Deep Within, Uwol fun shoot

[Dale Guthormsen]

Well,

I am finished 6 hours early. I had a lot of fun shooting this while dodging the wind, rain amd Mosquitos! I had a lot more footage than I could use, but 3 minutes and trying to keep to a single story line rules a lot out! My biggest dissappointment was camera failure. My sony is out for repairs which ruled out crane, steady cam or dolly shots as those tools are set up for the 5lb Sony camera not my bigger camera. So in that regard, I apologise for the run of static shots. My plans to build the turrit I designed was prevented by flooding of the homestead, etc.

The original music I had with it was just to perky for the subject, so this Sunday morning I sat down with my Tacoma guitar and plucked out the music while I watched the video. I call it an improvisation only because I can hear the glimmer of a an actual song in there.

While being slightly hearing impaired I broke down and purchased a pair of quality nearfield monitors to see if I can do better on my audio.

If nothing else I hope you enjoy looking at some of the plethora of wild flowers during our late spring/summer blossom.

Thanks Tronde for taking this fun shoot on!

Can't wait to see everyone's efforts.

Deep Within on Vimeo

[Trond Saetre]

Hi Dale,
As usual, I very much enjoy your films.
Maybe the new monitors helped, because the audio is great! Probably one of the best films you have done regarding the audio. Balanced levels for the VO and music.
Good music too. I like that you can make your own music. That's something I can only dream about.

Hope you get your camera back from the service soon.
As you mention yourself, a little more "movement" could possibly have improved, but I like the film as it is.

Well done!

[David Rice]

Dale,

The flower at 1:27 was staggering. Excellent story flow. I know what you mean about music. I have played around making music, and creating my own sound files. A musical friend of mine claims that a good video is 80% sound, and 20% vision. He may be right.

Dave

[Marj Atkins]

Hi Dale

Your films always illustrate so well the unique beauty and wide open spaces of the prairies.

The rich diversity of flora you found this time round and the many colourful details of the flowers certainly convey the theme ‘colour’ well. (Some of those flowers are so very tiny – you did well to give us a scale!)

Your opening (and closing) scene conveys the grandeur of the open grasslands and I was quite green when I saw your beautiful rainbow – could have done with one of those in my film (thin film interference). :)

[Bill Thesken]

Great job Dale. I really enjoyed seeing the tiny flowers up close and it's a great technique you have with the wide angle fading in to a close up. A lot of different species there. Awesome background music.

[Geir Inge]

Hi Dale and congrats on deliver such a great video.
You show us a great variety of fauna.
The colors are great and so is the music.
Can I come over so you can teach me to play propper?
Love your opening shot, spectacular maybe is the right word for it.
Nice way of showing the size of small flowers, I learned something from you there :)
Thank you for taking time making and showing this video.

[Steve Siegel]

Dale,
It's so good to see you able to film in some nice weather. Your techniques are well suited to macro and I thought the shot at 2:45 was especially stunning. Your audio is spectacular. Did you really have that variety of birds in your location or were they dubbed in? If the former, I think that bird photographers would like to know where it is. Was the squeak at 3:01 a grouse, or something rubbing on the camera?

[Dale Guthormsen]

Good Morning,

Thank you everyone for the nice comments. My video was certainly not complicated or anything, pretty simple really. And, you know I kind of like that, infinitlely easier than high speed falcons and such!!

Steve, I worked harder on the audio than all the rest combined. The bird sounds were all recorded out in the grasslands. Some of the audio I had a plane practicing stalls (Canadian snowbirds practice over our immediate area). So the next day I went back out with the old xl2, recorded just audio with two shotguns (AT 897, & Rode video mic) and the camera mic all recording to seperate tracks. Down loaded with scenalyzerlive, seperated tracks and saved as a wav files. As it turned out the rode was louder but the 897 had less background noise to deal with.
I listend to the audio at the time you mentioned and my damaged hearing can't hear what you hear, so I do not know what it was. Much of the background noise are savannah sparrows, white crowns, bobolinks, buntings and kingbirdsand several other little brouwn things can't idenitfy

The music I kept really simple mostly just melody and just a little harmony barely recognizable in the background. It was not planned or practiced, just whatever struck me as I picked the old box.

The new nearfield studio monitors make a huge difference for me!!! If you do not have a set, I highly recommend them!!!!
I also broke down and purchased some sony 7506 headphones for in the field, they are marvoulously better than my prior pair or my Shure earbuds!!

I hope to continue improving on all aspects of my videos, but particularly the audio!!!!

[Steve Siegel]

Well, for sure one of your little brown jobs (we call them LBJs) was a Chestnut-collared Longspur, and the really special one (with the tinkling high pitched song that gave the "prairie bells" their name) is a Baird's Sparrow. Birders go ape over it.

[Dale Guthormsen]

I need to learn my small birds better!! Yes, we have longspurs and horned larks, can hear them both in there.