"Our Secret Garden" (Video, Still Images)

Another project of monumental proportions (post-production time-wise), since I'm still learning how to create multimedia short subjects. Proper training would have been a good thing to help save time, instead of working through trial and error.

Somehow, the thought of capturing my father's floral garden dropped in my head, as my older brother and I helped Dad with work on our homestead. As we trimmed back the branches the orchard trees, I was attacked by a band of yellow jackets. Thinking about keeping my Lumix TZ1 close by, in case I was stung, thoughts wound up focusing on the flowers, which Dad grew to appreciate by grandfather's love of gardening.

Between chores, I paused to shoot some footage, trying to capture the butterflies that visited. Somewhere between chasing a butterfly with my camera rolling, and not wanting to help with discarding the large prickly holly branches, I started grabbing some images along with the video. I worked into the dark, using a digital Olympus DS-2 voice recorder and a Sennheiser K6 shotgun microphone, recording audio of the birds and insects around the home. Audio recording can be a struggle if one needs to capture sound near an interstate and along the flight path of an international airport.

Last night became this morning, with very little sleep as I worked using iMovie HD to help with the "Ken Burns Effect" of adding motion to still images, since I haven't yet mastered it in Final Cut Pro. Since the TZ1 can be set to capture images at the same resolution as high definition video, working with the footage in iMovie was a no-brainer. After finding some unobtrusive and excellent piano clips by Herbert Boland in the Freesound Project website, through creativecommons.org, the costruction of the short was finally complete.