On Making Movies

I was a “video virgin” when I started this course. Despite my current cameras having the capability to capture video clips I never felt the need to stray from “stills”. However, when I started my major project work I committed myself to augmenting the photographic portfolio with some video action. I had intended to leave this work until near the end of the project, when all the “stills photography” work had been completed. However, following my tutor’s feedback from Assignment 4 and my own frustration with attempts to integrate the two threads of the project within a simple image portfolio, I leaped at the idea of using video to link the different aspects of the project in a multimedia presentation, incorporating video clips. Starting in late February 2015, I have embarked on a steep learning curve as I started to record video: what follows is a short overview of my progress.

I started by recording videos of birds feeding from my hand, using both my Nikon D7000 SLR camera with 17-70mm Sigma zoom lens and my Panasonic FZ200 “bridge” camera. The first and most obvious problem to overcome was that I was no longer able to compose my shots through the viewfinder, but had to use the camera screens in “live view”. As I need reading glasses anyway, looking at the screen of the Nikon proved particularly difficult, particularly in strong light. The Panasonic was better, as I could fold the screen out and adjust the angle of view. However, the quality of the Nikon videos (shot at 1920 x 1080 resolution and 24 frames per second) was superior to those of the Panasonic, so I decided to stick with the Nikon. By careful adjustment of the focal length (around 24mm seemed optimum) and focussing on the tip of my hand I was able to get what, for me, were unexpectedly good results, although in some cases there were bright highlights, particularly on my hand.

In the early weeks I had the microphones switched on and tried to do some commentary (rehearsed beforehand) in addition to taking the videos. This proved to be almost impossible to co-ordinate, and frequently resulted in the video ending with a handful of choice four letter words, followed a few seconds later by deletion of the video. In the end I decided to buy a software package and a microphone, to record the commentary separately and then add it to the video in “Windows Moviemaker”. There were new issues regarding timings, etc. to contend with here, but this was a lot easier than an intense period of multi-tasking whilst making the video on location. I now had to remember to switch the microphone off when making videos, unless of course I wanted a soundtrack of (for example) birds singing.

Satisfied with my first efforts I moved on to making some video clips of “ATM” street art in London, moving through the streets before apparently coming across his paintings of birds (relevant to the second half of my project). I now had to watch out for traffic whilst making the video, whilst keeping at least one eye on the screen. Passers-by would get in the way, but at least I had the chance to repeat the video over and over again until I got it right.

The ultimate challenge came when I set about making videos of distant birds. The birds I wanted to concentrate on were not those that come to bird feeders or were happy to be fed by hand. These were shy species that it was hard to get close to. I needed to use a long lens for this work, with the more versatile 70-300mm zoom being favoured. I quickly found that when I did get close enough for video work there were two major problems. Firstly, I had to use a very narrow aperture to prevent the birds moving in and out of focus during filming (an otherwise excellent video of an avocet feeding was ruined by not doing this). Secondly, I had to find the bird on the screen after moving to “live view” and then maintain its position on the screen as it moved about. Remembering to do all this whilst hoping that the bird would perform as I hoped resulted in many failures! There were problems with even the more successful videos – I was hand-holding the camera (using a tripod was not an option when working in the field, especially as the birds rarely stayed still), so there was some camera shake, which could be a little disconcerting whilst I was watching the video on screen, but at least gave the work an air of authenticity.

I reached the limit of my ability when trying to photograph birds in flight. I could cope with distant birds, such as marsh harriers, where I could focus on a large area of reed bed (their natural habitat), but in this case the birds were rather insignificant in relation to their environment (no bad thing for “habitat” videos, but of no use when concentrating on the birds). For the video of red kites at Gigrin Farm I just focussed on the meat on the ground and waited for the kites to come and grab it. However, for the multimedia presentation I really wanted to video a skylark singing in the sky above me, but finding the bird in “live view” and then keeping it on the screen proved to be impossible. After many frustrating attempts I abandoned this exercise.

I’ve progressed from being a “video virgin” to just being a near beginner. I still make mistakes, lots of them (like making an otherwise lively video of the goldfinches on my garden feeders only to discover that the microphone had been left on the highest setting and I had a soundtrack of “Radio Five Live” in the background. However, they say that practice makes perfect - look out for my movies on "You Tube", coming soon!