Having some fun with the filming feature

Yesterday was a gorgeous day! We went for a walk, and I sticked to my promise and brought the camera. I took many great pictures which will be posted soon. But the camera I had with me - the Canon 5D Mark II - has also a nice HD filming feature. And here I am playing the Tarantino... with less blood of course.

For this post I have reduced the film to 500x400. 

The Camera

I am not yet familiar with the filming feature and I am also not sure how the lens focus works. It seems that it doesn't move because there were no movement on the auto-focus. I had a wide-angle lens with me, which is not very picky with focus anyway, so keeping it wide at 17mm and focusing on infinite did the trick: remember to keep a safe distance from the subject (3 meters is good).

This filming feature is something to explore on this camera.

The Film

But most important than taking the pictures and shooting small films is to transform them in something nice. Long films are very boring when they don't have a story, so I limit myself to a maximum of one (or half) song. That's 4 minutes maximum and that is already a lot for some people :)

The Music 

The music is something very important but extremely personal. What can be nice for me, might be boring to others. But its short anyway, so I stick to what I find nice. If I am making a film to someone else, I try to pay attention to the music the person likes. If its a wedding for instance, I pick one of the songs the bride has chosen.

Also be careful when publishing "to the world". Even paying for the song, you are not allowed to post it at You Tube: The film will be stilled. But on Facebook there is no restriction and I believe its because the publishing goes for a small group and the film is not public, which makes sense: it is the same as showing it to your friends, at home.

I am not sure what the policy for this site is. I will hear soon if I can't publish my personal video here :) These guys are fast nowadays, using software to "listen" to media and web pages and detect the usage of sound tracks.

Add some pictures as well


When adding landscapes, keep the picture's original proportion without cropping. Cropped pictures won't fill the screen and there will be black borders around the picture.

The best are the pictures taken with the camera on the horizontal. When shooting with the camera on the vertical a lot of detail is lost because the software "squeezes" the picture on the length to fit the screen, causing the sides to appear as a black frame.

I also take series of pictures of the same action (like the sliding on the snow from Thomas) and add those series between the small films.


Put everything together
 
Film Maker, which is distributed on Windows 7, is my choice. There I add the music and basic edition features,  avoiding all excessive and annoying transitions and animations. I stick to the zooming and panning and remove all sound of the original film, give priority to the music, with "fade in" and "fade out" effects.

Add titles and credits in the end and I have something nice to carry with me on the IPad or IPhone. Next time someone asks "How is Thomas?" I can show Thomas'  three minutes of fame!

And that is all

I enjoyed the silence and quietness on the dunes. The snow absorbs all the sounds. By this time of the year there are no cars racing in Zandvoort and almost no people walking around. Everything gets smooth: the colors, the sounds, the feelings. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, to refuel all my energy and creativity!

Thank you.