Ugh it’s definitely too soon after coffee to be writing this,

Whenever I take on one of the Challenges, I do so with a specific goal in mind, working on something I would like to learn or learning something I have been putting off. In this case, I got a new still camera, a big bruiser the Canon DsMarkII. I needed to spend some time with it to acclimate to it.

Well, no better way to acclimate than to make a video out of stills. Argh. It was much harder than I anticipated. I shot about 700 pictures to make this. Some things went in, not because they’re good shots but because they extend the narrative arc. Some of the best shots I took are out, because they did not.

The best moment in shooting this came when I decided I wanted to include a hawk and thought I would have to make a run to hawk territory, and, while I was walking around my neighborhood shooting snowy scenes, one appeared in my neighbor’s tree. It’s not the best shot of a hawk—my lens wasn’t long enough—but that hawk sure saved me a huge amount of time, and that it appeared in the most unlikely location just when I was thinking about it, is the little blessing of my modest film.

One technical note: it was a much harder process than I anticipated. I could spend the next three months photoshopping these images. As it was, I had time to process about 5 or 6 before deadline mania hit.

Also huge love and thanks to Bradley Marlow for jumping in and saving my voice-over when the guy I thought I had in lined up chickened out. He did the whole thing for me in one night and e-mailed it to me. Without much coaching or guidance and without having seen the actual imagery of the film. An inspired and heroic effort! And emblematic of why I love Dvinfo!

oh, and.....Bradley Marlow unmasked! At my outtakes link (very short file)...

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/201475

All that hard work paid off, Meryem, I'm glad to see you stuck with it. I know if I run into situations that challenging I'm more likely to quit. Going through over seven hundred shots to assemble this, that's sticktoitiveness if I've ever seen it.

I'm guessing we'll see a bit more of this general plot before the contest is over, but I think you handled it well, and in a very unique fashion. Voiceover and stills, simple yet powerful. Elegant, really. I noticed some keyframe flashing, but it wasn't objectionable to my taste, and the film shone through nonetheless. You're a wonderful photographer, if I may say so.

I think I might have done the voice recording differently, though. It seemed as though the narrator was overly mischievous, if you will. I want to say coy as well, but I'm not sure that's entirely right. Like he had a secret he didn't want to tell us, and was happy about it. A little too happy, in my estimation. The overall speech pattern felt a little slow and deliberate, as well. Not a big deal, I just think a little faster may sound more natural.

I hope your knee's feeling better. Did you end up using the shot you hiked three miles through the snow for?

This was certainly one of the prettiest "films" so far, but then what a backdrop you had to work with!

Many of the shots were great: my favorite was the shot of the one crow flying with the other crow directly under it in the distance. Talk about being in the right place at the right time! That was beautiful.

It's interesting to me that a number of films so far have dealt with the reflections of a dead person...

I'm sure that this took a ton of time. Thanks for all the effort.

Bill

What a GREAT concept.

I absolutely love experimental stuff, and while I was watching it I was only thinking in the amount of work involved in the collage of the images. Really good, sobre way to tell a story.

Ahh, and excelent photos, as well :)

Hugo

thanks, guys. i did manage to get a whole lot of pretty photography, just because the weather was so cooperative. it's 80 degrees here today...

the raven shot is my favorite, too. it really looks great on the DVD version, on my TV.

robert, that silly knee injury is finally healing this week. that stone bench is 3 miles uphill from my house, and i was so tired from schlepping gear, shooting 2 hours worth of photos, and breaking trail that i barely had the energy to swipe off the snow. and it shows! i wanted to go back up there and re-shoot it without snow, but that got filed under the heading of "@#%#%$ it, i've done enough ^&%%^& work on this #$%$%%$^*^&% thing."

i'm sure we each have a similarly labeled file.....

Oh man, BIG props for photography on this film! Wow. A friend of ours has the DSMarkII, also, and the 600mm-12-gauge-shotgun-zoom lens as well (he's a neurosurgeon so he's got the bucks) and I'm really impressed with the quality of this camera. But great work bringing those stills into a video production. Good story, too.

Yeah, it's interesting how "reflections" is translating to storylines of family (or friends) who have passed. Good work, Meryem.

