Wildlife sample made with XL2 & XL H1

[Lauri Kettunen]

Just uploaded a wildlife short film to my webpages I filmed and produced for the Finnish Broadcasting Company. I filmed the program for two years and the film was ready last year in June. This film is a part of a larger series, and the nice thing was that we had free hands in doing the film. Only the length of each section of the series was given. You can download a mpeg1 file from

http://www.luontovideo.net/Video%20gallery.html

The title "Storslagen tystnad" means something like spacious quietness, and the idea was to create a program which yields a same kind of relaxed feeling as one has when observing the wilderness without any kind of haste.

Hope you enjoy the film. At least it was a pleasure to make it.

[Mark Williams]

Very impressive. I enjoyed it very much. Really nice wildlife closeups. You obviously put a lot of work into this.

[Per Johan Naesje]

Wow Lauri, that was something!
You showed much of the beauty of the Finnish wildlife in your film. The Eric Satie score emphasize the scenes in a fabulous way.
I like this kind of wildlife reels very well.

Your crane/jib shoots was stunning and not often shown in wildlifefilms. I notice the aurora borealis scene, which was stunning. Did you manage to record this by video or did you use any filmcamera?

I know you are a busy man Lauri, but have you considered to join the uwol-challenge in the future? We need people like you in that group!

[Lauri Kettunen]

Mark, Per, Thank you for your kind words. Indeed, every episode of the series meant a lot of work. Especially because there's also a version with 5.1 surround sound including the music. That took far more time than I thought, but it also offers rather exicting possibilities.

The aurora borealis was shot with EOS Mark II, and amazingly enough, the first footage with the pine trees is from our backyard.

Per, yes I will participate the uwol-challenge as soon as I have time for it.

[Ruth Happel]

Lauri,

You captured some very nice footage, and the translation of the title, spacious quietness, says it all. There is a nice feeling of progression in time and space, and the music is a perfect complement to that.

The aurora borealis was amazing. How did you do that with the Canon still camera to develop it as part of a video? I'm curious about your technique, since I've tried timelapse with both video and still cameras, and am always interested to learn more about how others achieve their techniques.

Thanks for sharing this.

[Lauri Kettunen]

Originally Posted by Ruth Happel

The aurora borealis was amazing. How did you do that with the Canon still camera to develop it as part of a video?

Ruth,

I have the Canon EOS remote controller which enable one to set the time between each shot. This is important, because otherwise the motion of starts would not be smooth. Then the camera "is put to sing" as we use to say in Finnish. The focal length of the lens is typically 14mm, wide open, typical exposure time is about 15-20s. Then I shoot as long as the aurora borealis appears. Say, often 50-500 frames.

Then I open the first raw file in Photoshop in Adobe RGB color space and create an action to adjust whitebalance (here it's typically around 2800K, then the sky has a healthy blue tone), to correct the effect of the lens making trees to appear curved, to reframe the stills, etc., and then finaly downrez to SD or HD format. (I use square pixels and adjust resolution accordingly.) Once the action is ready, then I run in batch the action automatically for all images and store the processed images in some folder.

The images are imported from this folder into Premiere and then they are put on the time sequence using the automate to sequence command with cross dissolve transition. (That is, I set the cross dissolve as the default transition and within the automate-to-sequence command check that transition on.) Say, each still is typically a 4 to 8 frames long clip and the transition is of the same length (The length of the clip and the transition can be adjusted in Preferences). Then, render, if needed, and export (a video footage) and that's it.

Hope this helps. There's no magic involved.

[Ruth Happel]

Lauri,

Thanks for your detailed explanation. It is definitely a help, I appreciate your response. I don't often get to see the aurora borealis, but now I'll be set if I do!

Your film was really great, not just the aurora but all of it, thanks for sharing.

Ruth

[Brendan Marnell]

That's all I'm getting Lauri, but it's enough to make me want more ...

[Lauri Kettunen]

Originally Posted by Brendan Marnell

That's all I'm getting Lauri, but it's enough to make me want more ...

Brendan, could you please try again. I've also noticed that there is occasionally some problem with the server implying one is not able to download files properly. But although have reported this to the operator, they never find any problem.

[Brendan Marnell]

Thank you Lauri, after a few more attempted downloadings fuller versions arrived ...

Lovely lovely images and beautifully chosen and matched sound ...

"Sample" was like a gentle intro to your land & lakescape with heads of bog cotton bringing us together.
"Trailer" was more luxuriant, yet tightly edited ... 2 eagle species, a capercallie battle (sounds cleverly interwoven), more bog cotton but the early contrast between your Majesty the Swan and the Aurora was special. Your final images of distant woodland, hilltop and rolling mist seemed, from the contrast of light & shade, to be collage and yet I could not trace the overlapping or superimposing. What was the music for Trailer? I thought it was on lyre or lute but decided it was acoustic guitar ... mellow and soothing but never mushy.

Where did I miss Debussy's Reverie?

[Lauri Kettunen]

Originally Posted by Brendan Marnell

What was the music for Trailer? ... Where did I miss Debussy's Reverie?

Sounds like there are still problems in downloading the files. I added the size of the files on the web page, so you can check how much is missing. A moment ago I tried downloading the files myself, and it worked out just well.

The music of the trailer is by Massanet, the instrument is classical guitar. Reverie is the latter part of the short film. Both files should end to the text info.

[Mike Teutsch]

I could not get but about 1/3, two attempts, but it was beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing it with us..

Mike

[Mick Jenner]

If its of any help Lauri I managed to download Ok on Wednesday. I enjoyed watching it. Which preset did you use?

regards

Mick

[Gilles Debord]

Hi Laury

Thank's a lot for sharing these very nice footage and Debussy is is a perfect complement to that.
Your website is really nice.

Best regards

Gilles