Mola and Manta in Bali

First video posted.

All comments and constructive-criticisms welcome

Cheers

Loved the closeup of the Mola. I realize you had to share the subject with other people. The person burning through their tank at a record pace in your background was a little distracting but excellent footage.

Thanks. Truth be known I was really pissed with myself when I got home and reviewed the footage. I got way too lazy on this trip, and didn't have enough out-of-water and other shots to make a decent video for the group.

BUT, I did get to see Mantas... Mike: finally! I'm still pissed that you and Kim got all the good viz after Audrey and I left in FEB, and on my birthday no less!!! :glare:

BTW: the one going through gas like theres no tomorrow is my girlfriend

I really enjoyed watching your video. The mola shots were good, especially the closer ones, and you did a good job mixing long, med and close shots. I liked your music selection as well. Off to a good start telling a little story by starting out with topside stuff, so keep at that. The early diver shots didn't do much for me, but I understand why you used them to establish the setting. Not thrilled, though, with the YouTube encoding. One of these days I'm going to have to try putting something up on YouTube myself to see what they do to the submitted clip, but I would have loved seeing a better resolution version of your Mola shots!

One thing that a filmmaking friend once gave me a ration about was my use of transitions. She comes from this film background where there's a "grammar" to transitions. Fade in/fade out is supposed to mean a major change of place and time, etc., and every transition has a meaning within this grammar framework. Now I don't get too caught up in all this, but I do think that maybe going with cross-dissolves to soften the transitions between the Mola shots rather than fade in/fade outs might have been better since you're not changing time/place settings really. Best yet might have been to just go with straight cuts carefully placed. But this is all really subjective, and something I just try and be more conscious about when I'm editing now.

Anyway, great first post, and you're off to a good start with visual story-telling! Keep up the good work!

Mary Lynn

Mary Lynn, thanks for the feedback. I see what you're saying. I tend to use them as and when, and really should spend more time making the use of transitions more consistent throughout the work.

High rez shots of the Mola: well, unfortunately, the day I got those shots, they were hovering right in the thermocline, which does show up to a certain extent in the video. Don't have any idea on how to fix that.

Youtube encoding: I've put up some other videos, which are topside stuff (wakeboarding), and its pretty much the same. However, I think it might have to do with the fact that I'm extracting right out of iMovie, which even when sending to DVD, does not seem that good. I have FCP, but just haven't found the time to sit down (for a LOT of time) and learn it thoroughly. Been diving more... which I can live with

Anyway, thanks for the encouraging comments.

Cheers!

Gotta love Crystal Bay - I assume that was were you were diving (and Manta Point later in the clip?) We must have been in an adjacent boat! Last month on 3/4 September we had the best conditions I've seen at Crystal (though NOT at Manta Pt, which was very turbid then).

Love your face close-ups, and you have excellent banner fish interaction around the mouth of the alien.

I agree the encoding doesn't do justice to your material. You have some very attractive shots.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying about editing time. It's a pain, but it's a great feeling when you've created something that really "works."

FCP isn't that bad once you get the basics down, and you can do just about everything you need to by drag and drop to start with if you want. iMovie definitely has some oddities that I don't completely understand, but it is a pretty intuitive program to pick up. Limited, but intuitive. You know Stan Waterman edits his wonderful videos with iMovie! Anyway, when you export out of iMovie are you using the "expert" settings and then going for the highest resolution possible? (For DV it would be DV/DVCPRO-NTSC or DV-PAL, and then Quality set at "Best.") Probably you are, and YouTube is just mashing up what you're sending with its poor encoding.

Most important, though, is that your storytelling is off to a fantastic start and I can't wait to see more of your work! When you get ready to start tinkering with FCP there are plenty of us around who'll be happy to help you through the occasional "bang head on brick wall" moments. Keep up the good work!

ML

YouTube get the movie up really fast so the encode is being done really fast and I think they're sacrificing some quality. Google's take a bit longer and I think they're a bit better, although the delay might be just in their approval process and their encoding of the "download" versions (DivX, PSP, iPod). Now they're the same company it will be interesting to see if Google reposition the 2 sites and improve the encoding of the YouTube vids.

Thinking of editing in terms of traditional "grammar" rules can be a great help when you're not sure whether to use a cut, crossfade or whatever. There's a useful rudimentary article at http://www.personal.kent.edu/~lhanson/grammar.htm I'm finding that the longer I do this, the more simple straight cuts I use, but cross dissolves are still useful in underwater productions to give a smooth flow to a piece. For example if I'm churning out trip DVDs I tend as a rule to use cross-dissolves for the first 2 or 3 transitions of each dive, just to slow down the pace and get us in the underwater mood.

I also use cross-dissloves often to smooth a join where I don't have enough difference between the clips such as a wide and a medium-close shot on a fish from the same angle. Otherwise it can be jarring to watch. Having read that article I might experiment with wipes etc. this season for those transitions where I don't have enough visual difference.

I just watched The Departed the other day. A couple of times they used an extremely "look at me!" transition... a totally black screen with an off-centre bullet hole in it, then pulled the black out to the full screen. It worked really well. But if you're not Martin Scorcese then such gambles might not work.

Hey Nick!

Scorsese is, I think, playing off that old time movie iris wipe effect in the Departed (I love Scorsese!), and letting it linger just a bit to hold the moment and our attention, while at the same time giving us a wink.

My filmmaker friend went bonkers when she first saw all my cross-dissolves and that's when I first learned about this grammar of transitions thing. She also referred to something she called "television dissolves"--very short cross dissolves that are used in quick editing to hide bad cuts. And I remember explaining to her that I was using cross dissolves to convey a more fluid feeling for underwater. And I still do that on occasion! There's another very straight-forward article on transition grammar from Videomaker (a pretty basic, but often educational publication/website).

All that said, where I'm at now is trying to go with a lot of straight cuts, well-placed, but also use transitions that feel right for the situation. So I recognize that having grown up with movies and TV we all have an internal understanding or sense of what certain transitions mean or invoke. But I try not to be afraid to play with that and/or break the rules when I want to. And maybe that's what Scorsese is doing when he uses that archaic iris wipe in the Departed--playing with the current rules of transition grammar by harkening back to the days of silent films and early talkies, and reminding us that this is his film and he's telling us a story?

Great subject and thank you for sharing that link!

Mary Lynn

Iris wipe... that sounds much better than "off-centre bullet hole effect"

There's a book on this stuff that I've seen mentioned a few times. Haven't read it myself yet but apparently it's useful:

http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Edit-Media-M...TF8&s=books

That book looks great--I just ordered it. Thanks again for the link!

Here's one of my all-time favorite books on editing, it's a short one by Walter Murch (editing god) called, "In the Blink of an Eye." It's this view of editing as it relates to how and when we blink when we watch something. Really amazing little book that has helped me judge/feel when a straight cut should be made by thinking about blinking, emotion and storytelling.

ML

Damn I should have put my affiliate ID into that link and paid back 0.000001% of my new setup.

Thanks too for the Walter Murch link. It's on my wishlist now.