One of the greatest aspects of video-making is the opportunity to meet people, peek in on what they're doing with their lives, and to learn about their passions. I'm able to get an inside glimpse into the lives and lifestyles of many people, and while I don't have to make their lives my own, I do get the benefit of seeing them doing what they love to do.
A good friend of mine recently hired me to make a documentary video of a high school softball team he helps coach at a local high school. It was a chance to gain an insight into a sport I've never played before and have little interest in. That doesn't change the fact I was able to meet a wonderful group of young women who really love each other, who truly embrace playing as a team, and who know softball is a great way to prepare themselves for the future. Their determination, self-assurance, and upbeat attitudes made me very hopeful for their generation. I'm thankful for the chance to stand in the dugout and on the field and film them doing what they love - playing softball!
I am way overdue posting this, but through the support of all the people who liked our Snowbasin video, THE WORLD OPENS UP, we won the Southwest region in the Warren Miller Hometown Hill competition. Thanks to everyone for their support! The next round of voting for the National champ is in September. In the meantime, here's a photo of Emma and Lucy enjoying a nice ski run after the lifts closed at Snowbasin.
Our video, THE WORLD OPENS UP, made it to the second round of the Warren Miller Hometown Hill competition, so voting is open until midnight Tuesday night (22 April) at the Warren Miller Facebook page (http://bit.ly/1gLGoGn). It'd be nice to win the region and see the video play this autumn at all the Warren Miller screenings in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.
We're making a series of videos about the people behind the scenes at Snowbasin Resort, and the first video in the series highlights veteran ski patroller GR Fletcher. He and the other members of the Snowbasin ski patrol are up well before the crack of dawn to set into motion their avalanche control plan. I had the good fortune to follow GR around early on a beautiful morning as the ski patrol team did avalanche control work around the Needles Peak area. We look forward to presenting this and the other videos before the start of the 2014-15 ski season.
Congrats again to Patrick Pearson for filming such amazing footage. On April 5th our short film PEARSON STYLE will be playing as an official selection at the Leavenworth Film Festival which focuses on outdoor films. You don't have to attend the festival to see it; you can see the film here on our website.
I just finished editing a video featuring Snowbasin local skier Jim Forster in a video we shot this month at Snowbasin Resort. It was a great excuse to hike the upper ridges and chutes to get some shots that hopefully reflect the nature of this wonderful ski area. Everything was shot using a Canon DSLR, a Panasonic HD camera, and a GoPro Hero 3+. Initially I wasn't sure if I'd use the GoPro a lot, but now I use it daily to take pictures, such as the above picture I used as the placard for the video. With the wide FOV it's certainly easier to catch the majesty of the locations. I also love the rapid shooting mode to capture jumps and the time lapse to capture hi quality photos of different phases of a ski run. All in all, it has ended up being a very useful tool to have in my backpack.
(April 2014 update: This video has made has made it to the final eight in our region in the Warren Miller Hometown Hill competition. The winning film will be shown at the Warren Miller screenings this fall.)
I just finished editing a short video compilation of some truly amazing footage shot by Patrick Pearson and his crew out in Europe. He's based in Switzerland and is really pushing the envelope in the sport of speed flying. The video is currently featured on the Outside Television homepage.
I've been shooting a lot of video out on the snow these last few weeks as I learn how to get better video out of my GoPro Hero 3+, as well as my Canon DSLR. Unfortunately, video takes a lot of post production time to create something worth viewing, so it's always nice to snap off some photos for instant gratification. Here is a classic technique of combining a sequence of photos into one frame using Photoshop. It might not be a new trick, but it still works great.
I'm heading up to Powder Mountain quite a bit this season to lend my hand as the Powder Mountain Ski School video advisor, but my time on the mountain also gives me the opportunity to work on my photography skills. Here's a photo of a nice guy named Josh from Breckenridge.
