My vid of London Butterfly House done

eyetrip · 25 Oct 2007 at 21:52

Well, been working on it on and off over the last couple of weeks, and now it up

Better, I think, than my last and first video of my holiday.

From about 45 minutes of footage, it has been chopped down to just over three minutes. Seem to keep less video footage in the end, than do photos with photography.

Anyway, like to know what you guys think - I am biased

I am busy setting up my own website where I can host higher res videos, as Youtube quality really does suck.

Mint_Sauce · 25 Oct 2007 at 21:58

I found it boring, there was no text or narration. It was just a load of butterflys on flowers with some music over the top, sorry to be blunt but I couldn't understand what the purpose of it was?

Perhaps if you're a butterfly specialist it makes more sense?

eyetrip · 25 Oct 2007 at 22:10

Well, its just meant to be a vid of pretty little butterflies fluttering about. I jsut loved the butterfly house and wanted something to remember it by, as it is now closed.

I am alsousing any opportunity to getused to my camera and editing software.

I do understand where you are coming from though, and was kind of expecting people would feel like that about this video. I watched a vid the other day, and while I could see it was something the person taking it enjoyed, it was immensely boring to me.

Helium_Junkie · 25 Oct 2007 at 22:12

Mint_Sauce said:
I found it boring, there was no text or narration. It was just a load of butterflys on flowers with some music over the top, sorry to be blunt but I couldn't understand what the purpose of it was?

Perhaps if you're a butterfly specialist it makes more sense?

Yeah, were was the plot and the action scenes? Huh?!
Crap movie....
:rolleyes:

Ok, so ignoring the guy who completely missed the point, I think you've done a fair job of recording them and editing the video too

Compression spoils it somewhat, but that's youtube for ya!
Nice video

Mint_Sauce · 25 Oct 2007 at 22:19

Ok, for some constructive critisism, I would say next time try some panning or setting up the camera on a tripod and focusing on a flower you think the butterfly will land on. That way you will have a better image and be able to pre-think about composition etc. I found most of the butterflies were dead in the center of the video, try using the rule of thirds, I would have thought this is also relavent for film.

But yes, I suppose I do miss the point of the video, sorry! If there were fades and some creativity then I wouldn't have been so harsh as I could see that you were learning how to cut etc but all the shots are straight cuts to more standard clips of video (no panning, zooming or macro shots)

eyetrip · 26 Oct 2007 at 14:10

Thanks for the input.

With regards to setting up a tripod, and hoping a butterfly came along and landed where I had my camera pointed - it simply was not doable. It could easily have taken hours to simply get just a couple of butterflies. There were time constraints.

Plus, these guys don't sit still for long. I needed to be quick on my feet. Unlike a still photograph, where I would be hoping to get maybe one decent shot, here I have to try and get several seconds of decent footage - harder than I thought it would be.

With regard to composition, I guess you are right in that most do appear in the center. To be honest this is what I strugle most with in still photography too. I am not very good at framing my subject nicely, and really do need to get the hang of it.

As for transitions. I intentionally avoided transitions of any kind. I wanted to keep it simple and quick. Perhaps this was a mistake, but I would like to avoid transitions for transitions sake. Perhaps I can find a slightly better way to present it.