About This "Rockin' 4 God" Video
- Thursday, October 02 2014 @ 01:17 PM EDT
- Contributed by: masodo
- Views: 2,926
It is often said that the Lord works in mysterious ways. His ability to have me create a video documenting the "Rockin' 4 God 2014" event is ample evidence supporting that old maxim.
I am no documentary filmmaker (by any stretch of the imagination) but I have been looking for ways to exercise my video making muscles and this opportunity just struck me as just too good to pass up. It was an opportunity to photograph a rock concert with an all access pass. A day long event featuring four bands, a clown act and a sermon thrown in for good measure. Just the sort of volunteer work that would appeal to this old-school hippie photog.
Going into it, I was not exactly sure how I would go about completing the project. My video camera is little more than a toy - 640 X 480 pixel resolution with a fixed focal length lens - but I resolved to view this as an artistic endeavor and give it my best shot - as it were. The name "Rockin' 4 God" suggested to me that the video should be "high energy" (whatever that means) so a tripod in the corner was out of the question. I was going to have to go at this with a hand held camera to get in on the action.
I think it is safe to say that I am certainly no DevinSupertramp - but what I couldn't do with a rig like his? Since a GlideCam exists only in my covetous mind I decided to visit my freelance hardware store (a.k.a. garage) and see what I could come up with in the way of constructing my own Stedi(ish)Cam device. The internet is chocked full of ideas on this subject but seeing that my garage was gimbal free, I opted to go for a weighted pendulum style device that many claim to be a step above a purely hand-held camera - and I will give them that.
If you can scrounge-up 46-1/2 minutes you should check out
"Rockin' 4 God" The Video Project.
The actual job of recording the event presented many challenges but that is the name of the game and honestly what makes it so fun to do. I took along my Canon 5-MP rangefinder camera to - at least - get some quality stills and realized midway through the shoot that I would be combining stills and video clips for this video project. The little video camera uses SanDisk memory and I felt confident that the 4 Gigabyte chip would be ample for the day but took along two more 1 GB disks as a precaution - good thing too because for some odd reason the 4 GB disk refused to hold more than about 500 MB. It took every bit of those other 2 Gigs to get-r-done. When it became obvious that I should now use the video camera sparingly I started relying more and more on the still camera to document the event.
That was working fine until about two thirds of the way through the day when the Canon's battery went belly-up and I found myself regretting not tearing the house apart looking for the spare pack when I was gearing up for the day. Thankfully the video camera has the ability - as do most video cameras - to take still images. I finished the day bouncing back and forth between still and video modes adding one more layer of "what am I doing" to the task at hand.
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