FMP

IDEA AND INSPIRATION

The idea for my FMP project came quite a long time ago, when it was just an idea without the additional FMP nickname. During my undergraduate degree I began to think about a project which I had named “Sounds of Slovakia”, but it never got to realization. This idea consisted of connecting imagery with the art of sound to create a powerful feeling of presenting place and time of my country.

The original content was supposed to be of various places within Slovakia to illustrate the ordinary life within these places (from a schoolyard, traffic in a busy city, people coming and leaving factories, summer life near my favourite mountains and lakes, plus many more. I was inspired by different urban/nature documentaries and videos showing the miracle of the current place, a special or common daily routine. From realising how vast the content could be, and from discussions of this idea with my fellow media students and lecturer, I tried to change my focus. Slovakia, whilst not the largest country to exist, still covers an area of 19,000 square miles and is too vast for me to try and capture on film.

Through brainstorming, I was trying to shrink the field and come up with a more focused topic so it would be more concise and easier for the audience to understand the meaning of. Slovakia is not most people’s holiday destination, many still remember it as Czechoslovakia and can have a view that it is an ex-communist country with not much to see. It is so much more than that. Slovakia is mostly mountainous but we also have a vast number of castles, caves, ski resorts, spas, and medieval towns that are great to enjoy. You are never far from a forest in Slovakia either and they are rich with life – bears, lynx, boar, and wolves can be found roaming the trees. For me, there is no greater peace than camping in a forest and cooking on a fire therefore I decided to film my favourite corner of Slovakia called Stiavnice Vrchy.

Staivnice Vrchy is the spot where I spent so much time growing up and I always look forwards to returning. I wanted to film different locations within this region and create a small documentary without any words to showcase the calm beauty of this place. These locations will also include a sound recorder with a sensitive microphone to capture the feeling of the moment which will be included with the videos.

I want the audience to feel as though they are experiencing the exact time I spent at the location almost as if they were truly there. I want them to hear the slight breeze rustling the leaves, a stream trickling over stones, or a small animal snuffling in the forest. As a platform I chose Klynt where I am planning to create a map of the region and pinpoint the locations which will be clickable; these links will contain a small body of text detailing some information about the area and the video to present the current location.

EQUIPMENT

Choosing the right equipment took me a while since I do not have experience with such a project. After desk research that focused mainly on YouTube tutorials and video forums together with meetings and discussions with people from the field, I decided to use a Canon100 with various lenses including a macro lens and Zoom H2 recorder which is capable of recording surround sound. My initial idea was to take a different zoom recorder with four slots for four microphones to create the surround sound, but due to the extra weight and many more things to carry (for instance the camera, cables, and necessities like water) I decided to use a smaller, pocket size surround sound recording system. Alongside the camera and microphone as the main tools, I will be supported by a shoulder rig with follow focus, an extra monitor to make it easier to see what I am doing, and some additional filming equipment such as smaller mounts and gorilla pod etc.

FIELD RESEARCH

Although I have been to these places many times in the past, I chose to go to the locations at least once before filming and made the conscious decision to take no equipment. This allowed me the opportunity to turn on the imagination part of my brain, absorb the atmosphere, and think without the annoying urge of pulling out the camera and try to film during the first visit. It also allowed me a chance to scout locations and angles that would be appropriate and to examine how the light changes during the day so to choose what times of day would be best to film.

THE SYSTEM

Before the filming itself I like to have a schedule or scrum board of what I am going to do. Planning on paper is difficult for me, but I am pretty good at memorizing my plan and workflow. For later planning, I would take photos or short videos with my mobile to create a rough idea of how the videos will look like - camera angles, composition etc.

Here are some of the pictures and videos I took in Stiavnice Vrchy:

The original location chosen for my project was, I would admit, very ambitious and far beyond my capability. The area was too large, and I would need much more time to cover everything therefore I downsized the location to areas of my interest and ones that focused on areas closest to my soul. These are the places I spent my childhood, the places I know the best, and the places I have fondest memories of.

