UWOL38 In Search of Wild Horses Enjoying Leisure by Eric and Theresa Olson

[Eric Olson]

We enjoyed making our first UWOL entry by going out four different days with the cameras. The first time out we taped geese and ducks at the park across the street. The next time we drove out to the mountains and ended up with a herd of sheep, chipmunks and some lizards. At the lake in town there were seagulls. Finally we saw the "caution wild horses ahead" road sign and had a theme.

We enjoyed watching all the other videos and would appreciate comment level two feedback.

UWOL38 In Search of Wild Horses Enjoying Leisure by Eric and Theresa Olson on Vimeo

[Trond Saetre]

Hi Eric and Theresa,

First of all, welcome to UWOL!
Have a look at the "get together 2016" thread. Would be cool if you too were able to join us in Bristol, UK in October.
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/uwol-cha...nt-2016-a.html

I enjoyed watching your film.

Noticed that some of the footage was a little bit "shaky", which can be a distraction. Not sure which editing software you use, but in Adobe Premiere (which I use) there is an effect called "warp stabilizer". Works very well to stabilize your footage. I'm sure the other editing softwares have a similar function.

Well done, and I look forward to see more of your films in the future.

[Geir Inge]

Hi Eric and Theresa.

Welcome to UWOL, so good that you got handed this video.

I think you have worked well with the theme and made a great approach.
The music fits like a glove and background sound is also nice (the creek, gulls, etc.).
At first I thought: What is this?
Then comes your "naaa" and "ding", as was the question answered :)
This was a fun and clever way to solve the task.
The story tells itself, you need no VO or more text.
That's why I say you make a smart choice on approach to the theme :)

Can I ask what camera you are using and the editor?
I mean no harm with this, but colors appear somewhat washed out in some places. This can easily be fixed with a color correction in the editor.
I do not know what you have used during filming, but a filter can also help to get more vivid colors.

Just for the record, I use google translator to get this across to the English language. My mother tongue is Norwegian :)
I only say that because I wish you all well.

Your video is like a fresh breeze, I like it very well.
I wish you all well and hope to see you next round.

[Catherine Russell]

Hi Eric and Theresa. Nice to meet you both, I’m Cat. Now this was a fun take on the theme recreation and an interesting way to present it! Your choice of music was really different and a little jarring for me, but it worked, and I thought your “dings” and “baaas” highlighting your success and failure throughout your trip was creative and quite funny. I thought the sheep footage was fantastic. I wasn’t too convinced that those horses were all that wild in the end (were they really?) and I was a little let down that you didn’t wrap it up with the triumphant “ding” and a checkmark in all three boxes: “wild”, “horses”, and “leisure”. I felt you hung on a scenery shot a bit too long towards the beginning, but really, I think this is a fun and solid entry. Nice job! Looking very forward to your next entry, you two add a lot to the forum.

Cheers!

[Vishal Jadhav]

Hi,

I like the idea you used. The footage is nice too,

The idea of the tick marks an bing is very interesting.

I just feel the music might be a bit out of place for the calmness of the shots but then its a choice thing and we do it as per our taste, so its very personal.

[Mick Jenner]

Well done Eric and Theresa welcome to UWOL. What a lovely refreshing take on the theme like I said about Cat's entry quirky, as well as being a little off the wall. Hopefully now you are here you will enter future rounds. thoroughly enjoyable watch. Mick

[Bob Safay]

Eric and Theresa, welcome to UWOL. I promise you are going to have a lot of fun here. I had to watch the video a few times to really get into it, then when I did I said wow, what an interesting approach. They really were searching for wild horses and just couldn't find any until the end. I have to admit that at first I did not like the music, but then I started to realize that it really did fit. A great effort and again welcome to UWOL. Oh, I see we both us the same camcorder, the Canon XF300. I love it!!!!
What preset are you using? Bob

[Paul Wood]

Hi Eric and Theresa, I add my welcome to you to UWOL.
I found your entry very entertaining, with a nice use of the theme and some quirky effects to add to the story!
I gave you full marks for the use of theme and the story, but had to mark down bit for some of the wobbly shots, when comparing against other entries.
However, we all suffer from that, so please don't take it personally! I'm looking forward to seeing more entries from you in the future!
Welcome, and well done!

[Eric Olson]

Dear Everyone,

Thank you for your kind welcome and encouragement. We entered the contest to spend some time outdoors doing something together and for a small project to get started with videography. For me it was returning to something I used to know a bit better and for my wife something new. We had an enjoyable experience and are looking forward to making another UWOL entry. Below we respond to some of feedback.

All images were shot using the Canon XH-A1. We actually have two, each broken in slightly different ways: One looses focus when zooming and the other has an imaging block that was repaired in such a way that the color balance drifts yellow. Neither had been used since three years ago. However, the batteries charged to full and the tape transports worked flawlessly. The custom preset we chose (somewhat randomly) leaves plenty of room for more in-camera color saturation next time.

Editing was done using free software on a dual core Athlon II computer. Due to the speed of the computer, we could run the shaky footage through a preprocessing step before editing. At the same time shaky views of the signs was somewhat intentional though perhaps misguided. The shaky view of the lamb standing was a misfortune and the clip even had a cut in the middle.

In the end we didn't check wild, horses and leisure with a ding, because as you might discern from their tails, we weren't sure that those were really wild horses. Instead, we ended with the sign "25MPH Wild Horses and Children Playing" leaving the success of our search up to the imagination but also fitting well with the theme of playing and recreation.

[Catherine Russell]

"All images were shot using the Canon XH-A1. We actually have two, each broken in slightly different ways..."

LOL, I can relate to this.

Thanks for clarifying why you left out the wild horses check box check at the end. That makes sense, not being certain the horses were wild...