Urban nature - my pigeon documentary

M

mrWr0ng

Well-known member
My girlfriend and I are doing a documentary on urban wildlife, incuding pigeons, and I've been steadily filming them for a few months. I would love to get some or any feedback on how I've been capturing them in the "wild." So far it's been a lot of farther shots zoomed in as close as I can go due to the birds' natural skittishness when people get too close.

Everything's been hand-held and shot with spider brace, manual settings with a Varizoom rocker. I'm still learning a lot about the different colour and gamma settings, though mostly I've been using Scene File 1.

I'm mostly concerned about trying to get depth in my shots, trying to keep them from looking flat. Am I accomplishing this? Most of this was shot before I discovered Christopher Doyle and how to really change up my angles to put depth into a shot, but I'd love to get feedback on what I could do in a wildlife situation to bring depth and framing to a shot while still getting the content.

This is my video, 3.4 megs, minute and a half long:
http://www.jlboyce.com/video/20061004-pigeonflight.mov
 
mrWr0ng said:
My girlfriend and I are doing a documentary on urban wildlife, incuding pigeons, and I've been steadily filming them for a few months. I would love to get some or any feedback on how I've been capturing them in the "wild." So far it's been a lot of farther shots zoomed in as close as I can go due to the birds' natural skittishness when people get too close.

Everything's been hand-held and shot with spider brace, manual settings with a Varizoom rocker. I'm still learning a lot about the different colour and gamma settings, though mostly I've been using Scene File 1.

I'm mostly concerned about trying to get depth in my shots, trying to keep them from looking flat. Am I accomplishing this? Most of this was shot before I discovered Christopher Doyle and how to really change up my angles to put depth into a shot, but I'd love to get feedback on what I could do in a wildlife situation to bring depth and framing to a shot while still getting the content.

This is my video, 3.4 megs, minute and a half long:
http://www.jlboyce.com/video/20061004-pigeonflight.mov
Click to expand...

looks good, i would recommend using a telephoto converter, try the century 2x... and get some details, close ups... and even though it may seem cumbersome to use sticks... it might help to get some locked off shots where you really think about your composition, i would say, forget about following them so much.. and focus on what they do in the frame. one thing i see, which is entirely subjective, is that when one is always following or panning, composition is disregarded, especially when doing handheld. good job!:thumbsup:
 
Well I've been trying to focus on composition with more solid shots. Here are some stills from other shots I've gotten:

UF_OH_Still01.jpg

UF_OH_Still02.jpg

UF_OH_Still03.jpg

UF_OH_Still04.jpg

UF_OH_Still05.jpg

UF_OH_Still06.jpg

UF_OH_Still07.jpg

UF_OH_Still08.jpg

UF_OH_Still09.jpg


Unfortunately, the little buggers are just too quick to really get solid compositions with, so it's a lot of moving on my feet. I'd love to try the telephoto converter, it's just too expensive for me right now. But I'm still thinking about it!

My girlfriend's been telling me to get stiller shots, too, and let them move in and out of the frame. I'm trying to get into that mindset.
 
You should come to my neck of the woods, those flying rats aren't skittsh at all around here if there is food to be had.

One thing you could do is set up the camera on a tripod or the ground where the birds hang out, and then use the infrared remote to control the camera. The birds aren't afraid of the camera, they are afraid of you.
 
We've gotten a few shots where we've been feeding them - they're definitely a lot easier to work with when we're throwing food at them, which allows me to get super close. I kinda feel like that's cheating, though.

My girl used to documentaries for TV in NY, so she says that every documentary cheats a lot to get their shots, so I can understand that it happens, I just want everything to be as natural as possible - if other people are feeding the pigeons, that's fine, I just don't want to make my whole movie by showing up with food and tossing it at them to get them to come out.

I've been making friends with a pigeon racing club in San Francisco, so hopefully after meeting up with them, they'll let me go into their lofts and get some footage from there, especially cheating nest boxes to get some baby pigeon footage.

The remote sounds like a good idea, too. Focus will be a problem if I'm not on the camera, but I guess if I zoom all the way out and it's close enough to them, they'll still fill up the frame.
 
loved the song, who is that? Nice editing, i like the way it starts to feel more like an absrtact piece, due to the continual motion motif.
 
interesting.. a bit blown out at times... Ride your exposure, or just don't shoot into the hot white of the sky... What's your goal with this?
 
dogcat - i made the song in garageband. I'm working on an album and score all my own shorts (and hopefully this as well).

Justin - I'm planning on making an entire feature-length documentary. This is just a little piece of what I've been filming so far. The whole thing focuses on the city as a piece of nature that life has found its way in to. The theme is the relationship between people and the rest of the life that lives in the city. I'm starting on interviews with people, as well as lots of footage of pigeons, their relationships with other animals in the city (dogs, cats, other birds), and their life cycle (pigeon love, babies, and of course, death).

I always thought pigeons were silly animals, especially with how they bob their head when they walk around, but at the end, I'd like to have taught people a little bit about the animals that live with them (pigeon history or even info about their species, like how they mate for life, and whenever you see one pigeon you'll usually see their mate nearby), and that, like us, they're just trying to get by.

You're right about the exposure. It's really only the flying shots that I've had those problems with when I go from low angle to shooting them up in the sky.

This is another clip, I'm not an editor so there's not much in the way of cuts (I'm not planning on using the sequence, was just messing around with the idea) where they stick to one place, so I don't have to worry so much about blowing them out. This one is more on the relationships between the birds:

http://www.jlboyce.com/video/20061005-ballet.mov

You can kind of see how they start interacting and how they work together to figure things out. Plus the girl with the bread was really cute. I was glad my girlfriend came along because otherwise the parents probably would have flipped out at some random guy filming their daughter.
 
The thing that's weird about pigeons is that you never see their nests, or young pigeons, only big fat ones. It's like they are being churned out in a secret factory somewhere...
 
The thing is that pigeons are very particular about where they put their nests - covered places with difficult entrances, where the babies will be very safe. It's not like sparrows who will just pick a tree - pigeons use the same nest for as long as it's safe, they pick a particular spot that's very hiddena nd just go back to it again and again.

They can lay eggs every 18 days, and it takes about a month for a baby pigeon to become mature enough to leave the nest, so you'll never see "babies" for the sake of the safety of their nest. But I plan on visiting some lofts where pigeon racers keep their pigeons, including nest boxes for the raising of pigeon young, so that I can film the babies as they're eggs and too young to leave the nest.

I swear I didn't know any of this stuff in August when I started this film :)
 
Sounds like an interesting documentary. Pigeons aren't my thing--they are my enemy. When we first moved into our house they were all over the roof and ledges. Hard to control, and now I see why, since they can lay eggs every 18 days.

Footage looks good, I think that lots of close-up stuff will really serve your purpose.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top