I got all my recent DV tapes uploaded and I am assembling the first draft of the Tug Of War video from this recent weekend shoot.
However I have hit a bit of a wall.....
 |
| Thanks Mugatu. |
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
MUGATU VS PRODUCTIVITY
Got the iMac back, everything is running smoothly!
I got all my recent DV tapes uploaded and I am assembling the first draft of the Tug Of War video from this recent weekend shoot.
However I have hit a bit of a wall.....
I got all my recent DV tapes uploaded and I am assembling the first draft of the Tug Of War video from this recent weekend shoot.
However I have hit a bit of a wall.....
Saturday, 24 November 2012
Thursday, 22 November 2012
25% CLOSER TO FINAL CUT X
We get the iMac back tomorrow, at which point we'll be able to see how much damage I inflicted upon our back-up hard-drive. I'll keep you posted. My fingers are crossed super-tight. Typing is very hard.
On the right of these pages you'll see a green and red donut. This is my little interactive fundraising graphic (go on, hover!) that shows how close I am to having enough money to afford Final Cut X, the new and powerful video editing software which would replace my outdated and buggy version of Final Cut Express. The money is made through my Amazon associates account and youtube views. I recently pipped the 25% mark! A really big sweaty uncomfortable hug to everyone who has navigated through my blog when buying anything on Amazon.
It's true that Final Cut X is hardly bank-breakingly expensive at £200, if anything the price is eminently reasonable given the price of previous instalments, but as I'm living a financial hangover of debt clearance (we're succeeding!) a purchase like that is not really possible, so I'm putting my blog proceeds (which always go towards filming equipment) towards the goal of affording the software.
For those who have no clue what I'm yammering about, you can search Amazon through the box on the right hand side of my blog. I also review and link any products I use as a budgetless filmmaker that I buy through the site. If anyone gets to Amazon via my blog and makes a purchase (of anything at all, not just things I review/recommend) then I get a 5% commission which goes towards equipment for filming projects. It's a small and infrequent revenue stream (a trickle really) but every little helps.
If you're ever interested in helping out a struggling videographer, you can start your next purchase on Amazon from these pages. It won't cost you a penny, just a mouse click! You can even bookmark me for future purchases. I would be totally cool with that!
Ah, now to await the fate of my data. Tomorrow will reveal all.
.....
Is it bad that I just want to coccoon myself in a duvet for a week and play Borderlands 2?
On the right of these pages you'll see a green and red donut. This is my little interactive fundraising graphic (go on, hover!) that shows how close I am to having enough money to afford Final Cut X, the new and powerful video editing software which would replace my outdated and buggy version of Final Cut Express. The money is made through my Amazon associates account and youtube views. I recently pipped the 25% mark! A really big sweaty uncomfortable hug to everyone who has navigated through my blog when buying anything on Amazon.
It's true that Final Cut X is hardly bank-breakingly expensive at £200, if anything the price is eminently reasonable given the price of previous instalments, but as I'm living a financial hangover of debt clearance (we're succeeding!) a purchase like that is not really possible, so I'm putting my blog proceeds (which always go towards filming equipment) towards the goal of affording the software.
For those who have no clue what I'm yammering about, you can search Amazon through the box on the right hand side of my blog. I also review and link any products I use as a budgetless filmmaker that I buy through the site. If anyone gets to Amazon via my blog and makes a purchase (of anything at all, not just things I review/recommend) then I get a 5% commission which goes towards equipment for filming projects. It's a small and infrequent revenue stream (a trickle really) but every little helps.
If you're ever interested in helping out a struggling videographer, you can start your next purchase on Amazon from these pages. It won't cost you a penny, just a mouse click! You can even bookmark me for future purchases. I would be totally cool with that!
Ah, now to await the fate of my data. Tomorrow will reveal all.
.....
Is it bad that I just want to coccoon myself in a duvet for a week and play Borderlands 2?