Finally, I was able to save this file and watch it! (my pc) It was so worth the struggle!

You did a GREAT job, Meryem. The whole piece was so eerie--I got sucked in right away and didn't try to see the end, therefore, it surprised me. I thought it was cool.

On a sad note, I've been meaning to ask about your beloved friend but was afraid of what you'd say. I am so sorry. You shouldn't have to walk that trail alone.

Thank you so much for sharing this monumental effort with us. I really, really liked it.

The most I'm impressed of is the fact that I understand all words ;-)

The plot and the decision to work with stills fit together very well!

I've downloaded and watched all the movies posted, but I have to run out the door to make it to my in-laws for Easter weekend. I won't be able to comment on everything until later. However, I had to take a quick note to tell you that this one is my four year old's son's favorite! He keeps wanting me to replay it.

There is something very soothing about the piece. It has a tone, almost like Mr. Roger's neighborhood. More later!

Absolutely beautiful Meryem!

I do photography as well so relate very well to all of this, especially the nature scenery and the story. I really enjoy the whole feel of this film. You did a wonderful job.

"Think Edgar Allen Poe, the Raven. Think Gothic meets and walks in the Rocky Mountains. Think John Denver slaps on white face paint and eyeliner." I shall never forget! :)

Keep schlepping!

Best wishes~
Bradley

thank you so much, y'all. above all, i want my work to be beautiful (it's fine if it's incoherent or juvenile or whatever, else, i can live with that!...), but i live for the moments when i can squeeze a little beauty out of the other end of the lens....

lorinda, this is a piece of fiction. my best friend is still hanging in, some days worse than others. those are her footprints! she's in my outtakes footage. she actually made that 3-mile hike in the blizzard with me (lots of stopping to photograph things helps...). snow days have always been a favorite and seem to unleash the inner puppy. i put that part in because i was trying to sort of ease into the theme of dying (frozen dead guys, dogprints) from the carefree living part. (we're athletic, etc.)...knowing my best friend's days are numbered, i think this is on my mind. when i screened this piece at my monthly girl-videomakers' video group, my friends were all mad at me for killing off my dog, even if it was entirely fictional....it's nice to know that my dog has such vigorously loyal friends! i'll count you among them, lorinda!

anyway, thank you all for the kind words.

my favorite audience is 4 year olds. i know i'm onto something when i can please my 5 year old!

I really liked the story and picture combination. Some great looking pictures.

this is a piece of fiction. my best friend is still hanging in, some days worse than others. those are her footprints!
You got me! Somehow, I missed the doggie footprints in the snow. So nice to know the ol' girl is hangin' in there! :)

This was definitely different than the others! It was fun and refreshing to watch. I was a little confused about where it was going at first, but I caught on and thought that the 'beautiful place' line worked well when it came back in at the end. Nice job -- beautiful pictures, especially of the path and the mountainsides.

Yes, quite nice. The first half reminds me of a sort of chamber of commerce thing. Sort of like a "Welcome to beautiful Montana" sort of narrative. Then it drifted effortlessly into a real story line. Nice concept and good use of stills.

Voice over reminded me a bit of Agent Smith but that's OK. Also a bit like one of those story time readers at the public library. Nice twist too. Saved it till the very end. Good job.

Sean McHenry

agent smith?? that's pretty funny. look for bradley marlow in starring in "The Matrix 6: More Elliptical Than Ever"

i gotta say that i told him to do the whole thing slooooowly. i was shooting for a haiku effect and was trying to walk a line between normalcy and creepiness. so any critique of V/O technique rests on my shoulders. i probably should have just given him the lead, like a good jockey trusts a thoroughbred!

That was beautifully done. Coincidentally, I was talking with some filmmakers in town about trying to do a film with stills; watching yours, I can see how feasible that would be. Also, I found the voice to be rather soothing, which I thought you were shooting for.

There must be something in the water here at DVinfo.net. This is the third DV Challenge film I've watched that has the main narrator/character actually be dead during the telling of the story.

lol Mereym! "The Matrix 6: More Elliptical Than Ever"

On another note: You definitely squeezed beauty out of the other end of the lens.

