Sometimes things just don’t go your way.
Right from the start I have always maintained that this project/blog was a learning process and that I would share all the good and bad parts of this experience.
After the past couple of weeks and the great feedback I was getting I was on a high and thinking this project isn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. Then like in all parts of life, something comes along to bring you right back down to earth.
In the last week I have been away, been ill and had a family/personal issue to attend to, so I always knew Film 9 would be tough, it definitely was! After a couple of ideas became non starters i finally thought a few days ago my moment had come….
I have always been a weather geek, I love extreme weather including Tornados… One of my biggest dreams is to film an F5 Tornado and also in the past year or so I have got massively into Timelapse photography, however I haven’t been able to explore that area fully yet however I hope to this year! So like I said a couple of days ago the weather was actually nice for once and they cloud formations were great. I rushed to get my camera set up in my back garden and decided to do a Timelapse of the clouds.
For those who are unfamiliar with Timelapse, it involves a process of taking lots of still pictures over a long period of time at set intervals (for example 3 second intervals) and then stitching them pictures together to make one continuos film.
Tom Lowe has produced one of my favourite timelapse videos and possibly one of my favourite films as well….
TimeScapes: Rapture 4K from Tom Lowe on Vimeo.
So I set up my camera with all the settings that I thought were correct and left it running for a few hours, I took over 1000 photos in total. The big thing about Timelapse photography is sometimes you get into the edit suite and all the photos you have taken just don’t work for some reason and here in lies my problem for film 9….
I OVER EXPOSED my shots, because I was shooting clouds and with them being very white, a lot of my footage came out over exposed meaning it had a washed out look, I tried to correct this in my editing software but it gave the final footage a almost computer generated look. This was one video that I would have to chalk down to a failure and learn a lot of lessons from it.
As mentioned before I want to learn as much as possible from this whole process and you cant learn without making mistakes, I have spoken to many top film makers and its reassuring to hear that they are still learning everyday and still making mistakes as seasoned pro’s, so its going to happen, you just have to take the rough with the smooth, don’t let it get you down and push on.
If we stop learning as individuals we have failed, if you never make a mistake you are not pushing yourself hard enough.
In hindsight now, I should have planned more, checked my shots carefully and not have been in such a rush to get set up, I shouldn’t have let the excitement get the better of my knowledge and understanding of what needed to be down to make a decent Timelapse.
So here it is “Film 9” the biggest learning experience yet…..
Mark
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Film 9 edited 1080p from Absolution Films on Vimeo.