This was my first attempt at video production. Inspired by Brian’s talk about using video on the camera I decided to give it a go. The video isn’t meant to be a professional video about butterflies, it rather me attempting new techniques and trying to produce a video.
In order to do this I bought a separate portable sound recorder (about the size of a small mobile phone) that I was able to connect to the camera.In general the sound quality produced by the camera itself isn’t great but can be greatly enhanced by the use of a small recorder. When I started I tried to use the camera hand held. This is a mistake. No matter how steady you think you are you will still generate jerky video footage
So I went out on a second occasion to get some more video footage.In hindsight it takes a bit more planning than I did to get decent footage. You will end up with probably an hour of footage of which only a few minutes will be of use. Put the camera on a decent tripod and ideally use a fluid head. I didn’t have one I just used the Gimbal head that I had for my bird pictures. It’s too jerky. Anyway I shot about an hour and a half of footage – I left my camera running while I charged around looking for butterflies. I soon discovered that charging around in the grass disturbs more butterflies than you can capture on video – if they are flying about it’s very difficult to get focus. Wait for them to settle and start to feed on the nectar and then you might be able to get decent shots. A lot of my footage was obscured by grass blowing in front of the lens. So don’t go on a windy day!
Of course the one butterfly I intended to photograph only turned up for a fleeting moment, so I had to make do with footage of some of the more reliable residents. Quite a lot of the time you will find that manual focus works better than auto focus especially if your camera system loses focus when odd bits of grass etc gets in the way of your subject.
I came home and decided that I would try and edit the footage using iMovie that is supplied with the Mac. I watched a couple of videos about how to use it so I gave it a go. I found it relatively easy to use it has similar approach to software used for recording sound etc. I chopped my footage into useable clips and then it was all about editing them into some sort of useable sequence.
I did this and then decided to add some titles and transformations to my video clips to help with the transitions from one clip to the next. I added a few still shots and then when I thought that had the video completed I needed to add some sound. IMove make it quite straightforward to record voice over sound to your clips and by and large manages the blend of the voice with the video sound well.
I did learn that it is better to go through your video and write down what you are going to say as trying to make it up on the spot doesn’t work unless you are David Attenborough!
Having recorded my voice over I decided to also use some relevant background music. I managed to download this and add it to iMovie controlling the blending with the other sound tracks by adjusting the volume down or clipping the soundtrack. I then exported the movie to MP4 format and that’s what you see in the clip.
I learned a great deal from this experience and it opens up a whole new world of video photography which I want to explore further. So thanks to Brian for his help and encouragement to take the first steps.