:)

Best Wishes~
Bradley

What a workout for a new piece of gear. The results looked great. After all that are you loving your camera or hating it? I shoot stills a bit myself on the side so I'm always interested in what cameras people enjoy.

i'm so busy trying to watch all these other shorts that i barely have time to respond to my own thread....these challenges challenge us, all right, in oh so many ways....

kris, when folks discuss different cameras, the conventional wisdom is to go with the one that feels right. like a fine musical instrument, the one that feels right is the one that is right. i like that line of thinking in general. but what i learned when i bought my XL2 is that sometimes you have to force yourself to make it feel right, whether it feels right or not--that's the bane of being a left-handed person in a righties' world. the XL2 feels terrible in every possible way, from a physical standpoint, but then again, so did my brothers' baseball mitt, which i had to borrow when i was a youngster. didn't stop me from playing!

so, about the DsMark II. i hated everything about it when it arrived, except for the fabulous 16 MP resolution. ergonomically, it is a challenge because it is chunky and weighty (although hearing what still photographers whine about in terms of what weighs a lot makes me chuckle--it's nothing compared to a loaded-up video camera!). the worst part is that, in my opinion, it is not intuitively designed. you really have to LEARN this puppy. what buttons to use in what oddly arranged, non-intuitive combinations....

now, however, i am loving it. after spending a month with it, i've adjusted to the weight and the design. thank you, DV Challenge! i'd love to get my hands on Mike Teutsch's dolly, but the biggest reward already is that i can use this camera with ease. piling big lenses on it to shoot birds and squirrels and such has made shooting with any lesser camera seem almost too easy! using this badboy has made me better able to operate my smaller camera, which is a nice by-product.

this weekend i shot easter egg hunting photos of my daughter with a digital rebel and a reasonable tamron 24-135mm walkaround lens, and it felt like a toy camera, after lugging this big gun around for a month. my camera was still bigger than every other parent's point n shoot (oh my lord how the dads hate that!! it's hilarious how anxious they get that a GIRL has a bigger lens than they do! you just wouldn't believe the comments, though i'm usually the only one laughing....).

(fortunately for me, this time, there was another mom with a 10d and a canon 24-85mm, who worked in a camera store, how refreshing to have another mom to talk lenses with, for a change....)

anyway, this is getting away from your question. i am enjoying this camera quite a bit now. it feels good. i think the pictures look good.

one other thing that's tough about it, it's not practical to use for internet exchanges. i learned that the files it produces are so darn big that my internet service provider bounces them back to me. &%$^#%^ comcast!

so if i know i am sending around these pictures in e-mail, it makes a lot more sense to use my rebel. otherwise, i'd have to go to the trouble of re-sizing the files in photoshop. i'd download stuffit or something similar, but i'm touching against the limits of this internal hard drive as it is, so something else would have to go to make room.

that's probably more information than you were asking for, but it's my chance to get on that soapbox and say, if you think something DOESN'T feel right, sometimes you have to suck it up and wrestle that big camera to the ground. otherwise, we would not have ANY southpaw XL2 users!

I've heard that kind of comment more than once. Please. My response is usually, wait till you see what I can do with it. One of the things I like best about DVinfo is the lack of that kind of attitue. But I digress.

I appreciate the detailed response, it was exactly the kind of info I was after. It's good to know that sometimes the learning curve is worth it. Especially since I've been known to make final decisions on still cameras based on what feels best and is most intuititve.

Smile,
Kris

Meryem:

I ve done a lot of pan and zoom projects with still photos for things like memorial videos, and birthday and anniversary celebrations. In my early days before I became enamored with digital film, I had a darkroom, and shot a 2 1/4 camera (Kowa 66). Still have the gear, but I am finding digital stills easier to work with. Your photos are beatiful ! I never considered a "dramatic" naration in stills, but yours came out very nice !

