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Wild Wonders: The Calgary Zoo Experience
Project Reflection & Statement
When the video project came up during the same time as a family trip to Calgary, I just knew that I needed to try and capture our trip to the zoo. We got incredibly lucky while there, the place was almost empty and the weather very mild. Getting the chance to practice some creative boundaries in one of our favourite places as a family was so fun.
Moving from the city and into the zoo is always a fun experience for us and it was a lot of fun to capture the animals in, as natural an environment as Calgary can provide. If you haven’t been there, it’s a really great stop with a ton of different animals and a very knowledgeable staff. My son wishes we lived closer as we learned you can become a Jr Zookeeper at age 14.
I had great intentions going into this piece. Grabbed the camera, made sure it was charged, inserted a large memory card and off we went. After walking the zoo and capturing all my footage we got back to the hotel and I plugged in the card, excited for all the footage I couldn’t wait to put together. In a matter of about 60 secs my heart completely dropped. In my rush to get assignments done and out on this trip, I failed to do one crucial thing…Test. The. Camera. In the midst of chaos, I missed this step and just thought ‘I’ve used plenty of cameras in the past it should be fine.’ Well, it turns out it wasn’t fine and the lens that came with it failed at its stabilizing capabilities. So, all of the footage, the angles and perspectives I had gather were ruined.
While I’ve managed to get this project turned around and rescued a good majority of the footage, I also was able to learn some really good lessons on how to use different editing software to make the most of a bad situation. Most of the moving shots were run through stabilizing software before being entered into Premiere Pro, where they were also put through another stabilizer. While there is still some vibration, it is VASTLY improved. After that debacle I spent quite a bit of time sorting through all the footage and leaving more than I would like ‘on the cutting room floor’. There are so many more cute little shots I would’ve loved to add it but I think it all came together the way it was ultimately supposed to. I hope you enjoy the show as I had a lot of fun (and tears) putting it all together. It’s something I will cherish for a long time, even outside of this class.
Video Comparison of Camera Movement
Used a program called Gyroflow to initially stabilize, having stabilization metadata is helpful, but not required. Due to my camera and lens I didn’t have the data. After gyroflow, I used the warp stabilizer in Premiere Pro. I did however find that when using it in PP it messed with transitions and I wasn’t able to make all the edits I wanted due to this issue.