AC160 Galapagos Islands

J

jchristie

Well-known member
Hi folks

My wife and I shot this in July on a 7 day trip with International Expeditions, culled down from 13 hours. I learned that you roll a lot while filming wildlife and sealions don't take direction very well :) It's probably 65% AC160, 25% HMC 150 and the balance is Gopro and DSLR.

https://vimeo.com/49218605

Enjoy!

John Christie
 
Hi John

Even better than lovely...absolutely pristine and superb footage too...I trust IE Travel will use that as a promo?? It had just the right balance of interviews and footage and, of course, perfectly balanced narration ...truely professional in every way and that trip should be on most people's bucket list!!

Chris
 
Thanks for all the compliments!

Hauling a heavy tripod around the islands was the only downside. But the Manfrotto 503HDV with 506 carbon fibre legs was key to getting rock solid images in a place that has constant on shore breezes.

I always shoot with the Spark setting on both cameras. The color is a little exaggerated with Spark, but I like the look I get. I did additional color correction in Apple's Color.

Forgot to mention that we also shot underwater with the Nikon Coolpix AW100, as a little point and shoot it shoots 1080 30. I took along my Canon 7D in an Ikelite housing, but it started to leak first time in the water! Fortunately no damage to the Canon. But I was very impressed with the Nikon!

I used cinema tools to change the frame rate of the Nikon and Gopro from 30 to 24 to match the main cameras. This also slows the footage down a bit, but for underwater shots I think it helps.

I also used Smooth Cam in FCP and Warp Stabilizer in After Effects on some of the underwater and handheld shots.

Cheers

John
 
Super fantastic !

I had a colleague in Japan who liked to categorize things as "much", "many much", "very many much" and "too many much" . Your effort is "very many much" (the highest positive rationg).

Gives people like me something to strive for. Congratulations!

Now, you said 13 hours of recordings. How many editing hours to reduce it to the end product?

If you had done this as a documentary for a client (aside from travel/living time and costs) what would you have charged the client for the final product?

I have a couple of documentaries to do for two groups of professional singers. They both want firm-fixed pricing up front. We can agree with them that the end product will run 5-7 mins, no longer, with a cap on the number of separate local venues for the filming (these seem to be two reasonable parameters). Any others?

A group of students did a documentary on my wife's barbershop quartet as their input for a nationwide short film competition - they spent 100 hours (2 of them), shadowing the quartet members at home, at work, in rehearsal, on stage.

Their final video ran 4 minutes, was in the top 10 and made it to national TV here in Canada.
 
Very many very much thanks Walter.

I worked on the video at night and on weekends, and I'm guessing it took me 20 hours to log all the footage. Then I had to write the script, another 8 to 12 hours. And then the actual edit, which took about 40 hours, with revisions, colour correction etc. So that's around 70 hours of post production.

It's hard to put a price on these videos. I had a friend of mine look at one of my videos, he's an accomplished video producer here in Vancouver who specializes in high end corporate videos. He estimated the value at $25000 for production and post, not including travel or accommodation. Of course my clients don't have anything like that to spend so we work on barter and maybe I make a few dollars on versioning for other languages/markets. On a recent video I had to coordinate recording and re-editing a video into French, Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish.

You seem to plugged into the performing arts world in the videos you do, and I know that nobody is rolling in dough in those markets. The perfect price is when the client feels they are paying way too much and you feel you're making way too little.

I think 5 to 7 minutes is an ideal length for what you're trying to do, I would add to your budget someone to do a proper sound mix. I mix my own videos, but I wouldn't trust my ears when the content revolves around a group of singers.

It's always hard to know what to charge in this business. I do work for the Canadian Parkinson Society in BC, for free, because it feels good. And it seems I'm always helping out someone with a video project. If you still love what you're doing and you're making a bit of money doing it, then you're ahead of the curve.

My Canadian 2 cents worth!

Cheers

John
 
Good to have this information on hand.

I have two jobs, one as a management consultant, the other handling the technical side of a company that manufactures enterprise software. In both cases, the fees are what the market will bear.

Assigning one of my technical staff to do what you did (assuming they had the skill level) would carry the cost to $21,800, pretty close to the $25,000 your friend estimated but I expect your friend would require more than one person charging to the project during any one hour. Seems that for other than corporate video, its a difficult slog.

I get good returns from doing training videos for my software products - in the absence of these videos, we would need 5 more people at the support desk, so there is a good return. Training videos is why I bought the camera. As for the performing arts work I do, that is a hobby. Much more fun.
 
John,
I have only just seen this. A beautifully shot and tightly edited production. Excellent work!
I empathize with point of the tripod though. When shooting health and safety industrial site videos carting the rig around for 2 days is tiring! (As a sole trader I can't afford help!)
The last job I shot, my pedometer showed we walked 7kms in 2 days around a 30 acre industrial production facility and that included climbing quite a few stairs!

So well done- I love the style and the dedication! (and you have inspired me to try Spark again)
Rod
 
Thanks Bob! It's a great place to experience. A good tripod and the long lens on the AC160 really came in handy.
 
Tazza, the underwater stuff was part Gopro2 and part Nikon Coolpix100. My big Ikelite housing for my Canon 7D sprung a leak on day one! I was quite impressed with the video quality of the Nikon as a point and shoot camera.
 
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