June 23, 2014. Jasyn and I were on the road to Flin Flon early in the morning after he let me know about a mural he had to paint a few days prior. The mural was behind the Station Museum, and the goal was to create a film based on time lapses.
Summer was upon us, and it was going to be a hot week with sunny conditions and no chance of rain. When we arrived, we set up our campsite, which was only a few seconds’ walk from the job site, and we set up a tarp to store his supplies and my camera gear.
The weather was even hotter than I imagined! We constantly kept hydrated and I was always in fear that my camera would overheat from the extreme amount of long exposure time lapses I took.
That said, the first night was brutal! It cooled off immensely and dropped to 10 degrees Celsius, I had trouble sleeping because it was so cold. The next day, I bought a sleeping bag, which increased my camping experience to the Fairmont level.
It seemed like we were the only ones who were actually camping, because everybody else in the area were in campers and motor homes. I actually preferred my experience to theirs!
The campground was exceptional because there was a washroom and shower facility that was well maintained. I never used to like camping, but I had a fun time despite myself. Bugs have always bothered me, but they didn’t this time around, even though there were bees everywhere (inside joke: Jasyn dislikes bees)! Hahaha.
I always thought Flin Flon was a nice town. The extreme hills and little shops remind me of a Canadian San Francisco neighborhood. I really enjoyed myself there and could easily see myself living in such a place. While The Pas has more conveniences, Flin Flon is just a prettier place, in my opinion.
I did a few things differently with this film aside from all the long exposure time lapses. I animated all my titles. I also stuck to a single music track, which kept the amount of content limited. Review times were greatly reduced as a result, and that sped up my workflow. I tried using Magic Bullet Looks to do my grading, but it was tedious and the interface wasn’t intuitive. I guess I’ll stick with manually color grading with Colorista II!
I think the coolest thing I did in this film had to be the animated photo. When we drove around one evening, we stopped at a cliff side overlooking the lake and town. I snapped a photo of Jasyn, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity in post production to experiment with a parallax effect using 3D in After Effects. I also used the Puppet Pin tool to simulate motion, and the results were amazing (to me, at least). I try to find a couple new techniques to experiment with in each film I make.
The techniques I picked up while working on wedding videos for the past four months really culminated in this fantastic film. If I had started work on this before the wedding films, I don’t think it would have turned out as well as this did. Like Jasyn mentioned in this film, I can’t wait to pick up more techniques so I can further elevate my filmmaking skill set to the next level.
