French Pressed Coffee & Video Practice

Instead of just the weekly random photo, I shot more video footage yesterday to continue honing my tripod skills. Things went a bit better this time. My hands weren’t nearly as shaky, but I still need to become more proficient in operating the tripod controls. The Velbon DV-7000 is a tight little fluid-head tripod, but I’ve come to understand that producing smooth pans and tilts is a bit of an art. It takes practice. Mos def!

Note:The full-sized HD (high def) version can be viewed here.

Still messing about in the kitchen, but this time the footage, “Café à la Presse Française,” is actually a demonstration of sorts (slowly working my way to producing food/cooking videos for my other site). I discovered and fell in love with french presses a few years ago while watching one of my favourite foodie shows, Chef!. I’ve been using them ever since. I have two. They are the only coffee makers I own. I had a taste for coffee yesterday and since I decided to make it myself, I figured I’d take the time to document the process. Who knows, it may be useful to someone.

I’m glad I did because it helped me understand, posthaste, that the film making process, even for a short, simple video like this one, is not nearly as easy as I had previously thought. Doing all the work for making the coffee, setting up each shot and then actually getting decent, usable footage is certainly more difficult and involved than I had imagined. And if that wasn’t enough, the most work came during editing process.

I shot a little over 10 minutes of footage, consisting of 15 clips for this 4 minute video. That’s about a 2.5 to 1 ratio (2.5 mins. of footage shot for every 1 min of footage used), which is very low, but it still took me FOR-EV-ER to mix this vid. I pretty much knew what I wanted to do and could see the end results in my mind’s eye, but producing it on screen was qutie a challenge. I probably could have done a better job, but I’m learning Sony Vegas (editing software) and everything else on a “learn-as-you-go” basis, so I’m quite limited in my technical abilities at the moment.

Hopefully, I’ll get out and shoot some botanical and inner city footage next weekend. Perhaps I’ll take my HV30 with me a few days this week and look for something interesting. That’s pretty much it for now.

Wishing everyone a smooth and productive week.

Namaste