UWOL41 - Snow-Cold-Blow-Repeat by Gordon Hoffman

[Gordon Hoffman]

Well I just couldn't come up with a plan again for this round. I had hoped to get a good start on this year. I admire people who can come up with a plan and a shot list. Me I go out and shoot what ever and hope I can make it work. I guess I enjoy my time out in nature more when I'm not pressuring myself by having to get this shot or that one. But I had to come up with something as it's been 10 years since I did the first one. If I had of came up with this idea at the start I would have had no problem getting footage. It has been a little harsher winter than we had for a few years.
Thanks for watching.

Gordon

[Mark Hartopp]

Now that is a location I would love to film in; and was hoping for 3 weeks ago. All I got was a frozen car and puddles. rest of the time just rain. The coulds over the mountains and the frozen rock face are my favourite shots. And the sun set one...

[Paul Mailath]

Just once I'd like to spend a Christmas looking at scenery like that - it's usually so bloody hot here. I see your theme of repetition in the weather patterns and it ties together well. The scenery is of course stunning.

[LeRoy Gunderson]

Beautiful scenery. I enjoyed watching it.

[Trond Saetre]

Hi Gordon,

Nice to see you came up with a last minute film. Well done!
Harsh winter storm for those two poor animals at 0:40. Looked really cold that day.
The shot at 0:20: The image is vibrating. Did you mount the camera hard attached to your car and had the engine running, maybe?

Here is Gordon's film:

UWOL41 - Snow-Cold-Blow-Repeat by Gordon Hoffman on Vimeo

[Gordon Hoffman]

Mark - Thanks for watching. Yes it's a great place to shoot in. It's been a few years since we have had a winter like this one.
Paul - Thanks. Yes I'll take the cold over heat any day. I'm not a fan of real hot weather.
LeRoy - Thanks. No shortage of something to see here. It should be easy for me to come up with something if I could only come up with a plan.
Trond - Thanks for putting the link up. The two Mule Deer where sort of out of the wind. It was pretty wild for a while when the wind first hit with the snow we had. That shot that was vibrating was strange what was going on. It was hand held and I tried stabilizing it. Not sure where the problem really is. I had a few other shots at the same time that seemed the image stabilizer on the lens was doing strange things. It was fairly cold but I don't think that was the problem. I'll have to check what version of firmware the lens is on, maybe it needs updating. Thanks again.

Gordon

[Mick Jenner]

Hi, thanks for putting in the entry, just love looking at all that snowscape scenery, don't get a lot of that white stuff here, when we do it quickly turns to slush and disappears. Others have passed some observations that I would have made, so I have just one and that is I would like to see you use less bold and more subtle titling that would reflect the scene and not overly stand out from it, if that make sense.

Mick

[Gordon Hoffman]

Hi Mick. Yes I'm terrible with my titles. I need to spend more time on them which has been my other problem of ending up on the last day trying to come with something. No shortage of the white stuff this year and it's coming down right now. They're forecasting up to 50 cm in areas here this round before it's finished. Thanks for the feedback.

Gordon

[Andrew Hood]

Hi Gordon. Nice to capture some animals persevering in the harsh conditions. And quite bold landscapes there, very stunning.
I suspect with how windy it was the image stabilisation can only compensate so much, and that might have contributed to the 'wobbling' effect. Definitely tough conditions to film in.
A voice over or text narrative would be nice to tie the images together, and build on the theme.
My thoughts on the text were that a blue colour might match the video palette better, and convey the idea of everything being cold (even if cliched).

Great to see that part of the world.

[Paul Wood]

Gordon, Excellent scenery and use of shots - nice use of the theme some of the shots a bit shaky, (I agree with the problem of stabilisation) but they difference to the message, which comes across clearly!

[Dale Guthormsen]

Gordon,

I always like your winter footage you always make your point clearly. wondering what you're shooting with these days?
If i were to do anything with the footage i would knock down the gama level a slight bit in post to reduce some of the brightness without affecting the grain. bright skies or images a polarization filter is helpful too, you probably know that anyway, not ment as a criticism.

very much enjoyed as always. good job.

[Gordon Hoffman]

Andrew - With the wind blowing I know what to expect with stabilization but the shots in question it was calm, cold but calm. They were hand held so it most likely me causing it. It just seemed strange what was happening so I'll have to test some things out. Funny you mentioned the text colour. That was the first thing that hit me after I had it uploaded that blue would have been better. It definitely needed more polish but I had myself down to the last few hours to put something up. Thanks for your comments.

Paul - Thanks. I have to go back to using my tripod all the time. I'm really poor with hand held shooting.

Dale - I'm using a Panasonic GH4. This was all shot and edited in 4K/30p then exported as 1080. I didn't really take time to tweak much since I was running out of time. Mainly just tried to stabilize a few shots.Yes a polarizer would have made a few of those shots really pop.
Thanks appreciate your comments.

Gordon

[Mark Hartopp]

Hi Gordon, What are you using to edit 4k and what spec is your machine. My machine is 6 years old, uses a old i7 920 series with 12 gig ram and a 4GB GByte GTX 750Ti. Still very fast but 4k stutters. I'm also using XAVC-S.

[Dale Guthormsen]

One of these days Ill have pop in when im fishing thew crow.

[Gordon Hoffman]

Hi Mark. I used Edius 8WG. I did this on a laptop, I broke down and got a fairly good one. i7 6700HQ - 16 GB ram - 1060 6GB graphic card. It worked well with a simple project like this. The 4K clips were mov files and I did render the timeline when I stabilized some clips.

Gordon