The week in review.
Yet another fun week of media fun, without any tourists coming to our fair country. The COVID-19 cases have not completely stopped, but is down to a handful in Walvis Bay and Swakopmund combined.
Still, the rest of the world is in panic again, and Europe is shutting down. In America Biden seems to have won the election, but Trump is hanging on tooth and nail. The best video I have seen online is this one:
Of course I can’t claim any responsibility for that one bit of media. Still, it brightened my day a little. The week was a busy one, with me casting around for video work. Our plans for bringing in a second hand Sony FS7 fell through, but we are not giving up yet, there may be other options. In the meantime I am still using the Canon 5D Mk III, and learning new media tricks all the way.
This week it’s been mostly white balance, and how to get it right every time. In media, the white balance is paramount. Yes, you can set it in post, but there are limits to how much you can modify it, and there are some bad things happening to your video if you get it too far wrong.
As a video maker you have three choices:
- Automatic white balance – Easiest of the options to shoot, and the most difficult to fix when there is a problem. Editing can be helped along if you have something really white in every clip.
- Set your white balance manually in K. – The more fancy option, and works in a great number of cases. Really struggles with fluorescent lights, and anything that has a hue that is not pure temperature. – Editing in this case can also be helped along by having something white in your shot at the start
- Set white balance with a card – This is the option that I have started using, to great effect. Simply take a picture of something white in the shot, tell the camera that this is white, then shoot the shot without having to re-focus. You also have the option of “warming” the scene with a baby blue card, rather than pure white. I might be buying warm cards just for this purpose.
Wasserfall
The weekend was not without it’s interesting bits. Shannon Wasserfall was missing for more than six months, and very recently her body was discovered. There is an anti-SGBV group in Namibia, and Shannon’s face became the face of this fight. I was asked to take some footage for the BBC. They have not paid me yet, I am trading on them being basically honest people here. Since the amount is so small, I am hoping they will forgive any errors that I did make.
The shooting of the media itself was interesting, as I have never done interviews professionally before. We even went out and got a cheap microphone. Of course, the better ones have their own internal amplifiers, and the Canon’s internal amp is really noisy. Also, the microphone is omni-directional, so it catches noise from every direction.
I have just been using proximity to the speaker as a way of drowning out the background, but that is not what I want to be doing in the future. So, it all comes down to whether they want the footage or not.
Media posts this week.
Video
Yeah, they are!
Technicool was my project for the week, and I am impressed in how well this video turned out. In the beginning I had no idea of what I wanted to do with the footage, but dragging bits of media randomly into the timeline started my creative juices flowing and before long there it is! Give the video a play!
Images
That 360 image is now a pinned post on Awesome Chapters’ Facebook page. It is a little popularity trick, encouraging interaction. By clicking and dragging around, you can see the various things that Awesome Chapters does.
There are a lot of unsaid elements to this picture, that if you had to write an essay about it you would see. Subconscious programming for the win! (I promise not to use it for evil, hahahaaaaa!)
Some time after the rains have stopped, the grass turns yellow and makes for some stunning pictures. This is Brandberg of course, with the view from the White Lady Lodge never disappointing.
Sandwich Harbor. Splendid, and if you ever book a tour, ask whether you are guaranteed to get into the harbor. Access is tidal, and so you can’t just go at any time, and there are some operators that offer tours where you may not even see the Sandwich harbor as a Sandwich harbor tour.
So, ask.
This trusty Conqueror Commander may not look like much, but it enables some amazing media shoots. It’s also a comfy home on extended camps when we are cooling our heels, and only dreaming of the next big media project.
This rugged texture is well sought after in media circles, and all the best locations are here in Namibia. 😉
Not something you see every day, but the locals here are used to it, as this desert produces the heat necessary for this natural phenomenon in buckets.
Yes, it does. See you next week!
