Eternal Gifts

[Dale Guthormsen]

Here you go,

Eternal Gifts DV/UWOL Charity Challenge on Vimeo

This was a lot of fun building, composites and all. Being a simple event videographer and wildlife videographer as my real interest I totally went outside of my area of comfort. all of the actual footage had to be shot in -30 degrees and colder, was not so fun at the time. My hands were burning, toes tingling and face a tad numb. Even though I did not get to one place to shoot I think it all came out OK in the end. I spent more time on this short piece than almost any piece I have built to date. I also did the music for it, and in time I will do better with recording original music. Thanks to a couple guys in the vegas forum for helping me with some ideas on that!!!

DV INFO NET is the best, the groups are all so supportive and the contributing members you can't say enough about!! I have learned so much because of all of you out there.

I look forward to constructive criticisms and opinions.

I hope you enjoyed it for what it was worth.

[Roger Shealy]

Dale,

First of all, love the script (how can you go wrong with scripture?). Thanks for sharing and making the effort on such a difficult topic. As far as the production of the piece, it's obviously a matter of taste. I'll give my $0.02 worth:

The piece would have benefited from a cinematic approach. Much of what you showed seemed to be either still images or very stoic video so the piece had a slide show appearance instead of cinema. The bright & stretched titles, swipes, and light rays on the titles and in the video would be more appropriate for a less serious topic. They say "video" instead of "cinema". I think you would have been better served with simple white letters with black background fading with simple fade in and fade outs and perhaps some low end rumble at the beginning to add audible depth and drama. Some of the images also seemed to be stretched horizontally, so the aspect ratio appeared to be off (4:3 stretched to 16:9?).

As far as audio, Something happened to your audio around 1:35 and the sound went from rich to tinny like you either changed to a different mic or backed away from the mic and lost resonance in your voice/chest. The music was comfortable and I couldn't decide if I liked it or not. If you buy into the cinematic approach, you might try symphonic music to add to the grandeur. But on the other hand the simple guitar could match the humility of God taking on the form of a baby. Perhaps you could mix the two and have some symphonic instrument hits to punctuate the creation scenes and then transition to the guitar music as you bring in modern scenery. Hard to know what would work without trying.

Anyway, thanks for sharing and please keep working on it. The subject deserves your best efforts!

[Trond Saetre]

Hi Dale,
As always, I think you produce quality videos. Enjoyed every part of it.
The first minute was stunning. Loved it!
Very low temperatures you shot in. You did buy the Polar Bear heat cover for your XLH1 last year, right? You are happy with it? I couldn't live without mine. Keeps the hands warm as well. :)

It seems like the sound volume, especially for the VO, was a bit low, but got louder in the end.
As Roger also commented, it appears that the image is stretched horizontally.

Well done! Keep up your good work.
Thank you for sharing.

[Dale Guthormsen]

roger,

thank you for the feed back. I intend to keep this one around and slowly build it into a better and more complete piece. Your suggestions are good and I will institute them in the revision.

I built this to participate but mostly as an educational piece for myself. My regular videography never has composites, never fancy fonts or such. I have always kept things plain. so, I built everyting in order to try something new. I had to use three different programs to build it. Yes, I had to stretch some of the grapics only because I could not find any copyright free material in the aspect ratio I needed. I spent a lot of time in photoshop.

Audio is my biggest challenge: in part I have poor hearing (due to militaryabuse and 30 years teaching shop!!) so I oftentime do not even notice some of the subtlties you people do. Guess I need to get some one to proof the audio for me.

This time I was working hard at trying to learn how to record music directly from intrument to the computer without using microphones. That is why you ahd to suffer through the guitar. Also trying to get it to sound properly was a huge job for me. One of these days I may actually get it right!!

My biggest problem was getting out to film lights. we were in the deep freeze.

When I drove the 50 miles to the nearest city to film the lights I had forgotten my polar mitten. My wife laughed at me as she has been after me to make a check list for my filming equipment. she is right of course!! Of course now we are in beautiful weather +1 c today!!!

thanks again for the comments

the more I learn the more I appreciate everyone elses work!!!!!!!

[Bill Thesken]

Dale, I liked the lights and the music was outstanding. I wished the lights were a little brighter. Driving 50 miles in -30 weather to get footage gets you the Hero award. The little house with the lights was my favorite. I'll have to look again to see if there were any rocks in the film.

[Chris Barcellos]

Dale:

As I watched this film, the aspect ratio was an issue, and I am not sure if you uploaded it and did it that way on purpose, or it was an issue with Vimeo encoding. While it wasn't an issue with the most of the star field scenes, and the galaxy scene, the shots of the moon distorted was kind of distracting, and I would have liked to see that shoot is regular aspect ratio.

