Yellowstone

DaFireMedic

DaFireMedic

Well-known member
A collection I threw together from some footage I got in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in April. I only used the tripod on a few shots, such the grizzly. Others I used a homemade bean bag as a stabilizer for "run n gun", sometimes on the hood of my truck with the truck still running so I could get the shot before it went away. I used After Effects to stabilize a couple of those shots.

http://www.vimeo.com/5333943
 
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Very nice! Your pacing is wonderful... given me some ideas on the documentary I'm going to be shooting this fall. :)

Great idea using the bean bag, by the way. Do you have one of the "real" ones like the CineSaddle or did you sort of DIY on-the-cheap?
 
TigerFX said:
Do you have one of the "real" ones like the CineSaddle or did you sort of DIY on-the-cheap?
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Nope, I just cut off a foot or so in the the thigh of an old pant leg, poured in a bag of pinto beans and glued the ends with a hot glue gun. Worked great.
 
Beautiful images for sure. Love the opening snow shots and there's something really nice about teh waterfall pieces and just how you did your CC.. Very very nice. I really want to get out to that part of the country and explore with the kids and the camera. Cheers and thanks for sharing.

have you also ever thought about using an indi-slider or such? cheers.
 
Justyn said:
have you also ever thought about using an indi-slider or such? cheers.
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Thanks Justyn. Yes, I've given some thought to purchasing a real slider. For the one slider shot used here (the reveal shot of Grand Teton), I just used my homemade slider consisting of a track made of PVC pipe, a flat square piece of wood for a deck and some furniture type sliders from Lowes on the bottom of it to allow the deck to slide along the PVC pipe. Then I placed my bean bag on the deck and the camera onto the bean bag. Somewhat crude, but with some practice runs you can get some pretty decent shots with it. And its lightweight for hiking.

But yes, I would eventually like to get a real slider.
 
Wow.....the water falls clips...were just stunning. Was that the 60p stuff?
 
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Very nice. My backpacking friends have often commented that their Tetons hike was their favorite. I'd love to get some footy like this, but never really wanted to lug gear like that on my back for 5 days :-p Maybe once I get a 5Dm2 I can use that.
 
Thanks for making this avail for download through vimeo, I watched it last night on my HDTV- awesome. Pana should use this to promote the 150.
 
Thanks again for the kind words.

Skilled said:
Wow.....the water falls clips...were just stunning. Was that the 60p stuff?
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Yes, those were 60p and slowed just a bit in After Effects to give them a more powerful appearance, not that they needed much to look powerful.
 
The footage is wonderful. But what are the dark rings in some of the shots? Is this inherent in the camera when zooming in?
 
sojrn said:
The footage is wonderful. But what are the dark rings in some of the shots? Is this inherent in the camera when zooming in?
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It was added in post, just an artistic choice to soften the edges. Its actually in all the shots, just more difficult to see in some.

There is no inherent vignetting in the camera at all.
 
Quick question:

How much did you have to pay for the video fee at the national park?

The Department of Interior charges professional filmmakers at least $150 a day to shoot in National Parks. High fees will eventually spread to the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and their lands.
 
Don't even get me started about fees in Yellowstone!!

Most people either don't know about them, don't care about them or say their shooting doesn't qualify.
For 1 to 2 people teams they'll wave the $150 location fees. They'll still charge you $200 for a permit and in my case wanted to charge me $65 an hour to have a ranger follow me around because my tripod was a "tripping hazard." Even though I would be set up right next to professional still photographers using the same tripods.

BLM already has fees. That's where Yellowstone got the rate structure from.

My guess is this was shot without a permit cause Yellowstone would have bled him dry in fees.

Still photographers are protected by law from not having to pay fees. So you can shoot a cover for Nat Geo and Yellowstone or any of the parks can't do anything about it. Flip over to video though and they have their hand out.

Sadly the guy that created the bill that allows the parks to charge fees never meant for it to cover people like us. It was written to address huge feature film productions from coming in and having to cover the costs of keeping tabs on them.

There has been a bill to reduce the fees for shooters like us to a single $200 annual permit for all federal lands but it has never gone anywhere.

So, most people just ignore it and take their chances. I've only heard of two shooters that have been dined for shooting video in Yellowstone so the odds are pretty good so far that you won't get caught.
 
David S. said:
Quick question:

How much did you have to pay for the video fee at the national park?

The Department of Interior charges professional filmmakers at least $150 a day to shoot in National Parks. High fees will eventually spread to the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and their lands.
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To be honest, I didn't know there was any fees. I had heard that professional filmmakers pay fees at National Parks, but I was not there as a professional and I never gave it a second thought. I shot at least an hour of footage in full view of rangers with the HMC150 and a tripod at Old Faithful, some of the geyser basins, and a few other spots and no one said anything. I was not the only one with a prosumer camera either.

I'm not sure what constitutes a professional shoot in their eyes (other than obviously shooting footage for commercial purposes), but if its putting down sticks that matters (which often does), I shot most of this from a beanbag. But as I mentioned, I had sticks down in front of rangers with the HMC150 and no questions were asked. Maybe the fact that I had my wife and my 11 and 8 yr old sons with full tourist clothing clued them in that this was not a professional shoot.

To be honest, if there were fees involved for what is essentially home video shared with you guys, I would not have shot the video. Or else I would have shot it solely with the HV30 handheld or with natural stabilizers.
 
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I think a way to get around this might well be to shoot with the GH1 or similar. Shooting stills and popping off a quick video.


I wouldn't mind paying a fee to shoot this stuff, but a couple of hundred each day seems crazy and jacking people for little reason.. It's kind of like here in Florida, to shoot in Winter Park, there's a permitting fee of 750 per day.. but its not to raise revenue.. it's to discourage people from shooting in WP... so everyone just shoots around the place...
 
Justyn said:
I wouldn't mind paying a fee to shoot this stuff
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I agree completely, I just want it to be reasonable. If someone is shooting a Hollywood production with full crew I could see a fee in proportion to that. If its a one or two person shoot for Discovery Channel footage, a more reasonable fee. If I go out to shoot video to sell for stock footage on the net, I don't mind paying a reasonable fee as well. But if its a guy on vacation with his family, shooting video for family and friends, it should be covered by his $25 park entrance fee and the federal taxes I pay throughout the year. Several hundred dollars (even for the year) on top of your entrance fees is not reasonable for this. Grandma and Grandpa do it all the time and no one gives them a second look as they film everything in sight, the only difference is that I have a bigger camera and am generally more serious about the creative side of it.
 
I see more and more places with their hand out wanting money to allow you to film.

I know a guy doing a film about Glacier N.P. He asked if he shot stills with a D90 on sticks he would not need a permit. They said that was correct. He asked if he then shot video on the D90, would he need a permit. They said yes. Course, I imagine it would be hard to prove that you were shooting video and not stills. I guess shoot a couple insurance stills just in case. :)

But, when the laws were put in place, the only people that spoke up were the still photographers. That's why they are exempt.

Filmmakers really don't have a group like NANPA that can put any weight behind getting things done.

I think the two guys that were busted for shooting video for non personal use were fined $500.
Heck, it was going to cost me over $4k easily in ranger escort fees that they wanted to charge me. So I guess it's cheaper to take a chance than to follow the rules.
 
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