Snow in Portland . . . It doesn't happen too often

Ike615

Ike615

Well-known member
So we rarely get snow in Portland, OR so when it does happen it pretty much puts the city at a stand still even when we only get 1 to 2 inches (we got 3-4).

I'm not extremely happy with the footage I got (i.e. lots of shaking and some shots have lots of noise due to myself not realizing the gain was on 12db until I imported it onto my computer) but I thought I'd post it anyways. I took shots of both the city and a couple parks nearby.
-
Isaac

Edit:
I originally posted a better resolution version of this but it ate up my bandwidth so here's a youtube version of it in the meanwhile.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uVxXVZHiD4I
 
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So my bandwidth is being quickly eaten up. Does anyone know how to post a "save as" link? I uploaded it onto my .mac account and I can't seem to find a way to a link that goes straight to downloading the movie.
 
Isaac, I live just above you in the Seattle area.

The good:
You really can't go wrong shooting snow scenes because it just looks beautiful.
You had a nice variety of shots

The bad:
You really need a tripod. Shaky shots just kill the elegance of a snow scene. A lot of filmmakers are just lazy when it comes to dragging a tripod around, myself included. I always regret not making the extra effort when I see the results later.
You should color correct your shots so that they match. Some of your shots have rich blacks and others look milky.
Try to unify your shots with themes, the randomness here doesn't make the piece feel like it's solid.
Try to pick music that has meaning for the piece. Maybe this one did for you but it didn't feel like there was any real association with the imagery in the manner in which you edited.

Advice
It's fun to experiment with shutter speeds when shooting snow. Using the default is not the best for capturing single snowflakes. Bump it up to 250 or even 500.

I shot a couple of snow sequences last week using 1/500 sec shutter speed and was very pleased with the results. You can check them out in the Other Cameras section under Canon XLH1 if you are interested.

Anyway, I hope you can take my comments as just my opinion and not be offended in any way. I just try to call it like I see it.

Keep shooting.

Oh yeah regarding the "save as"... you can add an "x" to the end of your movie file name and it won't automatically play. It will force people to download it. When they have downloaded it, they can simply remove the "x" and it will play normally. Just make sure you tell people about removing the x and you should be good.
 
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disjecta, I just downloaded and watched the video you mentioned. That looks very nice, like all of the stuff you've done.

The only thing that marred the video is the tape dropout at 1:13 -- it's either that, or the snow in your neck of the woods is blocky and multicolored. I'd edit that out.
 
Actually it's a compression issue, not a tape dropout....I haven't had a chance to fix it yet. Thanks for the comments.

By the way, I don't want to hijack Isaac's thread so please keep any comments regarding my stuff over where it's posted.

Thanks...
 
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That looks great. I want to move to Portland some time. I thought they would get a decent amount of snow, nice to hear that they don't.
 
I had to take down the clip because I don't have a whole lot of bandwidth. here's a youtube version of it in the meanwhile.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uVxXVZHiD4I

disjecta said:
Isaac, I live just above you in the Seattle area.


Anyway, I hope you can take my comments as just my opinion and not be offended in any way. I just try to call it like I see it.
Click to expand...
Thanks disjecta for your comments. I agree with almost everything you said. I wasn't too happy with it myself from the start so I didn't really spend to much time with it during editing, which obviously showed. I'll be posting some better stuff in a week or two. I looked at your stuff and it looks very nice.
 
baquajim said:
That looks great. I want to move to Portland some time. I thought they would get a decent amount of snow, nice to hear that they don't.
Click to expand...

Thanks baquajim. We get snow about once a year here in Portland. There's a lot up in the mountains though which is about an hour and a half away.
 
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