Almost exactly a year ago, during a lull in the pandemic, I managed a trip on Aurora with my friend John Kingsley and I shot some nice video clips with my phone and with my drone. I edited the video some time ago, but my “production” lacked a sound track. I decided that a sea shanty was needed and so I modified the words of a traditional song to suit “this fine boat” and recorded myself. Click on the picture to see the result.
I have spent some of the winter non-sailing time learning how to use some new video editing software. As we look forward to Cape Cutter Week 2016, which will be held in Chichester Harbour and the Solent, here we have the highlights of the Cape Cutter Week 2015 which took place on the East coast rivers of Orwell, Deben and Stour (make sure you watch it in HD!). This video was shot mostly on my iPhone (there’s a shot or two from my GoPro) and edited on the iPad using Pinnacle Pro. I’m very much looking forward to seeing everyone again this Whitsun. This probably means I should be getting on with those maintenance tasks I have been putting off…
I have put together a video of our wonderful trip this summer to the Baltic. Whilst my main photographic interest is still photography, and I am very pleased with a number of images I made in Sweden, I decided that video conveys something extra. Throughout the trip I took video clips on my iPhone- I decided to stick to 10 seconds for each clip. I’m not much of a videographer and I think I’ve shot too many sweeping pans really. I have had lots of fun editing the movie- I used Pinnacle Studio on my iPad to make it and have been very pleased with the results- so much more portable than using a desktop or laptop. The software is surprisingly powerful, given the platform it runs on, but the main benefit is being able to edit on the go. The quality of the rendered video is quite pleasing, but YouTube has degraded the quality a little- looks best if you can watch the HD version.
This is a video I made when Aimee and I rigged Aurora at Suffolk Yacht Harbour this Easter. The video is speeded up quite considerably and I have edited out the times a car went past. The rigging went as quickly as it has ever done and you can see the steps involved. I have made a few changes this season to the way the boat is rigged; I have left the boom bolted to the tabernacle now and this should save a bit more time when rigging and de-rigging. On the other hand, I am now trying the staysail hanked on, rather than furling, and this might take a little longer to rig. The video quality is not very good because I set the camera up facing into the light, so I had to alter the brightness of the video footage which has made it rather grainy. I’ll have to try it again with beter lighting and a plainer background.
Last time I rigged Aurora was at Suffolk Yacht Harbour in Levington near Ipswich in Suffolk. I decided I would try to make a time-lapse of the rigging process. Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be harder than expected. Firstly, the camera exposure is difficult because of the amount of pale sky in the shot. Secondly, its amazing how many cars and people went past the camera during the filming (and I thought at the time how quiet it was!). Well, I’ve adjusted the exposure a bit and edited out all the cars and here is the result. Look out for, Aimee, my wandering helper….
This is my first attempt at filming the boat with my kite aerial photography rig. The footage is quite shaky and I need to improve the stability of huge rig before I attempt to film a moving boat. Not bad for a first attempt.
Filmed while on a mooring in Felixstowe Ferry, Suffolk. You can clearly see the strong ebbing tide flowing under the boat; the log was reporting 1.8kts.
I have been playing with Adobe Premiere Elements 11 using the gopro polecam footage from our Easter trip. I’m fairly pleased with the results. Several aspects are things I’d like to do better in the future (time lapse, aerial shots), but its a nice memory of a good trip. It makes the weather look lovely, but it was COLD! See what you think….
Travelling Aurora - journeys of a Cape Cutter 19 