Sunday, 18 November 2012
THE DANGER OF IDIOTS
So, here I am, without my computer while it is in the repair shop having it's hard-drive (and motherboard!) replaced. We have the hard drive and everything on it (including all my video projects past and present, such as the almost-finished videographic paeon to life alone with felines - Where's My Milk You Bastard - backed up on a precious external hard drive that holds the entirety of mine and Dee's digital life.
Meanwhile, our house is in a disarray of reorganisation (for reasons I won't go into here) as Dee and I spent over 6 hours assembling an absolute monster of an Ikea wardrobe in the bedroom. The second room (previously my "editing suite" aka room with desk and sometimes biscuits) is full of bits of stacked furniture, busted old wardrobes and ungainly piles of generic home-fodder as we struggle to erect a chipboard stonehenge next door using only the power of blunt drill bits and swearing.
While moving lumps of stuff from one room to another in an attempt to maximise space around our new Godless monolith I found myself in the second bedroom manoeuvring a huge cuddly stuffed gorilla across a chest of drawers towards a chassis of an old wardrobe.
Blammo crash bang, said the external hard drive as he toppled off the chest of drawers that some utter imbecile had left it sitting upon. The imbecile began hopping up and down in a stupor flailing an inanimate primate around as it slowly dawned on the increasingly panicked imbecile what was ON that hard drive. Everything. Every edit of video work. Every piece of footage. Every colour correction, every fade, every exported movie. Every photo ever taken by the imbecile or by Dee. Every song we had. Every document, every program. We put our digital lives in a box for safe keeping while our computer was being repaired and an imbecile walked by and smacked the delicate vault to the ground within 48 hours.
Until the computer is returned and we attempt to reinstall our data we won't know what the damage is. But a google prognosis carried out at work is not encouraging. The drive shows no physical damage but they are delicate complicated things that can be utterly destroyed internally without a single crack to the exterior.
It's entirely possible that I have just wiped out several years work. It's true that the original DV tapes sit in a drawer undamaged. I could start from scratch. But the very idea of undertaking so many hours upon hours of work without any references or notes is distressing.
It's not just the work that galls me. It's the pictures, the personal little videos, the photos, the memories.
I'll keep you updated when I know more. For the next few days you can find me hiding under the carcass of a dusty decommissioned wardrobe, repeatedly punching myself in the face.
Meanwhile, our house is in a disarray of reorganisation (for reasons I won't go into here) as Dee and I spent over 6 hours assembling an absolute monster of an Ikea wardrobe in the bedroom. The second room (previously my "editing suite" aka room with desk and sometimes biscuits) is full of bits of stacked furniture, busted old wardrobes and ungainly piles of generic home-fodder as we struggle to erect a chipboard stonehenge next door using only the power of blunt drill bits and swearing.
While moving lumps of stuff from one room to another in an attempt to maximise space around our new Godless monolith I found myself in the second bedroom manoeuvring a huge cuddly stuffed gorilla across a chest of drawers towards a chassis of an old wardrobe.
Blammo crash bang, said the external hard drive as he toppled off the chest of drawers that some utter imbecile had left it sitting upon. The imbecile began hopping up and down in a stupor flailing an inanimate primate around as it slowly dawned on the increasingly panicked imbecile what was ON that hard drive. Everything. Every edit of video work. Every piece of footage. Every colour correction, every fade, every exported movie. Every photo ever taken by the imbecile or by Dee. Every song we had. Every document, every program. We put our digital lives in a box for safe keeping while our computer was being repaired and an imbecile walked by and smacked the delicate vault to the ground within 48 hours.
Until the computer is returned and we attempt to reinstall our data we won't know what the damage is. But a google prognosis carried out at work is not encouraging. The drive shows no physical damage but they are delicate complicated things that can be utterly destroyed internally without a single crack to the exterior.
It's entirely possible that I have just wiped out several years work. It's true that the original DV tapes sit in a drawer undamaged. I could start from scratch. But the very idea of undertaking so many hours upon hours of work without any references or notes is distressing.
It's not just the work that galls me. It's the pictures, the personal little videos, the photos, the memories.
I'll keep you updated when I know more. For the next few days you can find me hiding under the carcass of a dusty decommissioned wardrobe, repeatedly punching myself in the face.