To sum up, I chose four locations. Firstly, an old mining lake named Pocuvadlo where I go a few times a year for camping and to relax. This footage will be focused mainly on the lake and its surroundings. The lake is a popular tourist spot as you are able to swim, rent a rowing boat or pedalo, take a walk around the perimeter, and there are many traditional restaurants. The second location is the city of Banska Stiavnica – an old mining town with a rich history, awesome views, and many historical buildings. It is nestled in the middle of huge hills. It is also a UNESCO heritage site because it is a completely preserved medieval town. Another location is the village Hodrusa Hamre or to be more specific the forests surrounding it. In this village my family used to own a cottage in the woods so I have many nice memories of this place. Footage from this location will include meadows, hills, ruins, and the simple life of the people living here. The final location is an old cemetery located within a small village at the foot of the mountains which is interesting due to its unusual locations and steep slope. With this footage I want to show the connection of nature and people living in the region.

DESK RESEARCH

Since childhood, I have had an interest in nature documentaries so I wanted to replicate one - however, these take a substantial amount of time, money, man-power and technique to make. This is not something I have available, and I knew I would not be able to produce something on the same level, but I wanted to try to make my own within my capability to gain experience of creating this type of media.

An inspiration was a series of documentaries about Slovak nature, these include V Oblakoch (in the clouds) produced by Arolla Film which showcases the Tatras Mountains. I was not sure how long my shots should be, or what is an acceptable minimum length of separate clips so it would not be too short. Some clips are shorter than the others according to their importance to me and, what is more important to me, to be shown to audience. This is is not an easy task since every filmmaker and every member of the audience has different tastes and styles of filming or likes to see different styles of shots. After watching this documentary where you can see some long or some very short clips I came to the conclusion that this project is about me so the editing needs to be done in accordance to my feelings so I did not follow any particular guidance, but composed it to reflect how I felt it while filming it.

Another inspiration was Nizke Tatry srdce Slovenska (Nizke Tatry the heart of Slovakia) by Branovi Molnar. This piece received the highest reward for the best Slovak film about mountains. Its focus is on the people who are living in the heart of nature.

This amateur documentary was inspirational due to its play with light, leaves and trees in the forest in general. I did not know how to show the forest in an interesting way whilst also avoiding boring, mostly landscape clips showing just trees. Some parts of this documentary were very useful and definitely helped me with filming the forest part of my project.

A third is Potulky po Slovensku (Wandering around Slovakia) by Jozef Dovicin which highlights the most beautiful places in Slovakia. This is probably the most amateur work from all the clips I took as inspirational material from different filmmakers. It showed me that you do not need to have professional equipment to work on something you love to do and also create nice work. In my opinion, some of the shots in this documentary are good, but some of them I like a lot less or would do differently so I think this is a valuable learning source for my amateur work.

Vysoke Tatry divocina zamrznuta v case (Vysoke Tatry - Wildness frozen in time) was made by Pavol Barabas, a documentary maker, in collaboration with ORF Universum who produce the highest quality documentaries in Europe. Here I learned that music blended with the sounds of nature can be used to make videos less boring. Even though I mentioned that sound in my project is very important, I found out that listening just to sound of surroundings can be a bit boring for viewers. Using thematic music combined with the sound of nature can hold the attention of the audience and produce something dramatic.

Two documenteries by Erik Balaz were also sources of inspiratoin to me. Strazca divociny (Ranger of Wildness) focuses on the population of rare bears and took Balaz fifteen years to film. The other,Vlcie hory (Wolves Mountains), presents the population of wolves in Slovakia. It is about life and death.

Both of these documentaries are created by a professional filmmaker who has many years of experience. During my own filming I was worried about every single shake or bit of autofocus. I cannot compare my work to this piece but seeing a slightly blurred shot or a shake even from a professional documentarist made me more confident and I understood that nature is not a geometric object with perfect lines and movements so some of these shakes and blurs are just part of this genre and must be accepted. Another thing that I learned watching these documentaries is that a perfect colour correction while filming nature with its ever-changing light, shadows, and colours is very hard and needs years of practice. Me, as a learner, spent hours thinking that I can do that too, but I realised that I cannot. I did not give up, I just accepted that these things are coming with time. Because my project is time sensitive, I cannot afford to devote such a large portion of time on one element as I need to focus on many different areas. Watching these videos where I saw that not every clip is perfectly colour balanced with the rest of the clips made me calmer and helped me to move from the colour correcting spot where I was frozen for such a long time.

2

CHANGE

Whilst planning is crucial to the process, plans are required to be flexible. Once filming began, my plan needed to be altered and my clips needed to be divided into different categories. I realised that traveling between many different locations would take too much time and the quality of the clips could have been compromised because I would rush them therefore the cemetery was cancelled, but the remainder will stay as planned.

