Video Editing - Sony Vegas

I recently edited a video about the last family trip around Hokkaido. 
(It's literally a family trip because we rarely have a trip that both my parents and sibling are traveling together. I really can't recall when was the last one before this trip - probably when my parents brought us to the Penang beach during my childhood before my sister was born?)


Here is my workflow stages:
1. Review/select footage and in port into Sony Vegas Project file (Edit footage frame rate to match the intended frame rate)
2. Trimming to make it as short as 2 min (but sometime this is hard)
3. Decide/Edit on aspect ratio
4. Color grading (probably I am a very 'visual' person, I enjoy this part the most)
5. Create visual/sound effects (e.g. film burn, film effect, tv-simulation, etc.)
6. Score/musics (I hate this part, but a video is without soul if without it, so I have no choice)
7. Titles/wordings 


For this particular project, I started it two weeks ago. The final result is totally different than what I thought it would be at the beginning (old film style). Because after the stage 1, I felt that the old film style will not goes well with the flow and the contents. 
During stage 2, I have to divide the Sony Vegas project into two smaller project files, because the computer capacity couldn't handle the huge memory demand - more than 4 GB. 
(This is weird as my window 7 is a 64bit version and it has 8 GB ram capacity. Anyway, my experience with my pc tells me that for as long as I reduced the project file to below 4 GB, I will have no problem in previewing and rendering.)
Stages 3 to 5 were done in two separate project files. Then I render the results to a 1920x1080 videos with the intended frame rate, wmv format to reduce file size. 
For stage 6 and stage 7, I created another project file and put together all the video parts rendered in the previous step. This include the time lapse clips which were rendered from other project file in mov format for better quality.
Stage 6 is the most hardest part to me. For a Hollywood movie, they have a composer to create the score/music. If this is a paid project, I will not hesitate to hire someone for the task. But since this is a non-profit, personal project, I got to handle it myself. The most efficient way for me to do it is to find some nice movie soundtrack that match the video (or to fine tune a little bit of the scenes to match the music). Though this is painful sometime, but the outcome is really rewarding when you have the music that brings the video to life! 


Screenshot of Sony Vegas Project:
During stage 2

During stage 7

Screengrabs:

Here is the video:





Some notes about footage shootings:
This wasn't really a well prepared project. I did have in mind that I wanted to record somethings about the trip because it is a very rare chance for the whole family to travel together, especially to this far. However, since I was the one who did the trip planning, managing transportation and accommodations, driving, I really can't commit to seriously shooting the footage. No tripod or other support most of the time, because that will be very inconvenient for me when I need to handle other stuff at the same time. Therefore, I relied mostly on my 16-35mm lens to make handshake not so apparent. 
My mindset was that if what I shoot is adequate, then I will edit a video, and if it's not, I will just make a photo slideshow. 
It turns out that I did shot quite a big amount of footage, but they are a little  about this and that events, so I decided to edit a montage video. This explains why there is no connection between most of the scenes. 
One scene however should have been included - sushi, since most of the time we are dinning at sushi restaurant, and that Hokkaido sushi is considered the best in Japan. Probably because I am not a fan of sushi, so it turns out that I didn't shoot any footage about it. 
The bear shot wasn't by me, it was by my brother using a camcorder while I was driving. The time I took out my camera and get the setting right, the bear already gone.  
 

A natural lighting setup

Just tried up a natural lighting setup for still life photography, corn in this case.

The setting is simple, one diffuser to diffuse the natural light coming into the room (make the light source larger), and a white reflector opposite to the diffuser to bounce back some light.

Although the setting can provide very soft lighting, still some Photoshop work is needed to create a pure white background shown below:

Water droplet photography

Just tried out water droplet photography today after obtaining some tips from youtube. Here is the result.

The blueish look is obtained by changing the white balance to tungsten mode.

My light source come from two table lamps behind a white sheet.

The vacuum cleaner tube is to hang a punctured plastic bag filled with water. The water droplets from the plastic bag fall into the black bucket below, which is filled to the brim with water.

I used canon 5D markII with a 100mm macro lens. Because the light source isn't that strong, I need to push the ISO up to 5000, so that I can shoot at 1/1000 s and F8.0.

It seems that I should have used an even faster shutter speed because the falling droplet still have some motion blur at 1/1000 s!

Hawaii - Honolulu

During my trip to Hawaii, I stayed at a luxury room of Shereton Waikiki with oceanfront view (the room was shared by three of cause or it would be too expensive). Through the balcony is a nice view of beach with the diamond head at the background.

Balcony view...

The bus is specially designed for tourist with its sites facing sides for sighting, and there is no window to allow the tourist enjoying the Hawaii sea breeze.

At the hotel lobby is a large statue of turtles... perhaps turtles are their symbolic animal because there are turtles swimming near the beach every late evening looking for foods. I've never seen turtles so often before.

There are also a sand made statue...

And some souvenir shops.

At the hotel's beach, there is a cafe (or pub) that we can enjoy drinks and light meals...

and enjoying sunset view. I should have been here with my lovely wife, not with colleagues :(

This (below) is the view of hotel from Diamond head.

Trees along the track of Diamond head hike.

From the Diamond head, the horizon no longer looks flat... we can see its curvature.

It has been some times I never see coconut trees. Natsukashiiiii

The views while driving along the cliffs were really spectacular! At one time I saw some seagulls flying near the cliff right beside the car window, so much like the view from the National geographic channel.

During winter, there will be full-pipe wave, but too bad the wave isn't strong during summer.

This is Hanauma bay, heard that Elvis Presley made his movie here. Honestly, I do agree that this is the nicest beach at Honolulu.

At any beach, do watch up for jellyfish. It is poisoning. My colleague got his hand bitten by it. It is really painful (according to him), but not to the extend that he will accept my offer of peeing on his hand, which people says can release the pain.

We also went to the Pearl Harbor.
See! a 'passport station'! This prove the important of Japanese tourist at Hawaii. In case you don't know, when there is a school tour, Japanese students are given a form (they call it passport some time) that they need to collect all the stamp on it from the places they are visiting.

The grave yard of US armies who passed away during the attack of Pearl Harbor.
Japanese (even with the US citizenship) were being held at refugee camp during the war.

Very famous Hawaiian burger, called the KUA'AINA burger. Must try it!

Garlic shrimp. Again, with pineapple, because it is the featuring fruit at Hawaii.

We have round the whole Honolulu island by car, it isn't so big.

'Hitachi trees' beside the road...

The kind of school bus we saw in Hollywood movie...

A compilation of footage and photos here: