The world has lost the attention span to read. Photos and video are the future. In saying that, I’ve been taking a ton of digital photos and an equal amount of video clips to go along with it. In the natural progression from uploading raw, uncut video to YouTube to producing mini-movies, I splurged on Corel VideoStudio Pro X4
I’ve lately been wondering how to take cool POV videos. This curiosity combined with testing out the software’s capabilities. The first video shown here was taken with the good ol’ Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS2. It’s a compact digital camera that is waterproof and has HD video capability. Quite frankly, it takes better video than our Sony Handi-cam.
I thought about strapping the camera onto the grill of the van or onto the roof rack crossbars. I decided against that and, instead, attached the camera to a gorillapod and duct taped it to the dash of the van.
The raw video was taken on a drive through of the town of Orangeville, starting in the far east end on Highway 9 and ending at the far west of town on the same highway. It was around 3:30 in the afternoon and I was driving into the late winter sun, so the clarity isn’t the best.
I sped the footage up to match the length of ‘Faster’ by the Black Crowes, about 3:40. The original footage was just over ten minutes. I added a few basic titles and that was that.
The second project was a little more elaborate and was something I really wanted to do for quite sometime. Forks of the Credit Provincial Park is located about 10 km south of Orangeville, near the really small town of Cataract, Ontario. The park is about a half hour northwest of Brampton. Within Forks of the Credit is a waterfall connected to a long abandoned power station.
The trail that runs near the waterfall leaves the visitor with a very incomplete view of where the Credit River tumbles over the Niagara Escarpment. Off limits, is the base of the waterfall. Since I’m not one for rules and regulations, I’ve explored the base of the falls a bit in the past. I had never attempted to get behind the waterfall. Not until March, 2012.
The trek down the steep incline to the river, then up the river to the base, is muddy and slippery. The waterfall creates quite a kick when it crashes to the bottom. There’s a decent wind generated and staying dry is an impossibility.
What we didn’t expect was the cave behind the waterfall, about 15-20 feet up from the base. It seems this was the water outlet from the old power station. The power station last operated in the 1940’s but quite a bit of the structure is still there.
Once again, the video footage was taken with the Panasonic Lumix. The still photos were taken with the same Panasonic Lumix and the Canon Rebel T3I. The background music was a song called “Hours” by Tycho.
What was disappointing was the large amount of graffiti and vandalism around the off-limits areas at Forks of the Credit. I believe that trespassing is okay if you don’t leave a trace of your visit. When people spray paint shit all over the place, it sends a message to the authorities that people are indeed trespassing and the security measures need to be fortified.
