Fruiting Bodies - Short art piece with Wild Shrooms (GH13 80Mbps MJPEG)

Shawn Storm

Shawn Storm

Active member
Hi People,

I'm back at it with the mushrooms! This time a fun little art piece of just mushrooms and background music (composed by my friend).

Shot with my GH13. All MJPEG 80Mbps footage. All shot with Lumix 20mm pancake lens. Edited with Final Cut Express. Took me two days from start to finish (1 day for shooting and 1 day for post processing).

The footage is a little shaky, but all shots were hand held with a non-stabilized lens so I think I did ok considering. This project made me really want a steadycam and a dolly. :)


EDIT: I re-made the video below using FCP's SmoothCam filter because people felt the original was too "jittery". This new version is definitely smoother, but the quality is diminished a little as a result (fine details are slightly blurry due to the filter enlarging footage slightly).


-Shawn-
 
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Some really gorgeous shots of beautiful subjects. The variety is amazing. Did find the shakyness to be at times distracting, but thoroughly enjoyed it anyway.
 
tflak said:
Some really gorgeous shots of beautiful subjects. The variety is amazing. Did find the shakyness to be at times distracting, but thoroughly enjoyed it anyway.
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Thanks much!

Some of my friends actually like the shakiness "effect"... go figure! :)

With the tools I had I am fairly sure I did the best job I could to reduce jitter, but I am totally open to suggestions of ways to reduce it further without having to purchase any equipment. For the static scenes I could of used my tripod and/or various props (some of the angles would of been impossible to get with my tripod), but I chose to hand hold it so all the footage had a consistent feel.

-Shawn-
 
Looks and sounds awesome. I didn't know there were so many different kinds of mushrooms. I really like the mushroom ensemble at 53sec. Pretty cool!
 
I think you will be fine with a gorillaPod for statics shots and a Slider for dollys and or maybe a cheap monopod mostly to give you a little of stabilization, because these mushrooms are in the ground and a steady maybe don´t work to well on this, just my 2 cent.
Anyways, looks great!
 
Great shrooms - but the shakiness really ruined it for me :( A gorillapod would be ideal and cheap... but too late now! Have you experimented with the anti shake options in your NLE? They can add artifacts if you crank it up too much - but I have seen unusable snowboarding helmet cam footage become usable.... so for this kind of stuff it should work a treat.
 
I know how hard it is to walk in non trailed undergrowth, you don't need look after more crap dragging around and catching branches, the dead trunks and flies are a full time job already.

Don't worry about the waving, viewers have been accustomed to a little shaking in hand-held footage for at least 2 decades. Bourne Ultimatum type of waving around might be on the edge of what's tolerable, but a small wobble is fine, nobody is going to care or even notice but old, classically trained d.o.p., or gear fanatics (sorry guys :tongue:).

You might want to shoot everything hand-held for a same project, a tripod shot is not going to mix too well in a hand-held project.
 
Gorillapod can be a viable solution. I keep a Focus model attached to my belt loop via carabiner when on the trail and it rarely gets in the way. Of course, undergrowth can be another story.

Have been waiting for the new Mercalli version 2 plug-in to become available in a trial version for the Mac, but it's PC only so far. They keep telling me within weeks, but the weeks keep going by. Anyway it looks promising. Have used the Smoothcam feature in FCP to salvage some otherwise unusable footage, but that can make things look really soft due to scaling and doesn't really address skew. Of course, the obvious solution is to avoid shaky footage in the first place, but as we all know that isn't always possible.

http://www.prodad.com/home/products/videostabilizing/300391667,l-us.xhtml

Tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uajXCD34Hok
 
x_WOrPIG_x said:
Looks and sounds awesome. I didn't know there were so many different kinds of mushrooms. I really like the mushroom ensemble at 53sec. Pretty cool!
Click to expand...

Thanks much. There are literally hundreds of mushroom varieties. In fact, I only shot about half of the mushroom varieties in my area! To include all the varieties around here would of resulted in at least a 10 minute video. :)

-shawn-
 
xenogears said:
I think you will be fine with a gorillaPod for statics shots and a Slider for dollys and or maybe a cheap monopod mostly to give you a little of stabilization, because these mushrooms are in the ground and a steady maybe don´t work to well on this, just my 2 cent.
Anyways, looks great!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I have a gorilla pod and I didn't even think to bring it along with me.. A slider sounds like a good idea (assuming I could find one that is lightweight and inexpensive). I agree that a steadycam for mushrooms probably wouldn't work very well.

So a question for people: I am wondering if there is some sort of multipurpose device that would be perfect for this kind of situation. Basically something that is lightweight (could easily fit in a backpack along with other equipment) and allows a variety of smooth movements in various directions. I would be bringing it on long hikes, so simplicity and lightweight is crucial. And best case scenario it would also have some sort of automatic program feature so that I could set it up and then be in the footage. And all this for less than $500? Perhaps I am dreaming? :)

-shawn-
 
the doc said:
Great shrooms - but the shakiness really ruined it for me :( A gorillapod would be ideal and cheap... but too late now! Have you experimented with the anti shake options in your NLE? They can add artifacts if you crank it up too much - but I have seen unusable snowboarding helmet cam footage become usable.... so for this kind of stuff it should work a treat.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear the shakiness didn't work for ya. As I said above, I actually hand held the static shots on purpose because I wanted a consistent feel throughout the video. If all the shots of the video were static then I would of definitely used a gorrilapod or small tripod. However, I felt that having all static shots would be kind of boring. :)

I am using Final Cut Express 4 and unfortunately it does not have anti shake options (that I am aware of). Perhaps I could try running the footage through iMovie and see what happens.