You also take on a challenge shooting Christmas lights and anything at night, and the resulting images were quite well done for the conditions ! I have taken serveral different cameras out, including the Canon 5d, and know what you were going through... except temperatures here are not 30 below...

Nice effort.

[Roger Shealy]

Dale,

Hats off if that was you playing the guitar; now I'm jealous! I look forward to any revisions you make.

We don't normally have -30F in Georgia, so I don't know what that was like. We just had a spell of 18 and it was a little cooler than I prefer!

[Lorinda Norton]

At minus 30 degrees I can certainly see why you chose this challenge to further your education indoors on the computer! I'm glad you had fun with it and it's obvious you learned some valuable things.

Nice guitar work, Dale. The style and sound made me picture a Taylor T5, but that's totally a guess. :)

[Dale Guthormsen]

Lorinda,

The guitar is a Tacoma ECM 28 C (American made). It does have a similar sound to the Taylor but I believe the taylor has a bit more richness about it. Originally I was going to get a Taylor but my friend Keith Richman (world blu grass picking champion) led me to this guitar and I don't regret his suggestion, bought on ebay pretty darn economical at that.


Chris,

The moon shot is a 3/4 moon shot and played in proper aspect ratio. the distortion you see is in fact some aberation caused by atmospheric conditions, perhaps subtle ICE Crystals in the air. I have superior moon footage but not shot in the time frame!!! I had to go with what I got.

shooting the lights I had huge focus issues to deal with. I did not want to use my small hd monitor out in the extreme cold, so bouncing between auto and manual trying to get it right was the issue. then when I got home, what I saw on the computer was rather different than through my fu 1000!!!

It is called a challenge for a reason!!! What is the point in trying to do something easy anyway???

What I really need to learn is how to change graphics and keep the aspect to the hdv aspect ratio using programs like photoshop.

I'll only ever be a student of this art.


thank you for the comentaries!!!

[Dick Mays]

Dale,

Excellent guitar sound. If I could play that well, I'd do my own music too!

You also have a nice narration voice. A very soothing piece. It seemed a little dark for a piece about "the light." Perhaps more color in the lights, some closeups, with blurred lights in the background added a few places. The rays emmiting from the blue Christmas tree was neat. How'd you do that? Aftereffects?

Other's have mentioned the aspect ratio, and audio seemed to drop low at one point. But I think you have great music, and a few tweaks whill have a great piece that could go viral among the Christian community. But I'd use the America Standard or King James version of 3:16, something about a "begotten son" speaks to us down South.

But hey, the moon counts in my book as a BIG rock, knocking Trond's puny rock off the mountaintop. ;)

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Dale Guthormsen

Chris,

The moon shot is a 3/4 moon shot and played in proper aspect ratio. the distortion you see is in fact some aberation caused by atmospheric conditions, perhaps subtle ICE Crystals in the air. I have superior moon footage but not shot in the time frame!!! I had to go with what I got.

Dale, attached are images of what it looked like to me, and I am attaching for illustration only, not criticism, in case you are getting a different view....

[Chris Swanberg]

Dale.... you went out of your comfort zone here - and I suspect are better as a filmmaker for your new discoveries. Some great work in composites etc. The audio was, as others have noted, a little rough here and there, but I enjoyed this film very much.

I especially like your Northern Lights logo they way you did it. Really reminded me as being written in the northern lights glow!

Chris

[Dale Guthormsen]

Chris,



thanks for the two frames. I went back to my editor and checked things out and low and behold, I believe I must have done that in desperation as the one composite with the blue tinge did not cover the entire frame which then showed on top of the background, because it was standard 16x9 (1.21) instead of the hd wide screen (1.33). I know the composite of the earth should have been rotated to have the right shape but then the land mass would have been wrong. I needed to actually get that right in photoshop but had trouble sorting that. Will go back and give it a go when I finish the job I have to get done in the next week.

[Ken Diewert]

Dale,

Why don't you move out to the West Coast? We're so warm (and wet) here that we may have to cancel the Olympics in a couple of weeks!

It's good to see that you're pushing your limits - getting outside of your comfort zone, and this theme is an excellent one for you. Granted it would have been nice to see some more footage of the light theme, but I thought the music, and the composites were well done.

50 miles to the nearest city? Yikes!

Stay warm, and keep shooting!

[Dale Guthormsen]

Ken,


Having grown up in the desert, lived in south east asia, and while the north is no place for a southerner, I would rather have it cold and dry rather than warm and wet.
Coldest day of my life was in the jungle, 70 degrees F, 30 plus miles winds and relentless rain and being stuck out in those elements all night!! and no camera!!!

The weather has been so nice I have been out testing out my new run and gun camera, a fx 1000.