty, this is probably your best use of natural lighting to date. This is some of your prettiest cinematography yet. The way you use silence at the end, after the story, giving the bird/nature the last word is very effective, too....

Was this a capture issue or compression issue - it looks like you shot 16:9 and put it in a 4:3 sequence. Or something? (At least, that's how it looks in my own world of bonehead plays....!). In any case, the image looks squeezed.

Beautiful...but squeezed.

P.S. I'm modding your thread title so that folks don't pass it by. It's too pretty and must be seen!

I know...I cannot figure it out...

I shot in HD (for the second time) did everything the same in editing and compressing that I normally do but the image was either squeezed or way too wide every time. I tried both TMPGEnc and Sorrenson's Squeeze (which kept crashing) and nothing seemed to work right. Anyway this has been the story of this entire film, problem after problem.

Oh well. I will try to put up a better looking version.

Jeff

Hey Jeff:

Lovely and masterfully done. You really did take the theme to a new level. Lighting and beautiful cinematography. Simple and elegant. The fog off the fields was magical. This just occurred to me, but what if you held off the full view of your main character until the very end, if at all? Your wife is very beautiful and she did her part extremely effectively, but I loved how in many shots we just saw her hands, parts of her arms.... that made it very intriguing. With the narrating saying it all, what if you left it up to our imagination just who she was? Anyway, just a first impression thought.

Loved it.

Cat

Jeff,

Man you had some great shots in this one! Who would have guessed that something as simple as a leaf floating down a stream could be so powerful?

You captured Mother Earth at her finest!

A great lesson in less is more.

Simply beautiful!

Jeff

Stunning visuals with a well written narrative. It was the most filmic entry (as oppose to a doc style) for me and I enjoyed the it very much. Shame about the aspect ratio.

Very poignant.

Nice story Jeff

You used some “simple” motives and told a strong story perfect combination. A different type of wildlife film… a more poetic one.

Well done Jeff

Markus

Okay. I was distracted by the side pillars and obvious aspect ratio problem first time through. Second time through, I saw what beautiful images you had honed.... Nice leap to the dramatic.....

Hi Jeff,

I really like this video! Stunning images and colors.
You had a good story too. As Catherine mentioned, I like how you worked together with your wife here. Brought the video up to the next level. Well done!

The natural sound was really nice, but I found the VO to have a really low sound level compared to the background sound. And this made it a bit hard to hear what she said, without turning up the volume pretty high.

You mentioned you had trouble with Squeeze.
Which settings did you use? (It sometimes crashes for me too)

Hi Jeff,

thanks for a film with high technical and aesthetic qualities.
I have much to learn.
But, I must confess that I do not understand your message and the connection with the object "habitat". I feel a bit embarrassed.