UWOL#3 - "The Wild Within" by Rob Evans

[Rob Evans]

Well, after a really bad may overall weather wise in SE england I had to scrap all my plans for the great outdoors ( well except for the intro bit ) and go for a macro approach. All the macro shot was filmed in my 25 foot back garden over a three hour session. I picked up a macro lens on ebay for £13 ($26) a few months ago and had been itching to use it.
To give you an idea of scale, some of the orange spiders were about 2mm in length, and dealing with the DOF was pretty hard work!!! During and after the shoot i was totally amazed by how much life i was picking up by just taking potplants onto the table, on a turntable and just seeing what was there. Hope you enjoy it!

Shot of a sony fx1, with a couple of 20w halogen bedside lamps for lighting.

High def version here ( right click save as please!!)
http://www.treborsnave.com/video/thewildwithinHD.wmv ( 180mb )
If you have the time and bandwidth, please check this out, it really does justice to the project ;-)

and low def for dialup users
http://www.treborsnave.com/video/rte...dwithinnew.mov (9mb)

Right, gonna download some of your films now !!!!

Cheers!

Rob

[Mat Thompson]

Hi Rob.

Well fella....great first film ! This was exactly my second idea for a film,well infact my first but I went with my second, lucky huh or we'd have played snap. This was very well executed, had a professional feel, nicely paced and nicely edited. Its begins and concludes well and has a nice overall theme. I could see you struggling with the shallow dof but I thought it worked anyway, it was maybe a bit too heavy in parts but blimey if the subjects were only a few mm long then I can understand that.

You might not have got the most mind blowing footage but you have made a balenced and interesting film, however good a shooter you are its the film making that counts. I have you in my top three.

Great piece !

Mat

[Geir Inge]

Hi Rob.
Your film is great, Rob and I have to agreed with you.
We don't have to go far to get some wild stuff :)
This is one of my favorite.

[Rick A. Phillips]

Rob,

Beautiful and smooth. The whole film just slides by like a lazy river. One point...and it may just be my hearing...I seemed to have trouble hearing the narration over the music at one point at about 33sec into the film. Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.

Rick

[Catherine Russell]

Rob:

I found this film absolutely stunning and highly professional. The lighting, the cinematography and the subject matter. The images were exceedingly sharp with the soft blurring around the edges. Amazingly done. I don't agree with all that Mat commented on but I do agree to his conclusion that this is most likely in the top 3. Thank you for letting us share your handywork.

A note to Rick: At first I thought that some narration was being drowned out by the music as well, but after really keying in on that, I am pretty sure that it was in the music, not separate narration. Rob's music choice was called "the Lamb" (? right Rob?) and if you honed in really hard on those words they were repeated and were Biblical (from Revelations). You had to have some background knowledge on that to pick up on it. Forgive me, Rob for jumping in on your session and answering for you. Let me know if I'm wrong too!

Cat

[Chris Barcellos]

Rob:

I had started some close up shots of ants, and such, and somehow got off on another tangent.... The close up work was great, and well done.

Nice job....

[Rob Evans]

Originally Posted by Catherine Russell

Rob:


A note to Rick: At first I thought that some narration was being drowned out by the music as well, but after really keying in on that, I am pretty sure that it was in the music, not separate narration. Rob's music choice was called "the Lamb" (? right Rob?) and if you honed in really hard on those words they were repeated and were Biblical (from Revelations). You had to have some background knowledge on that to pick up on it. Forgive me, Rob for jumping in on your session and answering for you. Let me know if I'm wrong too!

Cat

Hi Cat & Rick - yes this is part of the soundtrack - the guy i know who created the music is a little bit "strange" at times but does turn out some wonderful tunes.

Thanks for all your feedback people - this is my first real go at a macro film, and I'd like to think i adapted fairly quickly to the challenges it presented. Luckily most of the subjects i chose were static or fairly slow moving - keeping track of a fast moving 3mm spider with a DOF of about 5mm is something that scares me!!!! It has certainly opened up a whole new world to me, as i usually spend my time filming slightly crazy people flying through the air on oversized powerkites!!!

and @ Mat - glad you didn't go macro too ;P muhahahahaha.... gonna check out your films @ lunch...

Cheers!

[Meryem Ersoz]

welcome to the UWOL Challenge, rob...always glad to see some new ways of interpreting the theme. macro is probably my favorite form of shooting, so i really enjoyed this...can't get enough of the macro world.

[Tom Schumann]

hi rob

enjoyed watching your film a lot. especially the slow pace of the snail shots. there is this one shot with the snail crawling up on the stone in front of the black background. what an atmospheric image. downloading the hi-def version right now and looking forward to watch it again.

great one

[Trond Saetre]

Great video!
Amazing how shallow DOF you got there, keeping only parts of the animals in focus.
Well done!

[Bruce Foreman]

Macro imaging can be one of the most intriguing explorations to do. So much either looks so different from what we are used to seeing, or totally strange and unfamiliar. But what you managed to capture and portray showed a beauty bordering on a whole new universe to be experienced.

I liked the color, fluid motion and editing, and the music seemed to really fit.

I really enjoyed this one and would like to show it to my local photography club if I may have your permission.

[Per Johan Naesje]

Rob,
beautiful film. Most have been said from the others. I think your dof was good in the macro sequence. You gave me an idea about the turntable for my next macro installation!

One note: You have uploaded the film with a H264 codec. Beware that some may not be able to play it without additional codec.

[Ruth Happel]

This was a great film with an inspiring message, the wild is right under our feet, literally. I shoot a lot in my garden, too, and am always amazed when you really look how many worlds within worlds there are out there. The DOF seemed to work for me, I liked how it threw emphasis on part of the animal. The pace was well suited to the theme, a dreamlike small world in slow motion. Really fun to watch.


Ruth

[Rob Evans]

Originally Posted by Bruce Foreman

I really enjoyed this one and would like to show it to my local photography club if I may have your permission.

No probs at all - feel free to show it. Get the high-def version too if you like ;-)

Cheers,

Rob

[Rob Evans]

Originally Posted by Per Johan Naesje

Rob,
beautiful film. Most have been said from the others. I think your dof was good in the macro sequence. You gave me an idea about the turntable for my next macro installation!

One note: You have uploaded the film with a H264 codec. Beware that some may not be able to play it without additional codec.

Glad i have given you ideas!!

Thanks for the note on the codec, it's the first time i've outputted anything to MOV, i'm usually a windows media guy, so still on the learning curve - thanks for the advice!