Saturday, June 26, 2010

Judy's Garden

This will be an ongoing work-in-progress as I record the seasonal progression of my neighbour Judy's perennial garden next door. This garden borders our two properties, so my wife Karen and I get to enjoy its beauty as spring and summer unfold.

Judy's Garden from David Rilstone on Vimeo.



This clip was filmed with two cameras: a Canon 5D Mark 2 with a Canon 24-70mm L f/2.8 lens, plus a Canon 7D with a Canon 100-400mm L f/4.5-5.6 telephoto zoom lens. A 1-meter Glidetrack was used for several of the clips, as well as a newly-acquired Marshall 7" monitor. This monitor greatly eased filming in that:

1. It mounted easily on the camera's hotshoe and could be quickly adjusted to face whatever direction needed. This eliminated the need to scrunch around and/or kneel down low to view the camera's built-in LCD display.

2. The 7" Marshall screen was much easier to view the image being filmed as opposed to each camera's built in 3.5" LCD displays.

3. The Marshall monitors peaking and false colour monitors made it much, much easier to adjust and verify focus and exposure.

The music is entitled "Clear Air" by Kevin McLeod at his royalty-free website: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

Editing of the clips was done in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. It's new Mercury Playback engine has greatly simplified and speeded up editing the hugely-compressed h.264 video files created by the Canon cameras.