Thursday, 15 November 2012
COMPUTER OFF FOR REPAIR AND A FILM RECOMMENDATION
General Comings and Goings:
The iMac was taken away today for repair, but not before I managed to finish the video work I was helping a friend with first despite the delays due the slow computer. Once we get the new hard drive we'll be good as new and I can finish up my other jobs! In the mean time I've been sketching out some ideas with an old friend I've always wanted to work with. We're going to do something together that may or may not involve two naked arses with faces painted on them kissing each other for ten minutes. I say it may involve this. He says it may not. Time will tell.
Quick Film Recommendation:
Speaking of naked dudes rubbing each other, I saw a film a while back called Warrior
with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton as estranged brothers from a broken family (one is a marine, one is a physics teacher) who both find their lives falling apart and drift into a big-bucks mixed-martial arts tournament. It's basically an MMA version of Rocky and came out at the same time as the similarly themed (and better publicised) boxer-brothers film The Fighter, which overshadowed Warrior at release. The film ended up making a loss at the box office, which I think is a crying shame.
It's actually a cracking film and you should check it out. It's a classic sports blockbuster in the Rocky mould which is never going to appeal to everyone but it definitely transcends the the scope of an MMA movie with great characters and a genuinely gripping story, plus some brutal fighting scenes. I don't know a thing about MMA and that didn't impact my enjoyment one bit. Dee loved it too. It doesn't steer entirely clear of cheese and sentiment, but sometimes you just need a good movie that makes you fist-pump the air and spill your nachos.
Help out the poor buggers that worked so hard to make this film and give it a rental or get the DVD for a few quid online.
Trailer:
The iMac was taken away today for repair, but not before I managed to finish the video work I was helping a friend with first despite the delays due the slow computer. Once we get the new hard drive we'll be good as new and I can finish up my other jobs! In the mean time I've been sketching out some ideas with an old friend I've always wanted to work with. We're going to do something together that may or may not involve two naked arses with faces painted on them kissing each other for ten minutes. I say it may involve this. He says it may not. Time will tell.
Quick Film Recommendation:
Speaking of naked dudes rubbing each other, I saw a film a while back called Warrior
with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton as estranged brothers from a broken family (one is a marine, one is a physics teacher) who both find their lives falling apart and drift into a big-bucks mixed-martial arts tournament. It's basically an MMA version of Rocky and came out at the same time as the similarly themed (and better publicised) boxer-brothers film The Fighter, which overshadowed Warrior at release. The film ended up making a loss at the box office, which I think is a crying shame.
It's actually a cracking film and you should check it out. It's a classic sports blockbuster in the Rocky mould which is never going to appeal to everyone but it definitely transcends the the scope of an MMA movie with great characters and a genuinely gripping story, plus some brutal fighting scenes. I don't know a thing about MMA and that didn't impact my enjoyment one bit. Dee loved it too. It doesn't steer entirely clear of cheese and sentiment, but sometimes you just need a good movie that makes you fist-pump the air and spill your nachos.
Help out the poor buggers that worked so hard to make this film and give it a rental or get the DVD for a few quid online.
Trailer:
Thursday, 8 November 2012
WHADDYA MEAN WEBSERIES & HD REPAIR
After the elation earlier this week I am very sad to report that the new Battlestar Galactica series: Blood and Chrome will be a webseries totalling two hours over ten episodes and not the epic new television series I was hoping for. Feeling a little bit gutted! Happy and sad at the same time. I guess I should have followed events more closely.
The iMac is booked in for a hard-drive replacement. Luckily it is covered by the warranty and we won't have to pay a penny. Even small tasks have become nearly impossible. I am helping a work colleague by doing a very simple bit of video editing but just rendering the videos within Final Cut takes up to two hours. A ten minute job has so far been spread out over three evenings as the render and export times are so very long that my evening is over before the work is finished. I can only assume the computer has somehow filled with quicksand. Hopefully the warranty covers that.
