So, we were out for a Sunday drive this afternoon (beautiful winter sun, great opportunity for some photographs, unlike the recent “available gloom” that makes capturing light so difficult) and the prospect of a quick over-and-back on the Glenora Ferry came to the fore. Although this makes for a great excursion in the warmer months, we’d never taken the trip in the winter. As seen in the picture above, aside from a narrow watery path from one shore to the other, the bay was frozen solid with ice.
In addition to shooting some stills with my new Sony Alpha NEX-5, I took the opportunity to do a bit of video footage. The camera features both 1080i as well as an in-video auto-focus feature, and the results were remarkably crisp.
Arriving home, I decided to play a bit with the new “movie trailer” feature of the latest release of iMovie. Here is the result:
Resulting from an unplanned foray into the “movie trailer” framework, it quickly became clear that my footage was a bit slim on the requisite “close-up,” “group,” “medium,” “action” shots that would traditionally sit in their appropriate slots. Clearly the automatic story-telling structure of the trailer templates is best supported by having the right kind of content. But the template-supplied music, the built-in timing of the cuts, and even some of the stock reviewer phrases (substitute your own children’s names here) worked to provide a product that goes at least halfway towards providing a story.
Next steps will be to shoot some video that matches the called-for shots (landscape, action, closeup, medium, group). Including some people will be a good addition, too. And have another go.
In the meantime, here’s a segment of the raw video, featuring the wonderful cacophony of the ice-hull collisions as the ferry ploughs across the bay.
Note that the “auto focus” message that pops up midway through was added after the fact to highlight the camera function — it is not added by the camera!
Is that ferry your daily drive? I tell myself that I would love to take a ferry across an icy bay to get to work, but maybe it gets old? Anyhow, sweet footage.
Not a daily drive, but rather an occasional weekend excursion. While the crossing is only a short 10 minutes and runs every 15 minutes in the summer, during the winter it is reduced to one boat, running every 30 minutes. The path takes you off the island, but essentially points you east in the direction of Kingston, roughly an hour’s drive away.
My daily commute crosses the bay at a different point (Norris Whitney Bridge), normally an easy drive. Today, and coincidentally last Monday as well, early morning accidents on the bridge blocked “rush hour” traffic in both directions for over an hour. This morning I detoured (~45 minutes) to Carrying Place to get to the mainland and back to work.
I used to work in the high arctic in the community of Aklavik … we had ice roads for most of the year, but took boats in and out of the community after ( and sometimes during ) breakup. This reminds me of those breakup trips – great footage.