Dafs, sheep and the Square

The sun has continued to shine and so I've been out and about getting some generic 'spring' shots for the Year in Snowdonia project. At the moment daffodils and sheep are my main focus but while I was at Tan y Bwlch shooting the dafs  I realised that it was nearly time for the down train so I walked out towards Creau bank and got some nice shots of a stream and of the train passing, shot from below.

Here is a quick chop together of some of what I got. Now I'm back off to get some more, hopefully to include a sunset.

A Bridge too far?

This morning dawned bright and early and I was off to Minffordd yard with the camera to record the new Tan y Bwlch footbridge being transported. It has been sitting on a flat wagon in the coal road for some time but yesterday it was shunted into the main part of the yard in readiness for its trip today.

Four of us rode on the bridge which was propelled up the line by Hunslet diesel Moel Hebog. All went as planned and it was shunted into the short siding at the top end of TYB. After a cup of tea we returned to Minffordd dropping off some bricks and cement for the drains gang to use later this weekend.

I have done a quick edit which timed out at about fourteen minutes but won't upload this till the bridge is craned into place, however I've also chopped it down to three minutes so you can see what I was up to.

Shop Moving

Yesterday I spent the day following the container which had been the booking office and shop at Pont Croesor as it was taken to Blaenau. It was a long day but I didn't work as hard as the people actually doing the move. Today I've uploaded and edited a package which will be on You tube and will probably form a chapter in the Year in the life of the F&WHR 2012. It will get a re edit nearer the end of the year as there will be shots of it in action and so on to add.

Once I had loaded all the footage from the camera onto the computer I was faced with over an hour and twenty minutes of footage but I wanted the finished piece to be about ten minutes. The hardest part was telling the story of the move and selecting pictures which helped do this. To some extent it is obvious what to leave out; there was quite a lot of 'nothing happening but it is about to' footage from yesterday. It is easier to cut this out than to invent it after the action has started. E.g waiting for a train to come around a corner, it is much better to start the camera rolling before you see the train so you get the whole shot.

My first edit purely involved cutting out unusable shots and the above mentioned waiting. This got it down to about 25 minutes. The next process is to start making a few more 'artisitic' judgements and to cut out or cut down the length of dull shots. This got me down to about about 16 minutes; getting there.

The next process is to add captions, this really makes me concentrate on the 'narrative arc'. The more captions needed the less well I've captured the essential story in picture terms. I only needed half a dozen or so today so hopefully it all makes visual sense. Once I've captioned it, I watch it through again take out any more surplus material. This is usually starts and ends of shots. having done this I had it down to just over 13 minutes but I didn't want to remove anything else so this is its finished length.

Before I render it and upload it to Youtube I get Andrew Thomas the F&WHR spin paramedic to make sure my captions make sense and are puntuated and spelled properly, not my strongest suit.

See what you think.

Cob goings on

The work on the Cob widening finished early this week so I've been busy getting the video of it ready for release on DVD. This includes a compilation of the progress reports that I've done and also five versions of the time lapse that Andrew Thomas aka Dr Spinolla has been doing.

In addition to getting it all fit for DVD and authoring a disk I've done an edit and uploaded a final progress report to youtube.

Yesterday afternoon I found out that a one minute advert for the FR was needed to be played in Cafi Bont in Blaenau Ffestiniog. I copied a section of a package I have made for the 'Year in Snowdonia' DVD and changed it around a bit, bobs your uncle. Turned out quite nice for a quick job.

Hugh Napier and Stones

The last few days have been busy. Yesterday morning Hugh napier came over from Boston Lodge to be shown to the great and the good from the National Trust who are the owners so I got some shots of it chuffing up and down in harbour Station, you can see them here.

Yesterday also marked the end of the Cob widening works so I have been busy finishing the progress report and also working on the time lapse compilation. Both of these will be put together on a DVD as a record of this historical event.

Here is a photo taken by Andrew Thomas of the view finder of the video camera while we were waiting for Lyd to arrive, last week.

This morning a large works train went up the FR which I shot at Gwyndy Bank and then at the power station. It was a bit on the misty side but it was an unusual train.

Quarrypower teaser

Today I've been out for a trip up the FR hauled by Britomart. We only took one carriage and the purpose of the trip was to take a visitor to view Coed y Bleddiau cottage but while we were out and about it was worth taking the opportunity to get some lineside shots of our little train. I shot a fair amount from the train on the way which may see the light of day later but with the runpast shots I got I've made a short 'teaser' advert for Superpower this coming September.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVPAwTH2ipc

Sound foundations

Sometimes the sound that is recorded with the picture isn't right, it may have too much background noise or wind may have blasted the mic. In other instances the video doesn't have any sound with it. This is the case with the time lapse video of the cob works. So that the finished video is a satisfying sound as well as picture experience I've decided that there should be a relevant sound to accompany it. To this end I walked out onto the cob with a sound recording machine and recorded the sound of work in progress for a while.It includes birds and traffic and is just what was needed. However to get it ready to use after I transferred the sound file from the recorder to the computer I opened it in a program called Sound Forge. This has allowed me to edit the bumping noises from the start of the file, where I put the recorder down and then remove the similar noise from the end.

This is the waveform display and you can see the left and right channels shown.

It would also let me add a fade at the start and end if I wanted to. One of the most useful tools it has is called normalization. This is very handy if a sound has been recorded too quietly as it analyses the whole file and then makes the loudest peak as loud as possible, this has the effect of turning the whole recording up and so more useful within whatever software the file is destined for, Vegas in my case.

Dire Straits

When I got up this morning the sun was shining and I had the camera at home so instead of heading straight for Porthmadog I set out for Anglesey. I have a DVD in preparation which will replace 'A Year in Snowdonia' which is now rather long in the tooth being shot in 4:3 with the first camera we had. It is a long term project which I am gradually adding sections to as I get a chance.

I had shot some footage from past Beaumaris, looking accross the strait just after Christmas and so I decided to add to this and make a short chapter on the Menai Straits and the bridges.

Before I went to Menai Bridge I popped over to Llanfair PG and got some shots of the station name board and a couple of trains which happened along as I was there, I've made a how to say it chapter with Sam Hughes as the voice of wales.

The sun was in the wrong place to get the shot of the bridge from the Caernarfon side so I parked in waitrose car park and walked out onto the bridge to get some close ups and while I was there I also got some nice shots looking towards Bangor and then also back at Stephenson's bridge.

After this I drove back to Porthmadog as shop work was beckoning. However what I had to do was to deliver a new stand to the Caernarfon shop so while back in that direction I took the camera with me and popped back over to the Island to get some shots of caernarfon from the opposite side of the water. By now the sun had moved round and so on the return leg I got a couple of the shots of the bridge that I had missed first thing.

Then it was back to Harbour station to play the days footage into the computer and edit it all into some sort of sensible order. I'm just waiting for a DVD to burn while I type this so I can take it home with me and have a look on the TV at home.