In addition to the points of interest – the town of Banska Stiavnica, the village of Hodrusa Hamre, and the forest - a meadow was added. The meadow will consist of a moving picture of the meadow with an old ruined farm house in the background. Here the viewer will be able to decide to see the meadows themselves or footage of the old ruined house. The large lake in Pocuvadlo that I originally intended to film was replaced by a smaller one inside the forest and will be part of the forest footage.

LAKE

Small toast about my current feelings

"I can honestly say that my camera and editing skills are just on the beginner level but the combination of filming, post-production, and operating with Klynt software is giving me many experiences which can be easily polished with more practice after and during this project so I am very happy to work on something like this even if it is far from perfection."

FILMING DAY ONE

The first day of filming was more about practice with the equipment than capturing the shots I wanted. Using the shoulder rig turned out to not to be a very good idea since Canon 100 is not known for its good stabilisation. Despite this problem I persevered for at least a few shots before I got annoyed with the rig and continued with tripod shooting or basic hand-held filming.

Captured Capturing

This filming day was spent mainly in the village Hodrusa Hamre where my aim was to show this sleepy old village where I spent a lot of time during my childhood and I am still visiting these days because of its calm atmosphere or maybe just from nostalgia. Life in this village is "frozen in time"; people are stuck in the times as a once strong industry was suddenly gone and the village started to fade from the maps. The paradox is that this village together with the nearby town of Banska Stiavnica were the centre of mining activity for centuries where gold, silver and many different ores were extracted by German miners. People in this region benefited from this industry but unfortunately most of them were living in a "slave" society where they could work for the Germans for little money, or choose not to and end up in a deeper poverty.

These days you can still see some mining activity but the old fame is long gone. The village has many old times memorabilia such as very old ruined buildings, old mining equipment or many pits. This region is very poor and this is reflected by the state of its buildings rusting factories and few working opportunities. Despite this, it is a popular place for relaxation. Many people from cities are buying cottages where they come for weekends to escape the noise of their life. These nice cottages are a stark contrast to the badly maintained houses of the local people. One local is living alone with just a radio, a number of chickens, goats, and an elderly dog for company. His home does not have a proper running water supply and is balanced on a hill which you can pass by to reach the forest. His rustic life will also feature in the videos.

I spotted this old tractor and lorry in an open public space so decided to film as it fit my project. Later, when I returned to my camp, I was then confronted by a group of hostile men who made several comments about my car. They acted aggressively and claimed three police cars (who were their relatives) and four cars full of their friends had been searching for my vehicle in the region because they had seen me filming their tractor and lorry. They demanded I delete the footage but I could not understand why because I was not trespassing, it was not behind a fence or private place, just parked on an area of grass. Despite attempts to explain my project, they admitted they did not have all the proper paperwork to park their vehicles in that spot so were afraid of media publicity. It was strange to me as they claimed to involve police but were obviously very worried about the media seeing their cars. It did not quite make sense. The group said they would have beaten me if I was from the media therefore I did not question them anymore - but I still did not delete my footage. According to law, I was filming in a public place and have a right to the footage. Something was suspicious with their vehicles to warrant such an extreme reaction, but it makes me glad to have the videos.

FILMING DAY TWO

For this day, myself and a friend was helping me with filming because he is also a photographer, Jakub Arpas (jakubarpas.sk), wanted to capture the sunrise above the meadows. We woke up at 4 am at the camp in Hodrusa Hamre where we were staying for four days and went to the location. Unfortunately, the sunrise was not how I wanted. There were too many clouds and we had arrived slightly too late. Even though we did not catch the desired footage, I had still had some golden morning sun which was perfect for shooting the meadow. Here I was using the Sigma 24-35mm lens due to the quality of the image and especially for the close-up shots that I wanted. Since I am just a beginner, I was happy with the result and learned a lot of what to do or what not to do for the next filming to ensure the quality is closer to what I imagine.  

