Mondo Safari - Feedback

[Clint Harmon]

ooops duplicate post

[Simon Wood]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

From there, its a spot of beer, mud riding, night camping, soldiers with automatic rifles, a dangerous river crossing, and final safari into wetlands and a neatly edit little story about the subject.

Really good Simon !

Thanks Chris! Glad you noticed the 2 soldiers with the automatic rifles (blink and you miss them). I thought it was pretty funny to see the 2 different expressions of the soldiers in that scene (the guy on the left was very serious). We picked them up on a road and brought them to a small village during the trip; so they agreed to appear in a short cameo.

Originally Posted by Marj Atkins

This film is wonderful Simon! You have taken what could have been an interesting exploratory trip in its own right and made it into something that is simply outstanding! I just love the British sense of humour here. Your narrator made this movie. Very inspiring stuff.

I appreciate the way you have woven into this the colourful vignettes that give such a clear picture of the setting in which this is taking place - the environment, the people and their livelihoods - so much here I can relate to. How long did this trip actually take from home to swamp?

Something I noticed towards the end that affects the feel of the film a bit for me is that you changed from addressing the ‘expeditioneer’ to addressing an audience: “. . eventually ‘they’ realize they are surrounded by the birds”. I'm sure that was a slip.

The GoPro attached to his helmet makes it look quaintly like an antique Prussian helmet – esp in the shadow - it (the GoPro) did however go missing somewhere along the way. Just love the T-shirt he is wearing at the start – very appropriate!

Now . . . about that colour correction you didn’t do . . .

Hi Marj, thanks of that. Glad you liked the sense of humor; I was not sure how it would be received to be honest.

With regards to the trip; what you see in the film represents about 5 days of work, but this being a 'mondo' movie I have taken liberties with the stories construction and chronology, and so forth. Suffice to say that we certainly did do everything that you see, but in the 'mondo' tradition you shouldn't be able to tell which scenes were manufactured. Also, while we were in the swamps for 1 day (with Jotie & the motorbike) I had to do additional shoots by myself to get all the coverage needed for the bird. In all honesty I can say that I have literally hours and hours of very bad footage of the Shoebill stork, and maybe less than 10 minutes of useable footage.

With regards to the narration: it was actually a conscious decision to 'change gears' when we entered the swamp; the idea being that the Expeditioneer has in some way completed his task, and now we focus on the actual wildlife documentary section of the film. In the first cut I had a serious narration about the bird, but it did not fit with the previous section, so we changed back to the Pathe narration (but kept the new perspective). I'm surprised you noticed!

With regards to the GoPro: it was a great tool for this documentary and I am very happy with it. However after the first day I came to realize that it is really a one-trick-pony, and while spooling through the footage I came to the dawning realization that there is only so many hours of road footage that you can watch before becoming bored. So by the second day I decided to stop filming with it, and only use it when we passed something of interest (so we would rig it up, and drive past the object of interest for the second time to capture it - the overturned bus was one such example).

With regards to color correction: in the end I did apply a film look grade to the story (it actually also applied a very light vignette to the whole film too), as well as degrading the opening sees with noise, flickers and an 8mm overlay. So I did some quick and nasty film looks, but no serious grading.

Originally Posted by Clint Harmon

This is a great entry. I really liked the intro and title sequences. Others have said they are on the fence about the coloring, but I for one Love It! The green, red, and blue title sequence is great and with your permission I would love to use that as reference.

I like the use of the heroes. In nearly all my shoots we have incorporated 3-4. The down angle on the riders face was nice and not a typical shot you normally see.

On another note, your entry has changed my initial disposition on what Africa looks like (especially after I checked out your other videos). Reminds me a lot of southern Mexico and Bahamas mix.

Thanks Clint, by all means please do use the title sequence style for your own projects. Originally I wanted to do a 'TopGear' style opening sequence, but I did not know enough about AE or Motion to get it done in time, so I just ended up using some split screen effects instead (I was then aiming for a style that was popular back in the 1960's with movies like 'The Thomas Crown Affair'). Glad you liked it.

With regards to the GoPros; I made sure that the GoPro was rolling when ever we came to a bad section of road just in case we had a slip - but Jotie was too good a driver though and breezed through everything I could find. I tried a number of different angles (including from the handlebar, from the crash bar etc), but in the end there was just not enough time to fit everything in. That was the only GoPro 'effect' shot that made the cut....