Once we get it back, I can finally get back to work on my backlogged videos, namely the Three-Sided Football (can't wait to see how that came out) and the final stages of Where's My Milk You Bastard?.
Should be seeing a friend next week to do some research regarding a story I want to write a screenplay for. I'm prepared for it to be pretty bad as it's not an area I'm very experienced in, but we can't just give up at the first hurdle, can we?
Have more for you soon, stay awesome :-)
The iMac is booked in for a hard-drive replacement. Luckily it is covered by the warranty and we won't have to pay a penny. Even small tasks have become nearly impossible. I am helping a work colleague by doing a very simple bit of video editing but just rendering the videos within Final Cut takes up to two hours. A ten minute job has so far been spread out over three evenings as the render and export times are so very long that my evening is over before the work is finished. I can only assume the computer has somehow filled with quicksand. Hopefully the warranty covers that.
Once we get it back, I can finally get back to work on my backlogged videos, namely the Three-Sided Football (can't wait to see how that came out) and the final stages of Where's My Milk You Bastard?.
Should be seeing a friend next week to do some research regarding a story I want to write a screenplay for. I'm prepared for it to be pretty bad as it's not an area I'm very experienced in, but we can't just give up at the first hurdle, can we?
Have more for you soon, stay awesome :-)
Tuesday, 6 November 2012
BACK FROM HOLIDAY? BLOOD AND CHROME?!?!
BLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROMEBLOODANDCHROME
Got back from a much-needed week of peace and quiet locked away from the world in a New Forest cottage (with Dee, Louie Ad and Jen, love you guys) and I found out the new Battlestar Galactica series comes out on friday!
Battlestar Galactica - BLOOD AND CHROME!
Set during the original Cylon War a few decades before events of the current series, and featuring the captain of Galactica, Will Adama as a young fighter pilot. I cannot hide my excitement.
If this post means nothing to you, I apologise! Trailer here:
Original blood-pumping teaser from months back, before Syfy dropped the show (BOOOO!) and Machanima picked it up (Yaaay!)
http://www.thegetawayvan.com/2012/03/movies-cometh-blood-chrome.html
If you never got round to catching the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, give the 90minute pilot a shot and see how you feel. If you love fearsome robot baddies, intrigue, world-ending warfare, enemies walking among us and crazy space battles, you'll dig it, I swear.
Got back from a much-needed week of peace and quiet locked away from the world in a New Forest cottage (with Dee, Louie Ad and Jen, love you guys) and I found out the new Battlestar Galactica series comes out on friday!
Battlestar Galactica - BLOOD AND CHROME!
Set during the original Cylon War a few decades before events of the current series, and featuring the captain of Galactica, Will Adama as a young fighter pilot. I cannot hide my excitement.
If this post means nothing to you, I apologise! Trailer here:
Original blood-pumping teaser from months back, before Syfy dropped the show (BOOOO!) and Machanima picked it up (Yaaay!)
http://www.thegetawayvan.com/2012/03/movies-cometh-blood-chrome.html
If you never got round to catching the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, give the 90minute pilot a shot and see how you feel. If you love fearsome robot baddies, intrigue, world-ending warfare, enemies walking among us and crazy space battles, you'll dig it, I swear.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
HOPELESS ORGANISATION AND TO-DO LISTS
It's important to stay organised and motivated when you're working towards something big, especially if it falls outside the realm of your day-job and requires a lot of time management, which I am historically bad at.
A while back I decided that I needed an easily accesible To-Do List.
Far from being mundane, a good To-Do List enables you to break tasks and jobs up into tiny chunks that are quickly dealt with and far easier to handle. The beauty of an electronic list is that you can drag tasks around, set up sub-tasks and separate lists for different projects. After some searching I found a website that I liked, signed up (for free), and created several tiers of lists for my projects to help me stay organised and see my progress. Being browser-based I can access it from any computer, which means less stuff for me to carry around - an important consideration for the heavily laden no-budget filmmaker.
Before you know it, I'm easily on top of my projects and making progress. It saved me from that drowning sensation that makes me want to give up and play Skyrim for 6 hours rather than do anything productive (that shit went down a lot).
