Back in Time

[Dale Guthormsen]

Good afternoon,

We ( the dogs and I) Have a break while computer number one is rendering. So, thought I would start the response threads.

This round was really interesting and rule number 11 ruled through the entire Job for me. I even had nice weather for the time I needed!!! My original plan was to encompassing so I had to take the project down several notches to make it into a three minute video. Once again I'm in rather new turf for me. That is what makes this such a great opportunity, it pushes me in all kinds of directions I would never travel with my camera!! I have learned so much it is truly inspiring, however, not as much as all the inspiration I received from this group!! I have tried to keep this one simple and straight forward.

Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment.

Back in Time Uwol 16 on Vimeo

[Bill Thesken]

Dale, great colors. Time is moving for us all, and will pass us by, and this film reflects that in a heartfelt manner.

[Mike Sims]

Dale- I really enjoyed this one. You had a good idea and executed it very well. I see a lot of old farms down here too, but that buckboard was really cool. For me though, the best part was your narration. You came across as both relaxed and poised. I think you really nailed it. I wish I could do that! If I had to say change anything it would only be to try slowing down the opening titles a tad. Well done.

[Chris Barcellos]

Dale:

Coming from a farm background, where these pieces of equipment abandoned were common place, I found the perspective you took on examining the location very neat. It had an semi-archeological dig feel to it mixed with imaginings of human emotions.

Great film.

[Mike Beckett]

Dale,

Lovely. And nicely shot too - very cinematic, and some of the early shots I had to shake my head and realise I wasn't looking at some sort of perfect model created for a movie!

I always find it fascinating to see how nature quickly takes over again when man abandons something, be it a house, a factory, an old road, or an old railroad line. If we all disappeared overnight, it wouldn't be very long before everything was swallowed up in this way.

You are very natural presenting on-camera, which is something I don't have the nerve for! A nice, gentle film, which provoked a mix of emotions in me, including sadness at the thought of those who once lived there, and curiousity at what it must have been like to toil on that farm.

Round here there are lots of tumble-down cottages, mainly abandoned when families emigrated to America after the Famine, where nature has all but obliterated the houses in 150 years, and where people once slept, animals and plants thrive.

The voiceover was a bit hissy at times, but that didn't distract from the content.

Superb.

[Trond Saetre]

Hi Dale,
I have always enjoyed learning about the history, so your film was very interesting to me.
Nice to see all those old farm equipments, and how quickly the nature takes over when they are abandoned.
And as already mentioned, I really like the bright crisp colors.

You did really well with this one.
Thank you for sharing.

[Chris Swanberg]

Dale... I have enjoyed following your journey on this site as a filmmaker. I think from the outset you have demonstrated a strong affinity as a storyteller. Your cinematic skills have advanced such that you now meld your storytelling nicely into a finished piece such as this one.

Your sound editing and command has also significantly improved from the early days and this piece was a warm comfortable watch and listen from beginning to end. You deserve to be proud of this piece. Nicely carried off.

Chris S.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Good afternoon,


Been trying to get through them all, what a nice batch of films!

Thank you all for the nice comments.

I am still working at my nemisis, Audio I felt better about this one than priors.

If I could just learn how to control the darn unrelenting wind.

If i could do a better job at compression!!!

Out here in the prairies there are plenty of places one can run into, often times literally as you walk through cover, ancient stuff.

Originally my plan was to start with souix indian home sites and work to the present. While I have tee pee rings, found a stone tomahawk head and some arrow heads, it was just turning out to be to big of a project. Originally the title was to be "This old house, a journey back in time". I may do it as a seperate project down the road.

I turly did have fun filming this one! We had a week of fine weather between the snows and the rains and gales.I also made it an effort to keep it simple and straight forward.

One nice thing about video/film is no one really knows what you did not get!!

Once again, thank you for taking the time out out of your busy lives.

[Annie Haycock]

I often bump into old bits of farm equipment, some of the remains I recognise, many I don't. But they always bring on a kind of nostalgia for a time when life was harsher, but simpler, than today.

You've captured that feeling well here, a very enjoyable film at an appropriate pace. Well done.

[Marj Atkins]

Very nice Dale - I really enjoyed your journey into the past – quite an interesting if unexpected subject.

I think you did a very good job of filming and of telling the story about all these old farm implements. Got me wondering how you found this place littered with all this old rusted stuff.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Good Morning,

Marge Annie, thank you for taking the time to watch and comment.

I have lived in this spot for 30 years and have continually spent about 200 days a year out in the field. I know pretty much every nook and cranny, Many of the places we have given names (Like Skeeter's Bush, The Buffalo Rock, etc.) being intimately aquainted with the wild life community we even have names for specific animals or their family groups (a couple of my favorites are "the Door Jam BucK" and a Grouse we named "Moby dick" and his relatives live in the same spot a quarter of a century later. I looked for their Lek for 15 years before I found it!). There are numerous neat and hidden things in the countryside that almost no one even knows are out there. One of the biggest surprises was once I was riding our walking horse and had a cave collapse underneath us. I have digressed.

it can be anb adventure stepping outside ones door, ask frodo.

[Annie Haycock]

Dale

I haven't quite had a cave collapse under me, but I do have a photo of a hole where the ground collapsed under a neighbour! It's an old coal-mining area, so I guess the ground must have dropped into an old mine shaft. It's only a few hundred yards from where a mine shaft collapsed in 1855, killing 122 workers.

Over the past few years, I've occasionally recorded a lesser horseshoe bat in old barns. These rare bats don't fly far each night, maybe up to 2 miles, but there isn't a colony known within that distance. However, I've sometimes hiked past a derelict cottage, and wondered . . . . . . Last September I was asked to survey the cottage because the owner wants to bring it back into use, and guess what, the missing colony seems to be living there. I'll be there this evening to try to confirm that they are actually breeding there.

There's always plenty of stuff out there waiting to be discovered by those who can take the time to look!

[Per Johan Naesje]

Dale, very nice film. Enjoyed it very much. You did a good job telling the story of the past.

Just a few technical viewpoints, the sequence staring at 00:12 where you was talking, your framing is a bit off. Tilting the camcorder a bit down, raising you up in the picture would have been a better framing. But I know how hard this is as I believe that you had to set up your camcorder first and then walk out making yourself as an actor afterwards!
The VO was a bit distracting with some hiss and clicks. You could clearly hear the hiss starting just before your VO begin. A trick could be to make another audio track in the timeline with just the microphone recording silence without any talking (just the hiss) for the length of your film. Then put a new audiotrack with ambient sound for the length of your film. Mix these two tracks together raising the ambient soundlevel to a level where the hiss is not so noticeable.
Then put a third track with your bits of VO in the right place. Adjusting this with a fade in/out. Then at last put another track with your music/score and adjust it matching the VO and mood of the sequences.

But as told, your storytelling and quality of filming is very good and you have developed very well the last year or so. Top class Dale!

[Dale Guthormsen]

Per Johan.

Thank you for taking the time!!

The audio suggestion is brillant and i will go back to it this week and give that a try and see how I can improve the Audio!!!

Audio had been a big challenge for me to be certain!! I really apprecitate the constructive cricicism with a suggerstion on how to improve it!!!


Thanks again.


by the way, how is the musk ox film coming? 0or is on the back burner?

[Per Johan Naesje]

by the way, how is the musk ox film coming? 0or is on the back burner?

Well, as you know the worldwide financial situation also strike my country. Investments dried out like a small pond in a hot desert!
Meantime I´m rethinking the project to make it even more sellable to investors. Only time will show...