Few things heighten my awareness of my surroundings like walking around with a camera and new stereo microphone hoping to capture interesting scenes. My eyes and ears are on alert.
I live and work surrounded by a lot of woods, and they seem like a worthy natural environment to explore and find wonderful scenes to record. It is, however, a warm winter with no snow and when I walk around all I see is shades of brown, and all I hear is not much of anything – except gunshots and chainsaws because this is Michigan.
This is what I’ve been given – so what do I do with it? It’s just all messy and brown, and the sky is usually grey, and the sounds are few. This does not make for captivating video.
And so, with that to work with I’ve created a triptych or trilogy of brown woods videos. They are not eye or ear catching. They are simply what they are for the viewer (mostly me) to make of them what I can.
These are the first videos I’ve created that consist of more than one scene. This was in part an effort to reduce the monotony of the scenes. I did not strive to create or capture evocative scenes – mostly because I was not aware of any evocative scenes, but also because the quiet monotone is a point of these videos.
The first video is six scenes gathered while walking a trail loop in the back woods where I live. I have the mic on for all the scenes but there are very few sounds you get closer to the end.
The second video is three scenes with the camera pointed upwards. There is some bird activity to add some audio interest – but it is no Nat Geo video.
The third one was shot and recorded at my work. The Hut is a cabin in the back woods where people like to go on retreat. I initially recorded the audio of me walking to The Hut. I recorded this with a Zoom H4N (and it’s ridiculous handling noises). On a later day I shot a handful of video scenes along the way. They could easily be mistaken for still images, but they are in fact video. The final video combines these scenes with the earlier audio.
I honestly don’t know what these woods in this season have to teach me.