Here is non-edited footage of some clips from that morning:

After returning to the camp and having a small rest, I was heading to to the mountains. Here I was planning to film the footage of meadows and some of the forest clips. To get to the location was not easy since carrying all the kit plus necessities as food, water et cetera in a rucksack was very tiring. We had to abandon the luxury of a car and hike up through the forest and mountain to reach the meadow in the sweltering Slovakian summer heat. The meadow I was heading to is the one from the pictures of the field research which has long grass, many types of flowers and colours. After I came to the location I was immediately disappointed from the first look at the place. The meadow had been trimmed, the flowers were gone and it looked totally different from how I remembered. I found out that the farmer was using this meadow as a food resource for his animals. All that was left was just short, roughly cut grass and an old ruined house which was once used as settlement for local farmers. I was tired from waking up at 3 am and from walking a long way with a heavy load so considering walking more miles in search for a better meadow which I did not know about was for me out of the question. I sat down and started to think about a different way how to film this part of my project. 

To utilise the location I had, I filmed some of the remaining flowers with a micro-lens. The beauty of these wild flowers can be exaggerated using a micro-lens and more detail can be revealed. In addition, I filmed landscape shots as the meadow is situated quite high above sea level and there is a nice view of the surrounding mountains. Whilst filming the sunrise in a different location, I created some nice footage of the meadows around the hills that could work perfectly for this portion of my project. I decided to cut footage from both meadows to create the video. In more favourable conditions, the meadow can be full of life - small deer or foxes will be roaming the grass - however it was too hot to be in the open pasture, with temperatures reaching up to forty degrees so mammals receded deep into the forest to find shade. I still wanted to show at least some life from the meadow and insects were the only creatures present. I had to wait very patiently with equipment set up and focused on flowers in the hope that a butterfly or wasp might land. This has given me a deeper appreciation for the nature videos that were my inspiration because patience is the least acknowledged element of their success.

Once the meadow footage had been shot, I shifted my attention to the old, abandoned farm house. I remembered being able to enter it as a child when I was on an adventure through the forest, but time has turned the building to ruin and parts of it had collapsed. Only one room could be entered, but nature has re-claimed it from man and began to grow through the building. I spent a long time flattening down stinging nettles - some two metres tall - to create a pathway into the room. Due to the inaccessibility, I focused on the exterior of the building; the crumbling walls, the rotten wooden frames of a porch, and the nature beginning to devour the stone.

Hiking in the heat with all of the equipment and being in the open meadow with a sun blazing had taken its toll so I returned to camp. This allowed me to check the footage and recharge batteries ready for another day.

FILMING DAY THREE

On the third day, I returned to Hodrusa village which is a short distance from camp. I wanted to film more of the old industrial equipment that litters the village as that is the focal point of this video. I encountered a problem with the tripod – one of the screws had become loose on the head – therefore the footage I had been recording that morning was shaky. I had no tools with me to fix this issue and had to ask an elderly man from the village who was working in his garage. The local people are more than willing to help – but first we had to listen to his whole life story and all the drama it contained. He, himself, could not find the screwdriver needed so I ended up searching his garage with him then the problem was resolved. Whilst spending time with this man, I could not help noticing a very old building – the oldest one in Hodrusa – and wanted to film it. I took the opportunity to ask whether I would be able to film the building and the old man assured me the owners were from Austria and not currently home so I could film it.

As previously stated, I changed locations of the graveyard I wanted to film. This one in Hodrusa is on the edge of a forest and perfectly reflects the symbolic relationship the local people have with the nature here. Their bodies are returned to the forest and their decomposition releases nutrients back to the soil.

After a small break, I walked the few paces into the forest which surrounds the camp. It would be boring for the viewer if this section of the project was shot after shot of tree landscapes therefore I had to think of angles and shots that would make it interesting to watch. Since this project is focused on the tranquillity of this area through my eyes, I wanted to present it in the video. I have always loved the way sunlight filters through the leaves to create a beautiful scene so I decided to capture the ways light can change the face of the forest to evoke different feelings. Weather is unpredictable, so filming was slow because a lot of the time was spent waiting for clouds to pass so the sun could shine into the forest. It allowed me to set up shots without rushing, but it also meant I could spend a long time waiting for the sun – and this was the theme for the whole day in the forest.

FILMING DAY FOUR

On this day, I filmed the sunrise once more, hoping for a more favourable view. I chose a new location and left an hour earlier than the first attempt therefore filming started at 3am. We filmed at a ruined castle on top of a hill that allowed for a great view of the horizon and Stiavnica in the valley. One camera was on a tripod and was programmed to capture an image every thirty seconds to create a smooth movement of the sun. Originally, I wanted to film the entire duration then speed up the film in post-production but I worried the battery life would not last the entire duration as we were on location for one and a half hours. I took a sleeping bag with me to the top of the mountain while the camera was recording the sunrise so I could take some rest as I had a busy day of filming ahead. From this location, I also filmed panorama shots of Stiavnica.