When I created the original video about John Young, a SLC luthier, I knew it was too long at almost 15 minutes in length. While I love hearing all about the various aspects of the violin making world, I finally found time to cut it down to less than five minutes long. This is hopefully beneficial for folks, such as myself, who have a hard time watching anything more than a couple minutes long.
It's finally snowing again, so it's time for me to post some photos I took on my first day of "work" as the video advisor at Powder Mountain Ski School just after our last round of snow earlier this month.
Nothing like a fast paced jib fest hosted by SLUG magazine to celebrate the waves of new snow finally hitting Utah!
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow." - Albert Einstein
This video features my good friend and old high school buddy, Jon Malmberg, showing that the years haven't tempered his enthusiasm for life. I really wanted to create a short documentary with an interview with Jon, but I got impatient and threw this together. Besides, as you can tell in the video, Jon is a hard guy to catch up with.
Raised on the soggy side of Washington state, he now lives in Hood River, Oregon where he's close to the Columbia River and Mt Hood. He's burned through the sports of windsurfing (livin' in a van down by the river), kiteboarding (spending a stint in Maui working for Naish), and now he seems to be focusing on paragliding, jumping off of things, and doing both of these two activities on skis. You can check out his photos at http://www.jbamphoto.com
Winter appears to finally be here, and what better way to kick off the season than by shooting video of the best ski instructors in the Intermountain West on a bluebird day at Snowbird. The goal was to video the fifty or so instructors skiing three different tasks and provide the video for viewing and analysis at the end of the day. Sounds easy, but along the way I had to figure out how to quickly download and provide the videos to each of the six groups to analyze on separate laptops. First, I shot at 1080i instead of 1080p, so I could ingest the files through iMovie on my Macbook Pro, which also converted them to 540p QT files. Then I catalogued the files into pre-made folders for each of the groups and transferred them via a FW800 drive and gig sticks. This all went well, except for the few PC laptops which didn't read the QT files. In the end I'll try to stick with Macs for the entire process, or do more testing on what files play easily on PCs. Back at home I converted all the files to mp4 and uploaded them to Sprongo for the instructors to view and analyze to their hearts content in the months ahead.
I just completed a video featuring the local Salt Lake City luthier John Young, whose violins are bought by clients around the globe. I hope it's a nice little peek into the world of a man whose life is devoted to creating beautiful, and functional, works of art. Shot primarily on a Canon T2i and the new Canon 70D, it was edited in Premiere Pro and color corrected using MB Looks and Colorista. I added film grain to hopefully give it a more organic feel than a crisp 1080p HD video.
The ski season is already going strong...at least it is at 10,000 feet elevation in the Colorado Mountains. I just returned from a week at Copper Mountain supporting our local ski team and working on my action photo-taking skills, as well as shooting videos for the athletes and coaches. Everyone was able to get their groove back after months off the snow, and we were especially lucky to have some spectacular Westminster College athletes with us.
Here's a video I made for the ski team's annual banquet and fundraiser being held this weekend.
As I archived old projects to make room on my hard drives, I came across some video I shot this summer during a family trip to Alaska to celebrate my folks' 50th wedding anniversary. This short piece was an experiment in color grading using MB Looks and then exporting into a QT Prores 422 Proxy format in 720p before uploading to Vimeo. I normally export directly to H264, but I wanted to see if the quality held up better exporting to Prores before the upload. I think the difference is minor, but I'll be doing this on future projects to see how it works in 720p and 1080p.
I don't claim to be a photographer of any caliber at all (it would be a discredit to all the skilled photographers out there if I did), but I do enjoy tinkering around in Photoshop trying to make average photos look their best. Here's one from a recent dance performance and another of the local mountains.
For this promotional video I was faced with the dilemma of not having a lot of video footage and a limited amount of photos to work with to make the video. I did have the interviews I'd shot, but the limited amount of video led me to create a more kinematic graphic flow for the video. The interviews were edited in Premiere Pro, but the bulk of the project was completed in After Effects using a virtual camera and many null objects to move all the frames around the screen.
