gilliang video about me

My Story

I had been the photographer of the family for many years, but in the mid 90’s I began to feel that our holiday memories would be better served by a camcorder, as I at least wanted to see my pictures move.

In 1996 I bought my first camcorder, just in time for a visit to the ‘Western’ USA – the Rockies to the Grand Canyon. I returned home, and transferred the film to VHS tape, leaving out all the mistakes and unnecessary bits. Well, the scenery was so good that the film was very watchable, but the accompanying soundtrack was distracting. You get whatever was happening at the time, snatches of sound, other peoples conversations.....

I continued to film subsequent holidays, but I always felt the film would be better if I could be more ruthless with the out takes, and juggle the running order, and oh for the chance to add my own soundtrack, music and maybe a narrative. Well, eventually digital camcorders came along, and computer software, to enable me to do precisely that. Not that I could afford one straight away. (I subsequently found I could have edited my early films 'linearly' anyway, but that's life)

I eventually got my camera, a fairly simple Canon MV 450i, in January 2002. I deliberately bought a camcorder that was capable of re recording digitally from my old camcorder, as I wanted to re edit all my old films, as well as the film I took from then on.

The camera came with free editing software, and I started work. The first holiday with it was to Florida, where we had been several times before. It yielded plenty of raw film, but not much in the way of edited film, as it was difficult to make a coherent whole, and anyway, I had lots of raw analogue film from previous holidays. I decided to use this holiday as a ‘practice’ and make a full Florida film using all my footage at a later date. (That date has still not arrived)

I did eventually make a finished film about NASA, and also re made my ‘Western Journey’, but found the software very difficult to work with. What on earth to get instead??

I had learnt a lot of lessons in these few months though, particularly in the importance of the soundtrack. For example, while in Florida we visited MGM Studios, and the music and light show Fantasmic. I filmed most of this, but due to there being people in front of me, I did not have an uninterrupted view, and sometimes arrived at the action a little late, or out of focus. Here is an example of how the original film can be improved by the edit, in particular by moving the original soundtrack around a bit.

Beauty and the Beast raw film Broadband 56k

Beauty and the Beast edited Broadband 56k

Now I'm not saying there's anything very clever in that bit of film, but it was the first bit of editing I ever did, and due to the limitations of my software, a lot harder to do that it would be using the software I have now.

It seemed to me I needed advice regarding editing software and techniques. After a bit of research in my local library and on the internet, I found the Surrey Border Film and Video Club, who meet the first Friday of every month. My first meeting was July 2002. A whole new world opened up.

Since then I have acquired more software, I now use Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus for most of my editing and find it does almost all I need, and is very user friendly. I have a slightly out of date edition of Adobe Premier, which I do not find nearly so user friendly, but it is handy when I need to something special, like multiple video or sound tracks, or perhaps run a clip backwards - you’d be surprised how useful this can be. The computer was upgraded, then effectively rebuilt. I still regularly fill up my 100 gig memory, spread across 2 hard drives. Update, I now have replaced a 60 gig drive for a 250 gig one. Bliss - at the moment....

Thanks to musician friends on the Shadowmusic site (you know who you are), I found out about, and learnt to use (at least enough for my needs) music and sound manipulating software. I use Soundforge – the ‘lite’ version, Cool Edit and Acid Express.

For watching and storage convenience, I make my films onto Video CD, which will play on both the computer and our DVD player, though I also save a copy back onto mini DV tape in my camera – the best quality to save it in. At some later date when I have a DVD burner I will make DVDs also of my films. All the films on this website are wmv files (Windows Media Video) Hopefully, space permitting, as many as possible will be made in the ‘high’ quality wmv option, so that those who have broadband can see them at something approaching VCD quality. Update - I do now have the DVD burner, but getting a successful DVD is still a rather hit and miss affair. When I have it sussed, I'll put the details here.

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All contents of this website are copyright of Gillian Gatland unless otherwise stated