Mixing Stills & Video

Jim,

Wow, did you just light a fire under me with that video.....

"I'm a photography guy but did find that creating a video containing the stills and a soundtrack did add to the impact of the photos I took." from your Vimeo description.

The whole thing is very compelling...pics right up to your usual superlative quality. Sharpness and color wonderfully done. Did you color grade the pics in Windows LMM?

My only reservation is on the amount of panning....and I wished that you would have lingered a bit on some of the pics, it seemed a bit too fast although it did match the tempo of the music very well. Pans were very smooth...what tripod and head did you use?

Was this shot at 30P or 24P?


This past summer I started a project near the Grapevine Historic Railway but have not finished it...too many things going on.

Totally loved it...time to charge some batteries.:thumbup:

Bob

Bob, glad you enjoyed the video. It really was/is my first ever attempt at doing such a thing.

Windows Movie Maker does most of the work for you. I simple selected a folder on my computer that contained all the shots I wanted to use and imported them. Then I could arrange the order of appearance and set the crossfade transitions and durations. I selected Pan and Zoom for the presenation and then the software did the rest. I just dropped in a song I wanted for a sound track, added a title and credits page and hit the make a movie button.

The entire process took about 30 minutes at most.

You are right, lingering on various shots would have been better and sometimes not panning or zooming but rather a simple fade in would have been better but I was in such a hurry to see what I could do I just let the software do its thing. I then realized that this could be a very compelling way to tell a story or display work..(although nothing beats a good gallery showing of decent sized prints)

All photos were hand held... I did not use a tripod for any of these and you have to remember that these are stills converted to video by the software..I set the frame rate to 30fps.

Glad you enjoyed the video. I am spending the afternoon boxing up all my Canon gear and getting it ready for sale. I will be glad to get rid of it. I'm truly enjoying using lighter, smaller gear these days.

I did this last year using the slideshow features in Aperture 3 which are pretty flexible

http://vimeo.com/10852228

K

Nice work. Now that you've seen what the "Ken Burns effect" (as Apple terms the pan/zoom on stills thing) can do to still photos, I bet you'll take some real video next time. Even a few seconds of relatively still video can really spice things up, IMO.

I was probably in this same graveyard 20-some years ago. It's very photogenic. I'm glad it wasn't wiped out by the flood.

Jim,

this is just excellent. I also like you style of photographing.

Good pacing and music. Only comment: Think to make a shorter. 2 minutes of video can have a great impact.

ustein said:

Jim,

this is just excellent. I also like you style of photographing.

Good pacing and music. Only comment: Think to make a shorter. 2 minutes of video can have a great impact.

Click to expand...

Understood... I wanted to use the entire song and did not want to edit it.. so that's why it is so long. Understand and agree on brevity.