Friday, 26 April 2013 00:18

Making videos of the garden

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I’m really pleased with this video of birds feeding and bathing in my garden, cut in time-ish to a Strauss polka (watch the goldfinches and Blackbirds in particular). It’s an example of what I am learning as I create this Blog.

My day job is making videos for large corporates. I advise them on how best to tell and articulate their corporate stories on video – for investors, employees and other business audiences. Almost all of this video is online, so supposedly I am online video savvy. But my role is to think, advise, direct and produce – all bossy talk and no physical action! I am never behind the camera and I sit beside the editor as he/she creates the finished piece with me.

For this site, it has all had to change. I have to be able to do it all myself. I can’t wait for a cameraman to be free when a bee is in a flower – I have to film it. I can’t wait for an editor the other side of town to be free so I can create a piece to show you what’s happening in the garden.

So last year a bought a digital SLR that shoots HD video (Canon 6000D) and a GoPro to create the Welcome video. My editor Mike edited the Welcome video with me but everything else on the site I have created.

On the filming front I was relatively confidant. I take pretty OK still photos, understand light and have been in creative, visual industries all my working life and in video for the last 12 years. And I think visually.

The editing was the problem. All my guys work in Final Cut Pro on Macs. I work on PC and needed to find a suitable, cheap but effective, editing programme. I tried all the free ones. No good. I trialled a number of others and even tried to trial the expensive Premiere for PC but it entirely failed even to download.

This program I am using, which I am thrilled with, is from NCH and cost me $38 Australian dollars – almost free! It looks and works just like Final Cut to the extent that, after years of sitting beside editors, I can use it intuitively and have bought the software with no support because it is very user-friendly and has good online help. It has a timeline and sequence view, you can layer on lots of video and audio, and it has a reasonable number of effects. The only problem is that it crashes quite often – and sometimes crashes my whole computer – so you just have to make sure you ‘ Save’ a lot and bear with it if you have to re-boot. But I think it’s worth it for $38.

So, in my eagerness to film more and better for you, I am also planning to buy a macro lens for insect and flower details, I am investigating microphones because I may start doing some pieces to camera – if I feel brave enough - and I intend to improve my editing skills – so keep watching this space!

Read 54885 times Last modified on Wednesday, 01 October 2014 09:22