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I’ve received a lot of great feedback on the travel-lapse that I posted. There were enough people wanting to know more details, that it seemed worth writing a second post about. For reference, here is the original video. The shot I’m writing about is just the second to last shot of the sequence: Continue reading Travel-lapse II (And some thoughts on Adobe Creative Suite)
This is a very short travel sequence that highlights a time-lapse that I put together recently. The traveling time-lapse shot toward the end of the sequence is the first of it’s kind that I’m aware of. Read the post for more info. As always, click on the little gear symbol at the bottom of the video player to watch it in HD! I don’t really consider myself to be much of a graphics/effects guy. I’d rather be taking pictures than staring at a computer monitor or pouring over some arcane software user manual. Making films by yourself however, requires that you learn to do a lot of different things and if you want to take advantage of even a little bit of what modern digital filmmaking has to offer, this means learning some After Effects and motion tracking and color management and knowing more than a little about pixel-wrangling. It’s hard to manipulate video to get what you need if you don’t understand the nitty-gritty of how digital images work. So I’ve become a reluctant computer nerd spending untold thousands of hours learning how to use computers to bring the things I see in my head to the screen. Continue reading Travel-lapse Toward the end of this last fall I worked with my friend Dawson Dunning running a bunch of remote sensor video cameras not far outside of Glacier National Park. We were trying to record video of Grizzly Bears rubbing and marking trees for part of a Wild Horizons documentary about wild North America.  Dawson downloads and reviews footage in a downpour. Continue reading Forest Surveillance  Last frame - click to view larger That hot sun behind me seems a long ways away now as I sit in my studio on the hemisphere that is tilting ever so slightly away from the sun. This photo is the last frame of a time-lapse that I shot recently for my upcoming film, “Exuma.” The camera snapped this shot of me as I reached down to shut off the timer. Continue reading Speeding up the Bahamas  Leave a comment  Art, Photo/Video Tech, Photography, Production Journal  5D, 7D, Adobe, After Effects, Art, Bahamas, beach, Canon, Colin Ruggiero, documentary, Elektra, Elektra Drive, exumas, filmmaking, Kessler, moco, motion control, Oracle, photography, Photoshop, Pocket Dolly, Production, Rhythm Productions, rock, Staniel Cay, sun, Time-lapse  The view from part way up Mt. Katahdin - click photo for larger image I was recently up in Maine filming black bears for an episode of “Expedition Wild” for National Geographic. I should say “trying” to film black bears. Turns out that bears are hard to find in the dense, northern woods. The magnum Fujinon lens that Grizzly Creek Films has didn’t turn out to be a lot of help in stuff that dark and thick. We did however hop from lake to lake in a float plane filming moose and loons and bullfrogs and leeches and lots of other good stuff. Should be a fun show. We also followed host Casey Anderson up to the top of Mount Katahdin. Needless to say, there weren’t any bears up there either. But the view was worth the hike and made us feel like we were in the mountains of Montana again. Here are some production stills from the trip. Continue reading Maine
I missed pretty much the whole Day of the Dead parade this year. Long story. But sad because if there is one night to walk around Missoula with a camera, that’s it. I did get downtown beforehand though for about 10 minutes to take some photos of the lead-up to the parade. Here are a few of them. Continue reading Dia de los Muertos 2
I’ve always appreciated Day of the Dead. Partly because I’m a sucker for the Mexican romance and drama and chiles aesthetic and partly because I actually love the idea of focusing on the dead. Not so much for their benefit of course as for ours. The idea of my life’s sand slipping through the hourglass is what keeps me a poor film artist instead of a rich car commercial producer. Many a wise person has said, in various ways, that death is the only real advisor we have. Bringing the awareness of death to bear on our lives in a sobering but positive way seems to me to be a good idea. And fall is a good time to take a moment to make some art, eat some dead bread (Anise!) and realize that we won’t be around for long. Here are a few pictures I took at cemetery along the side of the road in the Yucatan earlier this year while shooting a short piece for the Secretary of Tourism. Hopefully they will make you want to bundle up and go brave the cold for some Day of the Dead festivities – while you still have some meat on your bones. Continue reading Dia de los Muertos  Views of the ocean from the winter den The combination of being alive and healthy along with beautiful weather have kept me from posting to my blog for a while. The last few months have been spent collecting final images for a film about the Bahamas, shooting a series of shows about bears for National Geographic and trying to tame a big backyard and the bounty of its garden and fruit trees. And hunting elk. And butchering elk. The bounty of Fall. And now as the leaves start to fall and the temperature starts to drop, it’s time to step back into the studio with a mug of hot apple cider and put in the studio time that is the other required half of making media in this day and age. The yin to my summer’s yang. I don’t enjoy being seated in front of a screen very much but at least as much of the creative process takes place here so it has it’s own rewards. I’m thankful to revel in the turning of another season and adapt my schedule to another phase of work. And I’m thankful for the little digital creative space that lets me continue to do this work that I love. Many more blog posts to come as I wade through the spoils of my summer adventures. Happy Fall.  Rick Smith getting the shot
Montana is so awesome. I recently got back from filming Grizzly Bears for National Geographic and was struck by how fortunate we are, in these times of 3D movies and nano-medicine, to be able to wander out into the mountains and find grizzly bears playing in alpine meadows. We were not in a National Park – just out in the woods not far from modern convenience. What an amazing state to live in. What an amazing place to be a photographer. We got sunburns in between getting snowed on. We watched grizzlies catch voles and play and dig and court each other. We shot time-lapses of extraordinary high-mountain weather. Here are a couple shots I managed to get in between shooting video. Continue reading Springtime in the Rockies Just posted a demo reel featuring some of my more recent camera work. Check it out here. There are some more short clips of other recent work on the “Film Samples” page. |
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Copyright © 2012 Colin Ruggiero - All Rights Reserved      |
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