Wildlife Cinematography Master Class

[Doug Jensen]

In case anyone is interested, I've just released an 8-hour Wildlife Cinematography master class.
Chapter 1 is on YouTube. The other 22 chapters are on Vimeo.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/wildlifevideo

YouTube (Short URL)

[W. Bill Magac]

Doug, curious. What camera/lens did you use to shoot the portions of the video where you are speaking to the camera?

[Doug Jensen]

I shot it myself with my Sony Z750. It was a bit of a rush though as the sun was setting and I had to shoot it that day. Do you think it looks okay? I did make a big blunder on the audio though by leaving the wind filter setting turned on, so it doesn't have a very rich sound to it. My mistake. Too many things to think about when you're working alone. The rest of the series was shot in my home "studio" under more controlled circumstances.

[Andrew Smith]

Doug, there's been a terrible mistake. It's only 1080 HD on YouTube. There's no 4K.

Andrew

[Doug Jensen]

Shoot in 4K . . . deliver in HD. That is the times we live in. :-)

[W. Bill Magac]

Originally Posted by Doug Jensen

I shot it myself with my Sony Z750. It was a bit of a rush though as the sun was setting and I had to shoot it that day. Do you think it looks okay? I did make a big blunder on the audio though by leaving the wind filter setting turned on, so it doesn't have a very rich sound to it. My mistake. Too many things to think about when you're working alone. The rest of the series was shot in my home "studio" under more controlled circumstances.

The reason I asked is I like the natural look of your skin tone. I currently own a Z CAM F6 and Canon
XF605. Still struggling with the cameras to get what I consider to be natural looking skin tones.

[Doug Jensen]

Thank you. I shot it in S-LOG and then graded it in Resolve, so it's not straight out of the camera.

[Andrew Smith]

Originally Posted by Doug Jensen

Shoot in 4K . . . deliver in HD. That is the times we live in. :-)

See. That there is why we all upgraded our gear to 4K. You can really see the difference in the quality of one's HD video. :-)

Andrew

[Bob Safay]

Well Doug, it looks like you have another winner. I hope you get a lot of people to sign up. I remember how much I learned by taking your incredible video tutorial on "How to make money shooting stock footage". Man did I learn a lot. Thanks to you I am still making money selling stock footage on both Shutterstock and Pond5. I recommend that anyone that is into filming wildlife to take your course. Stay safe, Bob

[Doug Jensen]

Hi Bob, thanks for the kind words and I'm glad to hear the stock footage course has paid off. I do like having that steady income trickling into my PayPal account.!

[Paul R Johnson]

I wasn't going to watch, not being that interested in wildlife - but the shots are stunning. I'm kind of thinking maybe I should actually try? Thanks for this.

[Doug Jensen]

Thanks for the compliments, I'm glad you like the shots. If anyone here is serious about signing up, please use the code DVINFO to save 25%.
BTW, much of what I talk about, particularly choosing cameras, lenses, tripods, and getting them setup properly applies to much more than just wildlife.

[Charlie Ross]

As said above, the skin colour is spot on. It gives me an easier sense of relating to the people on camera; probably helpful for what's going to be 8 hours. I like the pace and tone of your narrations too. (FDR-AX700 Master Class customer).

Wildlife footage at this quality gets me sentimental, looking back to the period of the 1970s and 1980s. The camera operator for The Nature Of Things in the 1970s and 1980s was a member of our church in Toronto along with his family. Neville Ottey. He was obviously absent most of the time, shooting on location all over the world.

[Doug Jensen]

Thank you Charlie, I appreciate those comments. The rest of the video series takes place under more controlled circumstances in my home "studio" so I hope I got the tones right there too. But either way, I'm just happy to have this project completed and the monkey off my back. Now I can enjoy the rest of the summer.

[Andrew Smith]

Originally Posted by Charlie Ross

Wildlife footage at this quality gets me sentimental, looking back to the period of the 1970s and 1980s. The camera operator for The Nature Of Things in the 1970s and 1980s was a member of our church in Toronto along with his family. Neville Ottey. He was obviously absent most of the time, shooting on location all over the world.

I'm guessing Doug's church is the cool one now?

BTW, Aussie wildlife photographer Ken Duncan has been known to ask God to shift things (clouds etc) around so he can get the right light to make a photo an absolute stunner. I've seen him in action on a TV clip. You can see his website here and check out the absolute stunner images he gets to capture.

I myself have some epic stories of 'putting in an order' for weather, mostly at stopping the rain so I could still film. In one of them, I told the interviewee up front (before I travelled over an hour to get there) what was going to happen despite the bollocking massive rain storm conditions. He later told me that he had been watching the weather radar until I arrived and noticed the storm clouds move (or part?) around his area despite otherwise being on a collision course. We got the filming done.

Pro tip (from another instance): Don't have the rain resume the very moment the event is over. You still need some time to pack up your gear. How I know this isn't worth stating out aloud.

Andrew