Hello all,
I started self-teaching myself videography, equipment, filming, and editing at the wilderness school where I work about a year ago.
Our programs are full-time intensives with people living in the wilderness for extended periods (months to a year), and we don't so much "teach" as show people the learning opportunities already there in the relationships and situations of their lives. Concretely, this means are programs are some of the most unstructured that exist in the wilderness scene. Every day of every program is different. Different weather systems, different winters each year, different skills needed for different projects. And different group dynamics playing out.
This also means that I don't know where to aim the camera half the time. The meetings are a group of people sitting in a circle, and I had a hell of a fun/frustrating time figuring out how to most efficiently get audio and video coverage with nice close ups at the appropriate times. Long story short: one wide cam on a tripod, me with the variable focus cam, 3 zooms triangulating the circles sound from the center, and gratuitous use of PluralEyes.
Right now I'm about to start the full length documentary on our last year's "Guardian" program (see the trailer here:
I filmed 350 hours of it last summer, and will be posting in the jobs section looking for an editor to help bring scenes out of my footage, and take some supplementary nature B-roll when the snows melt here.
I'm also working on a documentary for another circle; an archival footage discussion on applying the art of animal tracking to tracking our inner world and beliefs, called "inner tracking." I've worked up a trailer for that, and am about 50% through the final feature. Here's the trailer:
Although I haven't done any 'industry' work, I sense that interacting with groups of people in this way gives an edge to the film-making process that is both maddening and deeply enriching. With the guardian program that I filmed i felt like I was a participant as well: just as they were I had to adapt to weather conditions and "flow" with the group dynamics. There were no posed shots, and I had to be in top shape to keep up with them and predict my shot placement, or just throw out my ideas and wing it. Even with the 13 year old archival footage I keep going deeper and deeper into the characters and learning new lessons for my own life and relationships.
Prior to all of this, I did my Cinderella (ash cleaning) work making youtube shorts out of the mostly-horrible point-and-shoot footage taken prior to my involvement with video here. Nonetheless, it holds a unique allure (not for everybody) that throws out the "let's get this sexy wilderness skill AS FAST AS POSSIBLE" and shows that the process is neverending, and there's no escape no matter how skilled you get.
I'm proof myself, as having 5Tb of 1080p footage with hi-end triple-sourced audio I still have the same struggles and creative blocks as when I had static and jiggling camera footage.
I'm just getting better at moving forward despite my own uncertainty.
Thanks for having me,
Adjul Gardner
https://www.youtube.com/user/theteachingdrum/
I started self-teaching myself videography, equipment, filming, and editing at the wilderness school where I work about a year ago.
Our programs are full-time intensives with people living in the wilderness for extended periods (months to a year), and we don't so much "teach" as show people the learning opportunities already there in the relationships and situations of their lives. Concretely, this means are programs are some of the most unstructured that exist in the wilderness scene. Every day of every program is different. Different weather systems, different winters each year, different skills needed for different projects. And different group dynamics playing out.
This also means that I don't know where to aim the camera half the time. The meetings are a group of people sitting in a circle, and I had a hell of a fun/frustrating time figuring out how to most efficiently get audio and video coverage with nice close ups at the appropriate times. Long story short: one wide cam on a tripod, me with the variable focus cam, 3 zooms triangulating the circles sound from the center, and gratuitous use of PluralEyes.
Right now I'm about to start the full length documentary on our last year's "Guardian" program (see the trailer here:
I filmed 350 hours of it last summer, and will be posting in the jobs section looking for an editor to help bring scenes out of my footage, and take some supplementary nature B-roll when the snows melt here.
I'm also working on a documentary for another circle; an archival footage discussion on applying the art of animal tracking to tracking our inner world and beliefs, called "inner tracking." I've worked up a trailer for that, and am about 50% through the final feature. Here's the trailer:
Although I haven't done any 'industry' work, I sense that interacting with groups of people in this way gives an edge to the film-making process that is both maddening and deeply enriching. With the guardian program that I filmed i felt like I was a participant as well: just as they were I had to adapt to weather conditions and "flow" with the group dynamics. There were no posed shots, and I had to be in top shape to keep up with them and predict my shot placement, or just throw out my ideas and wing it. Even with the 13 year old archival footage I keep going deeper and deeper into the characters and learning new lessons for my own life and relationships.
Prior to all of this, I did my Cinderella (ash cleaning) work making youtube shorts out of the mostly-horrible point-and-shoot footage taken prior to my involvement with video here. Nonetheless, it holds a unique allure (not for everybody) that throws out the "let's get this sexy wilderness skill AS FAST AS POSSIBLE" and shows that the process is neverending, and there's no escape no matter how skilled you get.
I'm proof myself, as having 5Tb of 1080p footage with hi-end triple-sourced audio I still have the same struggles and creative blocks as when I had static and jiggling camera footage.
I'm just getting better at moving forward despite my own uncertainty. Thanks for having me,
Adjul Gardner
https://www.youtube.com/user/theteachingdrum/