-Shawn-
 
tflak said:
Have been waiting for the new Mercalli version 2 plug-in to become available in a trial version for the Mac, but it's PC only so far. They keep telling me within weeks, but the weeks keep going by. Anyway it looks promising. Have used the Smoothcam feature in FCP to salvage some otherwise unusable footage, but that can make things look really soft due to scaling and doesn't really address skew. Of course, the obvious solution is to avoid shaky footage in the first place, but as we all know that isn't always possible.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. That does look promising, especially if it works with FCE. I feel like I am in the stone ages with FCE 4, but unfortunately I cannot currently afford FCP and haven't had any luck finding a working non-legit copy of the new FCP.

Ultimately I will strive for more stable footage to begin with and will continue to look for ways of achieving this. This mushroom video was really just for fun and I am finding that some people don't seem to mind the shakiness, and as I said above, some people actually LIKE the shakiness and feel it adds character to the video. :)

-shawn-
 
This would make sense - but the shakiness was so inconsistent - some of the 3 layer montages for example showed excessive shakiness in one area, but not too bad in the others.... stands out like a sore thumb?

My personal opinion is that for shooting subjects like this.... you need them all to be stabilised. If mushrooms could run around then it would be different :) I am astonished that some peeps think this is a good artistic decision for shooting immovable fungus. Bourne identitiy it is not!
 
the doc said:
This would make sense - but the shakiness was so inconsistent - some of the 3 layer montages for example showed excessive shakiness in one area, but not too bad in the others.... stands out like a sore thumb?

My personal opinion is that for shooting subjects like this.... you need them all to be stabilised. If mushrooms could run around then it would be different :) I am astonished that some peeps think this is a good artistic decision for shooting immovable fungus. Bourne identitiy it is not!
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I basically agree. Overall this project was a great learning experience and I appreciate the critical feedback just as much as the positive feedback.

The bottom line is that I spent one day in the woods with just the camera and a non-stabilized lens and was kind of in a hurry to get as much shots as possible and also having limited card capacity and battery time (which is why I usually only took 1 or 2 shots of each mushroom). I was also using 80Mbps MJPEG which won't play in my camera, so I couldn't review the footage while in the field. So basically with my limited time, equipment, etc it felt impossible to get consistent footage.

The only thing that I could think to do differently (without getting more equipment, etc) would of been to shoot the static scenes with a gorillapod/random prop. This would of eliminated jitter for the static shots, but the moving shots would of been the same and there would of been more of an obvious difference between the static and moving footage. I also figured that taking the static shots without jitter would basically look like a still photo and be kind of boring. I wanted some kind of movement in each frame and all I could come up with was hand holding the shots for a slight jitter. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but there you go. :) I think if my lens had been stabilized it might of worked out better.

I would love suggestions of ways I could of done the project differently while still working with the same constraints and lack of equipment.

Thanks!
-Shawn-
 
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Very nice piece as people have said. The shot that starts around 1:17 and pans down is absolute money with the lighting in the background... The shakiness did take away from the serenity and beauty of your piece but that is TOTALLY within the tolerance to put on the shakycam feature. It's too bad you don't have FCP to do the adjustment. I've done it alot and on yours it wouldn't crop the image too much at all, when it's big bumps then you will severely cut down on the image size for sure.

I highly recommend a slider. You could pick one up for 300 or so. We just did and it's great. I'd stick to a 3' slider though so you can just use one tripod. Another huge thing that I think you would benefit from would be a high hat.. so you can get some low angle tripod shots. I bring mine with me when I'm going out to do this kind of stuff and just have my tripod head on the thing and maybe a compact set of appleboxes just in case..
 
Justyn said:
The shakiness did take away from the serenity and beauty of your piece but that is TOTALLY within the tolerance to put on the shakycam feature. It's too bad you don't have FCP to do the adjustment.

I highly recommend a slider. You could pick one up for 300 or so. We just did and it's great. I'd stick to a 3' slider though so you can just use one tripod. Another huge thing that I think you would benefit from would be a high hat.. so you can get some low angle tripod shots. I bring mine with me when I'm going out to do this kind of stuff and just have my tripod head on the thing and maybe a compact set of appleboxes just in case..
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions.

I have iMovie '09 which I believe has the shakycam feature as well, but it freaks out and locks up my computer when I try to import MJPEG footage from my GH1. Go figure! :) Honestly I don't feel like dealing with iMovie anyways, it kind of drives me nuts. The ideal situation would be to acquire FCP because I assume I could just drop my FCE project into it and simply apply the smooth cam filter. Anyways, this probably won't happen unless FCP randomly drops in my lap sometime soon and I am not too concerned about it since this was just a fun little experimental video anyways.

I think a slider is definitely in my future, it is just a question of when. Honestly I have been avoiding video equipment because there is so much of it out there and the prices are somewhat discouraging. At the moment I am still an amateur and have basically no budget for video stuff, so I am basically having to work with what I got. This is obviously limiting, but its my reality at the moment. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to invest in some more equipment and step up my game a bit.

Cheers,
-Shawn-
 
I recommend you to look at DIY projects DVXUser sub forum there severals low budget projects, one of them is a slider.

Cheers
 
um, for all those static shots with no movement in them you could just use a single frame from your video clip.....freeze the frame = no more wiggly jiggly. or just take a photo! there really is no reason to play the actual video clip if there's ZERO movement in the shot other than you holding the camera.
 
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