27 April 2010

Spring Equinox 2010 : Samish Island to Mt. Baker

I bought a Flip MinoHD video camera in mid-March and was looking for a way to play around with it, see what it could do, so I decided to document "a day in my life." On the vernal equinox, I woke up on Samish Island in lower Skagit county and proceeded to wind my way up back roads to Mt. Baker Ski Area. The video depicts the adventures of the day.

A couple of things I learned: it is much harder to deal with "filming" while snowboarding than I expected. I had to limit recording to very easy runs, cat tracks, etc. Also, I learned after reviewing the footage that one needs to keep the Flip as steady and unmoving as possible to get quality footage -- better yet, having it stationary on a tripod delivers the best quality. Finally, the processing and editing of the footage took much, much more time than the actual recording, which makes me want to be sure I really, really want to do a project before I start capturing video.

(Update: I noticed a sound glitch about 2/3 of the way through, after I come off the mountain and start driving away. It's too much trouble/time to go back and fix it so I'm gonna let it ride.)

All in all, lots of fun and a quirky take on a typical weekend day in northwestern Washington.

The soundtrack is provided by the Grateful Dead, Quantic, An-ten-ae and the Cinematic Orchestra.

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