Fast forward several months to now and I've let myself go. Feeling a little overwhelmed I decided to dig up and refresh those old lists, only I couldn't remember the name of the website. Not if my life depended on it. Several dozen Google searches later and I'm fucking stumped.
So I'm starting from scratch. I'm now signed up to Wunderlist, a multi-platform To-Do List which you can download for your computer or use via your browser or phone. It's nice to feel organised again. Empowered rather than adrift. I've already managed to tick a box or two!
Why am I telling you this? Mostly so I'll have a record of what the bloody thing is called, so when I forget the name of the website again in 6 months I'll have more luck finding it.
Now... time for tea.
A while back I decided that I needed an easily accesible To-Do List.
Far from being mundane, a good To-Do List enables you to break tasks and jobs up into tiny chunks that are quickly dealt with and far easier to handle. The beauty of an electronic list is that you can drag tasks around, set up sub-tasks and separate lists for different projects. After some searching I found a website that I liked, signed up (for free), and created several tiers of lists for my projects to help me stay organised and see my progress. Being browser-based I can access it from any computer, which means less stuff for me to carry around - an important consideration for the heavily laden no-budget filmmaker.
Before you know it, I'm easily on top of my projects and making progress. It saved me from that drowning sensation that makes me want to give up and play Skyrim for 6 hours rather than do anything productive (that shit went down a lot).
Fast forward several months to now and I've let myself go. Feeling a little overwhelmed I decided to dig up and refresh those old lists, only I couldn't remember the name of the website. Not if my life depended on it. Several dozen Google searches later and I'm fucking stumped.
So I'm starting from scratch. I'm now signed up to Wunderlist, a multi-platform To-Do List which you can download for your computer or use via your browser or phone. It's nice to feel organised again. Empowered rather than adrift. I've already managed to tick a box or two!
Why am I telling you this? Mostly so I'll have a record of what the bloody thing is called, so when I forget the name of the website again in 6 months I'll have more luck finding it.
Now... time for tea.
Monday, 22 October 2012
BIRTHDAYS AND BICYCLES
I spent so much time counting down towards my birthday that I can't believe it's gone by. Back at work now after a really nice weekend of trappist beers and stroganoffs.
Still no action with the three-sided football footage I captured until the hard drive problem gets fixed. I have to confess, not being able to work on this is like having an itch I can't scratch.
I picked up my new bicycle (thank you workplace bicycle loans!) the other week from the rather excellent Vaidas Bicycles in Honor Oak and have been absolutely loving it. My last bike was a little too heavy and noisy but my new one is a simpler machine and flies like a bird.
Just over a year ago I had decided to make a big change in my life and buy myself a good bike, enabling me to ditch the hour of tubes and trains travelling across London and to become a cycle commuter. It was a decision borne of financial strife and unfitness, one that Dee and I were making together. I made this decision despite not having cycled since my teens save for some jelly-leg inducing stints on the London cycle hire bikes. To be honest the notion originally terrified me, especially cycling in London during rush hour, but after my first ride in, I was pretty much settled. Now I happily do my commute 5 days a week, 20 miles a day. I'd recommend it to anyone. I'm losing a bit of weight doing this too, as I'm burning about 1200 calories extra a day with the riding. I still eat like a pig though, that's probably going to be the next step towards being a bit more healthy.
I wonder if I could find a way to combine my love of cycling with my video work?
In the meantime, while unable to directly edit my work I've been drawing up a shortlist of people that I want to work with in the near future. Small businesses, exciting local shops, bands, performers, venues. New ideas for screenplays have been popping through my head lately too, or new angles on current ideas. I really would love to write one. The hardest part is always starting so it's about time I stopped dreaming and started to knuckle down.
I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.
Still no action with the three-sided football footage I captured until the hard drive problem gets fixed. I have to confess, not being able to work on this is like having an itch I can't scratch.
I picked up my new bicycle (thank you workplace bicycle loans!) the other week from the rather excellent Vaidas Bicycles in Honor Oak and have been absolutely loving it. My last bike was a little too heavy and noisy but my new one is a simpler machine and flies like a bird.