On the route to the centre of Stiavnica, I continued taking panoramic shots as the roads into the city spiral downwards through the valley. I struggled to pick locations and camera angles in the city because there were a lot of tourists and many cars which destroyed the calmness I wanted to film. The majority of people who are holidaying in the wilderness will travel to Stiavnica for supplies or some comfort like a coffee shop. During filming, it was also tourist season which increased the bustling life in the town. I do not enjoy to try and capture cities because they are not a relaxing environment for me, so I will admit this section was the hardest for me. I still wanted to include this city because of its significance in the mining industry and its importance to the area itself. I chose to focus on the older buildings in the town as it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its medieval town with narrow cobbled streets. There are many hidden places which you need to have insider knowledge of so I mostly included these smaller, secret locations albeit some of the main town is featured. Some of the architecture of the town is quite special, particularly I like to look at the roofs as the nature is hidden in the background which creates a nice contrast.

This was also a tiring day because the town is sloped so there was again a lot of walking up and down hill; there is limited parking in the centre of town due to the narrow streets so the journey had to be on foot. I also battled with the heat which was relentless and made worse by the heavy equipment I carried.

There are many lakes in the area that were created for mining purposes and are used recreationally. I discovered one that is mostly untouched because it is not used for swimming so it does not have the same popularity as other ones in the area. This one is located in a forest so I planned to combine this footage with my forest footage, however I visited it six years ago and I forgot how to find it. Somehow, I managed to find it and was so happy as it is in a beautiful area and the blue waters are attractive. There were lots of insects around the lake so I used the micro-lens again and managed to capture dragonflies; I was proud to get the shot of the ant dragging the bee too.

The bulk of my filming was completed in these four days so I packed up all of our equipment and headed home. The thirteen hours of filming every day coupled with sleeping in a tent and eating campfire food began to take its toll. I was ready to go home and take a proper rest then review the footage. However, we passed through Hodrusa village on the way home and I spotted two old entrances to the mines that I did not include on my first filming day so I stopped to film them too.

FILMING DAY FIVE

Although I had taken an external monitor during the previous filming days, because the camera display is not good, its battery does not have a long life. I reviewed the footage properly at home on a laptop and discovered some of the footage was not good and some clips were ruined due to bad focus or shakiness. I decided to return to the Stiavnica area one more time and challenged myself to film all locations in just one day. It sounds exhausting – or a little crazy – but I knew which shots I was missing so I knew exactly what I was filming and where, for example I returned to the meadow. Luckily, I managed to borrow a professional tripod from a cameraman who is working for a Slovakian television station which helped a lot. This day was not without troubles: I borrowed a DJI Ronin M from a camera loan shop in Slovakia so I could walk and film but keep the smoothness of the footage. I paid a large deposit but once I got to location, it was not working properly. I was disappointed because I had taken it there with a purpose but it could not be achieved so it was a slight wasted effort, however I did my best to achieve what I wanted.

Despite many setbacks and disappointments, sometimes there was some luck. The farmer I mentioned who is living a rustic life with just livestock was not home that day. To get to the meadow, you must pass through his garden and walk right by his sheds and house therefore I could film how he is living to demonstrate the life of people in Hodrusa.

The day was non-stop and tiring, but I managed to get the shots I wanted. However, the biggest disappointment came when I returned home. Prior to this day, I had been using the camera to film an advertisement for IKEA and was using a different white balance. I had forgotten to change it before filming in Staivnica, and, due to the bad quality of the display on the camera, I did not notice the difference until I reviewed the footage at home. The colours were destroyed and the footage had a cold blueish tone which did not match the previous filming so I knew I already had an uphill battle in editing due to the cloudiness of the day and now needed to try and colour correct. I did not have time for more filming so had to rely on good editing skills.

AN EXAMPLE OF COLOURS FROM FIRST DAYS OF FILMING - USING CORRECT WHITE BALANCE + CINEMATIC LUT INSTALLED ON SD CARD:

AN EXAMPLE OF COLOURS FROM LAST DAY OF FILMING WHEN I DID NOT SET CORRECT WHITE BALANCE:

EDITING

I was really looking forward to start editing my footage. It means hours and hours behind computer screen, but I knew I do not need to carry all that heavy equipment and walk long distances in Slovakian summer heat so editing for me sounded much more convenient.

