AV News 200 - May 2015
'Iceland'
Judges comments: "You don't go to sleep in this one! The music is very dramatic
with a driving rhythm, well suited to the images, and the author has used it skilfully
to power the sequence along. It really captures the power and majesty of the
landscape.
The snap changes are all precisely positioned on the beats, and although the
changes are often very rapid the images are on long enough to appreciate
without spoiling the effect. The Ken Burns effect of gently zooming most of the
images is used almost imperceptibly and works well. The photography is first
class, the mix of colour and mono works well and the transition between them is
well handled. A swell in the music is used to move to the greener landscapes.
The panning shot is not too long. The dissolves at the start and end of it are kept
short, and as a result are visually acceptable.
The inclusion of four vertical pictures is totally unnecessary both in format and
content and really rather interrupts the flow. I would also question the
incorporation of the five or so 'human' pictures as the cars, people and shopping
centre are out of character with the rest of the images. Also several of the images
are quite similar, so I would like to challenge the author to make a 5 minute
version. The title is really a working title and a more dramatic one is called for.
The title font is very ordinary for such a spectacular production."
V1 of Iceland started with the music. I heard the bang, bang, bang of the music
and thought of an Iceland waterfall - colour with a fast shutter, colour with a six
stop and then with a mono version. By V5 it was spot on and it won 1st place at
the 2015 NIPA AV Festival. It then went 'head to head' with the winner of the Irish
Photographic Federation AV Championship and won. I was encouraged to enter
the '5 to 8' but, the closing date for entries was the next day.
In my haste, I made a number of silly and basic
mistakes in creating V6. In V1; I had included four of
my favourite images from the trip, in particular a
horse with a blue eye. But these were in portrait
format and they 'jarred' when going for a photo
harmony approach - so I removed them. V5 only
lasted 4 minutes, so I extended the music and added
some of my favourite portrait images. Big mistake!
The judge, quite rightly, picked up on this.
This highlights a most
important point. Your favourite
images have your emotion
and that does not mean they
work!
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