Just over a year ago I had decided to make a big change in my life and buy myself a good bike, enabling me to ditch the hour of tubes and trains travelling across London and to become a cycle commuter. It was a decision borne of financial strife and unfitness, one that Dee and I were making together. I made this decision despite not having cycled since my teens save for some jelly-leg inducing stints on the London cycle hire bikes. To be honest the notion originally terrified me, especially cycling in London during rush hour, but after my first ride in, I was pretty much settled. Now I happily do my commute 5 days a week, 20 miles a day. I'd recommend it to anyone. I'm losing a bit of weight doing this too, as I'm burning about 1200 calories extra a day with the riding. I still eat like a pig though, that's probably going to be the next step towards being a bit more healthy.
I wonder if I could find a way to combine my love of cycling with my video work?
In the meantime, while unable to directly edit my work I've been drawing up a shortlist of people that I want to work with in the near future. Small businesses, exciting local shops, bands, performers, venues. New ideas for screenplays have been popping through my head lately too, or new angles on current ideas. I really would love to write one. The hardest part is always starting so it's about time I stopped dreaming and started to knuckle down.
I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
Sunday's Filming @Plumstead Common
Sunday was exhausting! We arrived at Plumstead Common at about 10:30am and met with Owen at the rugby club pavilion where we got some general taping (scenery, location) done. Transportation was taken care of by Lauren "wheels" Carnall who drove myself and the gear down, along with Dee and our dog, Louie, who bounded around the common like a mad thing while I discussed events with Owen. Here's how it all went:
The Tug Of War
Shortly after we arrived two fire engines (sorry, fire appliances) from Plumstead Fire Station pulled in, the occupants forming one of the main tug-of-war teams, facing off against members of the Greenwich Rugby Club. The rope was laid out, the markers were set, and several rounds of ferocious tugging were underway! Lauren "wheels" Carnall took a camcorder and I took the Canon XL1S and we filmed every round, while poor Dee had to do her best to relax Louie who was sent into a barking frenzy whenever columns of beefy men started roaring and pulling. As the afternoon chill began to set in, the firefighters reigned supreme and took a trophy home for their efforts and thanks to Owen's excellent supervisory skills no-one lost an arm.
The 3-Sided Football
With the tug of war settled the hexagonal pitch beckoned. Dee and Louie made their way to the train station for home (I'm a sap but I missed her immediately) and Lauren and I set up our cameras on tripods to film several rounds of 3-sided football. There were 5 teams, each wearing a different colour which made things much easier to follow. The teams would rotate after every ten minutes so that everyone had an even number of games. The pitch was set up with proper goals rather than cones and the games flowed beautifully. In between rotations I was able to do a few small interviews with some of the players that I hope I will be able to incorporate into the final video. Filming a football game from the sidelines is hard, any zooming in you do invariably ends up with you losing the ball in your viewfinder and anything zoomed too far out looks a little poor. Sadly this means the best footage is not usually the bits displaying the most skilled players, but rather the moments when the drama of the game coincided with moments when the camera was pointing the right way and wasn't shaking around.
By switching the f-number with the frame speed I was able to jump between differing depths of field, a deep DOF to capture everything smoothly and a shallower DOF to get better looking shots (at the risk of losing focus) but the change would take a few seconds during which nothing usable is being recorded. I did get better at adapting my settings on the fly and by the last rotation I was getting much better footage than the first. With Lauren filming on the camcorder as backup I should hopefully have more than enough coverage of the game.
Coming Home
Shit got real when I got home. Our persistent little computer errors over the past week have been identified as a failing hard-drive. I somehow doubt that I will have any joy uploading the five hours of footage I captured on Sunday.
