Shear: A film about sheep shearing (testing new jib)

[jamesh]

Just wanted to share with you guys this little edit I did, while I was testing my 550D on my new new 14ft jib.
I am quite proud of the result actually...



My family have farmed Restormel Farm since 1939. The sheep shearing sheds at Barngate have been a big part of the history. My Granddad is now too old to look after the sheds & farmhouse there so he is moving down to the larger farmhouse at Restormel with my parents.

I partly wanted to make this film to document one of the last farming operations that my Granddad will undertake at Barngate, but I also wanted to test out my new 14ft camera jib in a real life situation.

Filmed on Canon 550D
Nikon 50mm 1.8
Nikon 24mm 2.8
Tokina 11-16mm 2.8

Glidetrack & 14ft JibEdited in Adobe Premiere CS5.5
Colour correction is AE & PremiereMusic by Ben Howard

Let me know your thoughts

James.

[Solomon]

baAaAah

Nice shots. I'm surprised at how docile the sheep are, gettin flipped around all willy nilly.

[Raindog84]

It looks really crisp and beautiful. The creativity and diversity of your shots really make this great, though.

[grantw]

Really nice. Great job with the natural sounds.

I'd have the dialogue kick in earlier to make it a bit more internet friendly. At about 2:30 I felt done with the video and was surprised it was only half way thru, then discovered the 'doc' part kicks in. Although this is probably more for your family and less of a pure doc piece. But I think if you just had the intro shearing piece about a minute then played the rest out more people online would watch it thru. Really great job though.

[jamesh]

Totally agree grantw. The doc part was an afterthought really. It was just really for my own testing and for my family. Thanks for watching.

[antcuc]

Really great shots and composition. Curious as to why you use nikon lenses on a t2i? Isn't there some loss of control?

[groveChuck]

Very nicely done, watching it was a... shear delight! (sorry!)

Great shots, though I'd love to see granddad speaking on camera at least once or twice.

Most interesting non-sheep moments- the sling supporting the shearer on the left (all that bending over makes my back hurt just to watch), and the border collie- those are some crazy dogs!

Had no problem with the VO coming in the 2nd half.

Nice job shots, who makes the jib?

[paulears]

All looked good - it did sometimes make me wish the depth of field was greater. I found I was forced to watch sometimes the things I didn't want to - in a documentary I always feel your eye needs to be able to see everything - especially the background, so the softness of some things got in the way for me. The big thing with heavier jibs is the control needed as you approach the ends of the travel, because if you hit the end stop, even gently, you get a bounce and it goes the other way again. I've always found it very difficult to work to the very ends. The benefits of the high shots in this example are the ones that work for me - you can see everything - and for this kind of thing, it works well.