Even though I tried to store and separate the footage after every filming I still had a load of the videos to be sorted. Sometimes I was filming clips for a several projects in the same time and I was just too tired to go behind computer at night, specially with limited electricity source. When I finished my first days of filming I did not have time to empty all the memory cards, because another day I needed to go to the capital city and work on IKEA

advertisement. This meant that on one card I had not just mixed footage from my final major project, but also mixture of nature, towns and clips from IKEA. Same thing applies for sounds. Sorted out the sounds was even harder because strong noise caused by insect in the area made all the records sound very similar. Forest, meadows and even towns were almost the same.

I began editing footage theme by theme starting with footage of the Meadows. As it is with filming I had several videos of the same thing and same angle what makes choosing of the right footage a “great fun”. Whilst going through all of the clips I found out many corrupted videos, mostly caused by shaky camera and that fact was for me very dissapoiting . As always I chose Adobe premiere pro as my editing software because I can use it for everything what I need.

Each of my videos for this project needs it’s own beginning so I started putting together two clips of sunrise each just about 4 sec long. I wanted to have one complete footage of this view but need of camera battery change caused that I have two videos with just few missing frames. Although this was not a problem because with that many frames is hard to spot the difference.

It took me long time to choose right footage because I wanted to put the video together on the first try so I do not need to go back to it. This turned out to be a bed decision because process was slow and stressful. Finally I understood that I need to change tactic and come up with better solution. I wrote basic timeline on the piece of paper. Into Premiere pro I dragged videos which looked like the onse I would like to use. I knew that I will need to check each of them and perhaps replace them with better onse, but at least this gave me an idea how my video will look like and what is missing or is extra. This process turned out to be much faster. After the temporary timeline was finished I started examining each clip and replacing shaky or out of focus videos for the same but better captured.

I knew that I could not helped to shakiness too much whilst filming, but through my previous experiences with Premiers pro Warp stabilisation effect I felt confident that a bit of software magic with help me to solve this problem.

Took me few hours of program stabilisation and endless YouTube tutorials to realize that I was completely mistaken. Warp stabilisation works good with filming solid objects or people etc., but footage of grass or landscape is a big bite for this effect. This stabilization tool works with, scaling plus picking the main and parent point from the clip to create smooth movement. In my case where I have too many object in the composition, this method does not work.

I tried to fix this in Adobe after effect. I was reading one forum where people with same problem talked about similar experiences and how they solved it. Process should be functioning on the same steps; main and parent point. In this case, I needed to set these points and track the movement frame by frame without promise of functioning. This was for me out of question because with that many footages and 5 videos to work on, this would take countless hours for the whole project to be fixed and I would have no time for other work as blog or klynt. I took my fade and decided that I will use just few of my not shaky videos and will hope for the best.

Relieve came another day when I mentioned this problem to my friend who told me to try Final cut pro. This program was unfamiliar to me because it is exclusive to Macbooks and I have a windows PC so I was not sure if I would be able to learn how to use this program in time for my project. It was worth trying as I understood this program had better stabilisation. That day, I compared Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro and the difference in stabilisation quality was staggering; in such a short time, it produced much higher quality videos. This was crucial for my project as a lot of my footage would not be of use in Premiere Pro due to the stabilisation issues. I decided it was more important to spend time and learn how to use this program because it would be more beneficial to my project to use this one; however it has a very friendly user interface so I could navigate and utilise the program quite quickly.

I did not have access to a proper tripod so I was using a cheaper photography one which meant the head is not suitable for video capturing. This impacted my videos because it was difficult to maintain the same speed during tripod moving/turning shots; parts of the video was slower, parts were faster.

This was present in all of these types of shots. I tried to prevent this problem during filming by tying a string around the camera and using that as a pulley to make the movement smoother and more consistent, but unfortunately it did not work. These shots were frustrating during editing because it looked amateur when one section was moving much quicker than the other. In Premier Pro I used a bladespeed tool to try and fix the issue: this will find the differences in speed and the program will try to match it to the same speed. I had to cut a lot from the videos and include slow-motion shots to increase the duration of videos; unfortunately you can still see the differences in the video.

