Another film for the Underwater Over Land Film Challenge.
The theme for this challenge was “Animal Kingdom.”
Unfortunately this film had to be put together in just a few hours.
Family matters kept me home for most of the time period we had to complete the film. So, on the last day I headed out and spent most of the day driving around trying to find anything to film.
I knew I didn’t have enough wildlife footage to even come close to doing a film that really addressed the theme. So, I came up with the idea of doing a film about there not being any wildlife in the “Animal Kingdom in the tenth hour.
With the film due that night, I sat down about 9:00PM and started trying to put something together. My plan was to do a voice over but as the night wore on, that grew to be less likely.
The clock struck 2AM and I was still trying to put something together to beat the deadline.
Finally I just started laying down track, hoping that it would all make some kind of sense.
Although not the film I was hoping to do, I made the deadline and hopefully it has a bit of a message.
[flv:http://www.silverphoenixllc.com/phoenixblog/movies/SilentKingdom.flv 592 331]
Silent No More
A lot of times when I’m out in the field, I like to just sit and listen to the sounds of nature. I enjoy this so much that I invested in a Zoom H4n digital audio recorder to take out with me and capture some of the natural sounds I encounter.
The Zoom H4n by the way is a remarkable recorder. It can record fantastic audio with it’s built in stereo mics but also allows you to plug in 1/4 inch and XLR mics as well.
My first experience recording with it was in Monterey, California. My hotel was right on the beach and at night I could listen to the waves and seabirds outside my window.
Returning back to Iowa I took the Zoom with me on my trips to a tall grass prairie about 15 miles from my home. I was working on my latest film, “The Prairie” for the UWOL film challenge.
It was late in the afternoon and I could hear owls hooting in the nearby forests, birds settling in for the coming night, frogs in the nearby pond, etc. But what amazed me when I returned home to listen to the audio was how much other sounds the Zoom had picked up.
The tall grass prairie is really out in the middle of no where. Yet, I could hear the sound of tractors out in distant fields, motorcycles roaring down roads far in the distance. There were airplanes flying over head and the rumble of freight trains as they made their way across the state. I could hear dogs barking from nearby farmhouses, cars traveling down the lone road that passes by the prairie.
What amazed me even more was that long after a plane flew overhead or a car drove past on the gravel road, their sound continued to be recorded. The pristine natural sounds of the tall grass prairie were being contaminated by a world that had seemed so far away.
No matter how much I felt as one with nature while I sat in the prairie it seems that the sounds of man are still there no matter how much I wish they weren’t.