I agree with everyone else and since I'm also into stills, I really liked how you were so creative with them - beautiful photography.

it sounds like a couple of you are considering a video with stills project. if you ever complete one that gets on the web, i'd love it if you could send me a link. it's a bit difficult to learn from what other people have done or are doing because i don't know of too many of these types of films. the one i had in mind was the classic of the genre, chris marker's short black and white film, "la jetee."

if any of you haven't seen "la jetee" and plan to make one of these types of projects, it's absolutely must-see viewing! what's great about the film is how deliberately the form meets the content. by that, i mean, the choice to use stills completely reflects the frozen-in-time time paradox at the center of the narrative....(ugh, my inner professor unveils itself--i think i have taught this film one too many times....). anyway, my students always loved this film. it was one way to feed them an art film, while they were thinking they were getting a freaky science fiction film.

i wish i had the talent to storyboard things. it would have been much more efficient undoubtedly. with every video i've ever made for myself, i get an inkling of an idea and then walk around shooting stuff, and the stuff generates more ideas, until eventually the whole thing takes shape from that process of thinking a little, shooting a little, looking at what i collect, and thinking about it a bit more. it seems sort of random, but i think it's about tapping into a stream-of-unconsciousness.

it's not very efficient! it seems like the ability to storyboard one of these would save you lots of head-banging.....

chris, the filmmaker chris marker uses only one pan in his story, and since the rest of it is without motion, other than dissolves, that single pan carried a weighty meaning. i looked for an appropriate place to put pan/zoom motion into my little film, but ultimately, with all the snowy scenery, opted for a more frozen look.

i'd be open to suggestions for good spots for selective motion.

in chris marker's movie, he only uses one additional ambient sound, a jet engine, and the rest is voice. i recorded some ambient sounds--the skateboard park, the coffeehouse, footsteps tramping through snow, etc. but ultimately, i thought those muddled the sound mix, rather than adding anything. everything you choose to add to a still video is more dramatically emphasized, it seems, automatically...

i'd love to see how other people work with these issues!

Meryem:

Your piece moved me the most (thus far). Believe it or not, I am very esoteric by nature (althought I don't allow many people to see that side of me). I can talk with folks for hours about the hereafter and the true way of the mind.

"How do you know when your eyes have closed for the last time?"

Who came up with that? That line will haunt me (in a good, thought provoking way) for the rest of my days. Thank you for a magnificent movie. This is getting tougher by the minute.

wow, hugh, thanks! i'm moved that you are moved! it makes it all worthwhile.

i stole the line (with permission, of course) from a friend, who is using it to introduce her own video project for her MFA. i belong to a monthly video critique group. we give each other feedback and help each other hone our work. she opened her project with a beautiful sunrise image and this inscription. she said she borrowed it from someone in her program, who said it was a zen koan. i tried to look it up, in books of zen koans, and never found it. so maybe she made it up. i'm not sure. i thought it worked with my project, synchronously, with my friend's project. what has been fun is seeing how we are working with the identical line in such different projects. we differ so stylistically, there's not a lot of danger of overlap.

thanks for viewing....

[QUOTE=Meryem Ersoz]
chris, the filmmaker chris marker uses only one pan in his story, and since the rest of it is without motion, other than dissolves, that single pan carried a weighty meaning. i looked for an appropriate place to put pan/zoom motion into my little film, but ultimately, with all the snowy scenery, opted for a more frozen look.

i'd be open to suggestions for good spots for selective motion.

[QUOTE]
Meryem:

I wouldn't presume to think I could improve on your work by adding motion. First of all, you do have motion in your film, without pans or zooms- The "rapid fire" sequences themselves create a sense of motion. I also recall the crow and squirrel scenes have successive frames that create a sense of motion. If I was going to play with anything for motion effect, (1) I might try a zoom effect on the photo from behind tail of crow, with an appropriate transition to the the nest landing. (2) With a couple of the Static landscapes, I might have considered just a slight pan or zoom, almost imperceptible.

anyone here from minnesota?

my DVC5 short film will be screening at the Twin Cities Underground Film Festival which runs from Sept. 1-3rd in Bloomington, MN.

where the heck is bloomington? why aren't they calling it the bloomington FF?

oh well, it's a nice bonus when a DVC video gets into one o' these events. so i learned how to operate my still camera and squeezed in a film festival credit. in a week--oh never mind, this one was a month, wasn't it?? it's all a blur now. oh well, it was all worth it.

yo dylan, you should start a list of these things. i know sean has screened some of his stuff, and didn't bill gardner move his award-winning film from local to global? it would be fun to gather outside data on just how much "cheaper than film school" the DVC actually is!