Yesterday, I posted my first video project in a while, “Tawny: A Day in the Life.”

For this project, I went for a very understated documentary feel. The intent was to get a chuckle from my audience based on the old cliché’s of a “dog’s life.”

How did I do this? Well my shooting was focused on two areas; first, shoot Tawny lounging around a lot, second, catch the main events of her day. Shooting her lounging, I put the camera as close to her as possible with the lens set very wide. Fortunately, she tolerated the camcorder in close to her like that better than she does my still camera. I think this is primarily due to the articulating LCD on the camcorder, which means I don’t need to get all the way down on her level. When I get on her level, she thinks that’s an invitation to play, not to continue what she’s doing and let me photograph her.

For the “big events,” I tried to retain a similar look by lowering the camera to her level and walking along with her. I used my camera’s “dynamic image stabilization” to keep this footage reasonably steady.

When I got around to editing and post processing it was time for Adobe’s new Creative Cloud to shine. I am a new subscriber to this controversial new service. On principle, I’m not really a fan of subscribing to my software. From a practical standpoint however, I think it will all work out essentially the same with some advantages.

First, I ingested all of my footage using Prelude. This appears to be a great program that I did not use to anywhere near its full potential due to my lack of experience. Unfortunately, it looks like it will take a little more work than I hoped for stock footage that I shoot often. The potential for specific projects is huge.

Next I did the bulk of the editing in Premiere Pro. I have experience with this program, but I must say I like the new version. Things seem to work faster and the default work space has much bigger preview screens. While doing this, I created my intro and outro title screens in After Effects. These were so simple however, that I couldn’t really get a feel for any changes in this amazing software package.

Finally, for grading I applied one of the desaturate lumetri looks that came with the software. Then I applied a Luma corrector to most of the interior shots, to get a contrast level that looked right with the exteriors. This “look” was precisely what I wanted for this project, but it’s going to be fun to mess with Speed Grade to create unique looks for me. I have something in mind particularly for aviation videos.

Take a look at some of my other videos.