First person perspective documentary photography

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Peter David Grant

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A while ago, I captured some Hawking at a local castle. Dev, short for Devil is 'guided' around a place with treats to, in this case scare off pigeons. As well as capturing stills, I had a GoPro and little shotgun mic attached to the top of my camera, so edited together two hours of footage and stills, to make a short little story video (sub 4mins):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdpnGQg372o

Also if you're interested you can see a short video of how I mount the GoPro and Mic to the camera here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqnNLbQsOCw

Cheers,
Peter
 
I like it. You've got good variety and you seem to have connected with the subject. Particularly impressed by the flight images. I've tried similar with other raptor handlers in the past and not had that kind of luck. Very good.

One comment. It may only be the way YouTube played back for me, but I found the breaks to black between some of the images a little distracting. I at first thought it was my computer, got a green screen at one point. (If you didn't put them in there and it is me, you can ignore this.) It wasn't a deal breaker for me, as I watched all the way through, but it was a tad distracting. Just my personal thought.

Overall, good job.
 
ABrosig said:
I like it. You've got good variety and you seem to have connected with the subject. Particularly impressed by the flight images. I've tried similar with other raptor handlers in the past and not had that kind of luck. Very good.
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Yeah I felt pretty lucky really - not used to shooting that type of subject with a MF lens.

ABrosig said:
One comment. It may only be the way YouTube played back for me, but I found the breaks to black between some of the images a little distracting. I at first thought it was my computer, got a green screen at one point. (If you didn't put them in there and it is me, you can ignore this.) It wasn't a deal breaker for me, as I watched all the way through, but it was a tad distracting. Just my personal thought.
Click to expand...

After watching it through a few times with some other people, I'm pretty disappointed with this section too. The problem came from wanting to use the great audio before the bird came out, while not having enough photographs / decent video during this. It's a good lesson for next time.

Not sure why you got a green screen though - when no image is on the video it should be black...

ABrosig said:
Overall, good job.
Click to expand...

Thanks :) I'm pleased for a first attempt, but know there is lots of room for improvement!
 
charjohncarter said:
That was very very good, I liked the way you combined stills and GoPro. That must be hard. Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks! Shooting both GoPro and stills was easy - I didn't have to change anything I did (although in future I need to point the mic towards the subject better, for improved audio) like this:

Screen%20Shot%202016-02-14%20at%2020.33.23.png


As for making the edit, it was absolutely an audio first method (I'm a massive podcast lister), worrying about visuals after creating a narrative.

First you transcribed the 2 odd hours of video. Then print those transcriptions out, and changed the order around to make a start/middle/end. After that you build the order in Premiere Pro based on your desired sequence. At this point you look at what visual footage was good, and delete what wasn't. Then create some gaps using 'b-roll' (good footage, no 'story' in the audio track) to let the narrative breath a bit. At that point you finally add the stills. If they are good stills when good video occurs, you could line them up with the shutter clack. Otherwise put them in where they fit with the story.

Phew, that turned out to be more writing than I'm used to!

I can't wait to do some more of them!
 
Peter David Grant said:
Yeah I felt pretty lucky really - not used to shooting that type of subject with a MF lens.



After watching it through a few times with some other people, I'm pretty disappointed with this section too. The problem came from wanting to use the great audio before the bird came out, while not having enough photographs / decent video during this. It's a good lesson for next time.
Click to expand...


I know the problem well. What I've done in the past is just extend the duration of the still images. I don't mind, in fact I often appreciate, having a few more seconds to take in a strong image.
 
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