Five hours is an excessive amount of footage for two short videos, even though it is across two cameras. The mistake was mine as I made assumptions about everything. Having never witnessed a tug of war, and knowing that there were two main teams, I had assumed it would have been all over in one tug (like so many things in life). I soon learned that there would be several runs with varying team members so I recorded everything for the sake of coverage only to find that by the end I had recorded a shedload of footage (of both the tug of war and the football) and I should have been a lot more selective. By recording too much footage I have made the task of sifting through it all more difficult than it needs to be. I have my notes to guide me, but they are largely hasty and non-specific owing to the bustling nature of the day and the fact that the two camera operators were on opposite sides of a football field.
It would have been good to get started on the footage capture straight away, while my memory is still fresh, but the hard drive failure is setting me back.
Lessons learned? Always make time for note making and write them obsessively. Find out exactly how everything is going to play out so you can record appropriately.
The footage should be pretty good so I look forward to getting it together. I'll put up some stills once the editing begins and put the videos up once they are done!
Thanks for reading!
Check out more of the Plumstead Make Merry and their excellent community events here:
http://plumsteadmakemerry.co.uk/
The Tug Of War
Shortly after we arrived two fire engines (sorry, fire appliances) from Plumstead Fire Station pulled in, the occupants forming one of the main tug-of-war teams, facing off against members of the Greenwich Rugby Club. The rope was laid out, the markers were set, and several rounds of ferocious tugging were underway! Lauren "wheels" Carnall took a camcorder and I took the Canon XL1S and we filmed every round, while poor Dee had to do her best to relax Louie who was sent into a barking frenzy whenever columns of beefy men started roaring and pulling. As the afternoon chill began to set in, the firefighters reigned supreme and took a trophy home for their efforts and thanks to Owen's excellent supervisory skills no-one lost an arm.
 |
| The champions in action: photo by Sarah Harper |
The 3-Sided Football
With the tug of war settled the hexagonal pitch beckoned. Dee and Louie made their way to the train station for home (I'm a sap but I missed her immediately) and Lauren and I set up our cameras on tripods to film several rounds of 3-sided football. There were 5 teams, each wearing a different colour which made things much easier to follow. The teams would rotate after every ten minutes so that everyone had an even number of games. The pitch was set up with proper goals rather than cones and the games flowed beautifully. In between rotations I was able to do a few small interviews with some of the players that I hope I will be able to incorporate into the final video. Filming a football game from the sidelines is hard, any zooming in you do invariably ends up with you losing the ball in your viewfinder and anything zoomed too far out looks a little poor. Sadly this means the best footage is not usually the bits displaying the most skilled players, but rather the moments when the drama of the game coincided with moments when the camera was pointing the right way and wasn't shaking around.
By switching the f-number with the frame speed I was able to jump between differing depths of field, a deep DOF to capture everything smoothly and a shallower DOF to get better looking shots (at the risk of losing focus) but the change would take a few seconds during which nothing usable is being recorded. I did get better at adapting my settings on the fly and by the last rotation I was getting much better footage than the first. With Lauren filming on the camcorder as backup I should hopefully have more than enough coverage of the game.
Coming Home
Shit got real when I got home. Our persistent little computer errors over the past week have been identified as a failing hard-drive. I somehow doubt that I will have any joy uploading the five hours of footage I captured on Sunday.
Five hours is an excessive amount of footage for two short videos, even though it is across two cameras. The mistake was mine as I made assumptions about everything. Having never witnessed a tug of war, and knowing that there were two main teams, I had assumed it would have been all over in one tug (like so many things in life). I soon learned that there would be several runs with varying team members so I recorded everything for the sake of coverage only to find that by the end I had recorded a shedload of footage (of both the tug of war and the football) and I should have been a lot more selective. By recording too much footage I have made the task of sifting through it all more difficult than it needs to be. I have my notes to guide me, but they are largely hasty and non-specific owing to the bustling nature of the day and the fact that the two camera operators were on opposite sides of a football field.
It would have been good to get started on the footage capture straight away, while my memory is still fresh, but the hard drive failure is setting me back.
Lessons learned? Always make time for note making and write them obsessively. Find out exactly how everything is going to play out so you can record appropriately.
The footage should be pretty good so I look forward to getting it together. I'll put up some stills once the editing begins and put the videos up once they are done!
Thanks for reading!
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