For the meadow video, a lot of microshots were included because these had not been corrupted - a large portion of my footage from the meadow had been ruined by the tripod. This problem with the tripod movement occurred for all areas I filmed.

Another element of Final Cut Pro that appealed to me was the rendering process was much quicker compared to Premier Pro, and you could continue working on the program whilst it rendered a clip which is not possible in Premier Pro. This sped up my work as I did not need to wait a long time for clips to render. I wish I had used this program before as it would have saved me many hours of work.

Each video is supposed to reflect the feelings I experienced whilst filming so I needed to edit the clips in that order to achieve is. As I mentioned before, the forest always attracted me due to the colours inside and the green darkness. The meadows are a gate to another world once you leave the forest because there is so much light and colour from the wildflowers so I wanted to show the beauty of this place. Although I filmed more modern houses in the village of Hodrusa, the history always drags me in so this video was heavily influenced by the old mining times: I always wondered how people could live in such old, poor houses but still live in simple happiness. The Hodrusa video begins with industry and ends with the old man who lives on the forest's doorstep.

The clips of Stiavnica were ordered to show its location then I worked inwards towards the centre of the city to reflect the looping downhill roads one must also travel down to reach it. The video of the ruins did not fit into the current contents so I decided to do one more extra: I wanted to show that although people of different classes lived differently, now both have come to ruin and there is some similarity. The clips of the property from the meadow move from exterior to interior of then the interior to the exterior of the second property in Hodrusa so the viewer will not know it is a second property until there is an exterior shot.

SOUND

To record sound, I placed a surround-sound recorder at each location so it was not a difficult task. There are many roads deep in the valley which creates an echo so some sounds of cars can be heard through an echo which sound like they do not belong but I decided to keep it to reflect the real atmosphere. In some instances there are sounds like the crack of a twig made when I was walking, but I quite liked them as it remained authentic to the sounds of that environment.

The sounds were similar in all locations - mostly sounds of insects - however in the forest there were different birds, or there were passing cars in Stiavnica. The sound of a car or a stream dominated over the rest of the background sounds on the recording, but when present other sounds could still be heard so I wanted to replicate that in the videos. I did this by isolating the dominant sound and turning it down and taking the background sounds and also adding these to the videos.

To express the past industrial time, I found some old equipment in Hodrusa so scraped a shovel against the ground. This recorded sound was included during the video so the viewer can imagine how it would have been during that time when mining was a constant noise in the village.

When walking in the abandoned houses, the sound of my footsteps conjured an image in my mind of the people who once lived in the house and their lives. I recorded this sound and included in the video so the viewer can feel the same emotions as me.

Once these sounds had been applied to all the videos and I reviewed them, there was something missing. The documentaries that were my inspiration all contained music and these conjured up more feelings - music is a powerful tool capable of captivating attention and stirring emotions so I decided to include it in my videos.

Originally, when I was conceptualising my FMP, I named it Sounds of Slovakia. The direction has changed a lot since its beginning so adding background music was not sacrilege as I wanted to emulate a documentary. YouTube free sound library contains a lot of ambient and cinematic music so I browsed through this with certain keywords such as nostalgia or industry, and found a specific track for each video according to what I wanted to express.

In Stiavnica, they have a mining tradition to broadcast a song hourly from the churches so I recorded this and used it as background music for this video rather than a YouTube one. Sometimes a small click is audible which is as a result of people walking by during the recording; it could not be cut as I would not be able to merge the tones of the music so it had to remain.

COLOR

Colour grading was not an easy task because I did not have enough previous experience with it from. Prior to this project, I knew how to edit the contrast or exposition, but this one demands more than this basic knowledge. I needed to learn how to manipulate colour curves in order to achieve satisfying results. Again, I called my friend who has more experience with this technique from his photography work to show me the basic process. Most of the clips from the early filming days did not need too much colour correction; the white balance was fine plus the cinematic LUT made for Canon c100 works really well which made my work much easier. The majority of my clips needed just a bit more contrast or less/more highlights. To fix these small problems I learned the S curve method where bending this curve helps to polish the footage.

PICTURES FROM COLOUR EDITING

As I mentioned before, the last day of filming did not go very well because I had forgotten to set the white balance on the camera that resulted in a bluish layer on every clip from that day. For me, this was a very hard thing to fix. I tried to balance colour in Final Cut Pro using the colour balance tool or match colours between good and destroyed footage. This always ended with bad results and the bluish tone turned to yellow or red, which also looked bad.

In the end I turned onto separate colour curves starting with blue, green, red etc.; Final Cut software allows you to take the picking tool and pick the exact colour you need to edit. This changes the basic RGB into many different tones and helps with colour correcting. On some of the clips I needed to use more layers of colour curve fixing to get closer to a better result. Even though I tried as hard as I could, I could not achieve exactly what I wanted and many clips were deleted from project. I did not have time for another filming day so a few of these clips are still included in the project to maintain the length of the video in line with the others.

After I was done with colours I started working on subtitles for each video. The clips were a bit boring without any text so I decided to include a few interesting facts about every location I filmed. I know a lot about this region myself so it did not take me long to pick right information. I browsed few Slovakian websites and chose articles which I later translated and transformed into separate sentences rewriting everything with my own words. Sometimes I also included my own thoughts which I placed between the interesting facts to make it more poetic and more interesting to read.

Placing them into the video was very simple since you just need to drag the text into the video, write what you want and the job is done. Some of the text was hard to read so I put a blackish transparent background behind it to separate it from the rest of the video and due to this contrast, reading is much easier. In the end I just timed the length of each sentence using 1.5 (to be able to read the sentence one time full and then just half of it, to make it possible also for slower readers. international subtitles standard.

KLYNT

Finally, there was time to start with KLYNT. I had a clear idea how the basic structure of Klynt will look like. There would be a menu from which you can choose which video you want to see. I made this structure before with blank windows so I just needed to add the correct videos.

Connecting these sequences was easy so I just needed to come up with an attractive design of the main menu that fit the theme of my project. I tried few designs and then I chose the one I considered to be best.

FIRST PROTOTYPE

FIRST MENU

For the background, I recorded a short piece of footage of a campfire representing the base from where you begin your adventures in Slovakia. Every time when I am at one of these locations, I love to enjoy an evening campfire; looking at the fire, listening to its sound is very calming. It is at this time when I am planning the next trips, so placing it as the starting picture is relevant.

To tell the audience the point of my project I wrote a small text which is displayed a few seconds after the start. This text explains the whole point of my work and motivates the viewer to see more.

After a while this text fades out and the thumbnails of the videos appear. Firstly, I wanted to cover the whole screen with them, but it was an impossible job. I tried many tactics to fit those pictures above the whole fire, but Klynt is not very good with responsiveness. The pictures were either placed all around or split with huge gaps; even when I almost fitted them in they were not responsive and were changing size while scaling for different screens.

In the end I managed to put them together but the design looks a bit different from what I wanted. Five thumbnails are set to 50% opacity which creates a nice effect because you can still see the fire behind and allows me to set a hover interaction. When you hover over each thumbnail with a name tag upon it the picture will come into full opacity which makes the viewer recognize that they can click and something will happen.

MENU I WANTED

EXAMPLES OF HOW I COULD NOT MAKE IT RESPONSIVE

FINAL MENU DESIGN

The rest of the page is simple, each video has two arrows to go back and forwards and the home button to go to the main page.

I am okay with this compromise because at least I managed to make my first Klynt site so it is a good base for future work in this program.

APPENDIX FROM FINAL CUT-SOME OF THE EARLY TEST FOOTAGE

Testing footage with no sound

First draft with sound

First draft Meadow

FORES+SOUND+SUBTITLES

REFLECTION

I have enjoyed the responsibility of working on my FMP because this is the largest project I have worked on independently so I have gained experience in managing a range of areas which will equip me for the future. I have learned that I need to spend more time planning – despite it being the process I dislike – because of how important it is. Another lesson I learned the hard way, was to test the camera and the settings prior to the project; if I had known about the stabilisation issues of this camera then I would not have chosen it. For next time, I would also investigate whether the software is truly appropriate and perhaps create a prototype to make the work easier for me later on. This has been a steep learning curve which I had to adapt to, particularly as I was also working on a project for IKEA too so I knew what to expect from a large project. Overall, my FMP is close to what I imagined and I am happy with the result, but I know it could be better. There are many ‘ifs’ that can influence the quality of the projects – if I had my own equipment, if I had more time then I could do better, but I was under restrictions and despite these I am proud of my project. I gained invaluable experience that has encouraged me to pursue a career in media and this FMP has made me sure of my future.