October 22, 2010
NEW DOCUMENTARY IN THE WORKS
A shot of a future star is above. Note: This photo’s lighting has been computer-enhanced (big telephoto lenses don’t always catch light well), and a non-photogenic portion of a long blade of grass has been digitally removed.
I recently began outlining a script and selecting music for my latest production, which is tentatively titled Mule Deer Bucks of Autumn. I’m not sure exactly what it will be like, and much work lies ahead of me. I hope I finish the project sometime in 2011. I already have all the footage and natural sounds I need, but organizing/transferring the materials to my hard drives is tedious, and I need to research a whole new script. Below is my current synopsis of the video that I hope will materialize.
“This program celebrates mule deer bucks during the glorious, action-packed season of autumn. See bucks living wild and free in their scenic, colorful habitat as they fight for the right to mate, spar for fun, wander, feed, and just relax. This production consists of spectacular footage of bucks (ranging from spirited spikes to majestic monsters) accompanied by peaceful natural sounds and quality orchestral music. Geographer/ filmmaker Tristan Howard narrates, presenting facts on mule deer ecology and their beautiful habitat.”September 6, 2010
NEW HEADQUARTERS
I recently moved from northeastern California to Boulder, Colorado. In fall 2011, I plan on continuing my geography studies by attending graduate school in Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana. However, in the meantime, I figure I might as well gain residency in a Rocky Mountain state and take advantage of new/different employment opportunities.
Boulder’s location is great for my tastes. The town’s nestled between the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the edge of the Great Plains. I now live near bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, moose, and other species that were distant novelty critters in my old location. Rocky Mountain National Park (with its fantastic snow-capped peaks and tame wildlife) is only about an hour northwest of me.
NEW JOB
I’m nearly done with a sediment educational video (Addressing Road-Related Sedimentation) that I’ve been working on since July. The video was commissioned by the 5 Counties Salmonid Conservation Program in Weaverville, CA and funded by the California Department of Fish & Game. I performed principal cinematography, all video and sound editing, narration, and some script editing.
In the last couple months, I shot plenty of scenery in the wildlands near Weaverville, Hoopa, and Ukiah. I also recorded interviews with numerous land management professionals. Significantly collaborating with others on an educational video was an interesting experience that taught me a lot about the client-based aspects of the videography business.
VIDEO ISSUES WITH IE8
I recently learned that videos on my site may not even show up if you’re browsing the web with Internet Explorer 8. The problem is due to a browser bug that can affect all Flash videos on the browser—not just the clips here. Anyway, if that’s an issue for you, my videos should play fine in a different browser, such as Mozilla Firefox or Safari. The newest video on my site is below. It’s the 15-second DVD offer for Conditions of Western Wildlife that aired after the documentary’s Oregon broadcast last month. If that video plays fine, you shouldn’t have a problem playing my videos.
July 11, 2010
Conditions of Western Wildlife will in air in southwestern Oregon on SOP TV (Southern Oregon Public Television) on Monday, August 30 at 8:00 p.m. on Digital Channel 8.3. SOP TV broadcasts out of Medford, and its coverage includes Ashland and Jackson County.
July 6, 2010
I think I should explain the very poor screen quality that accompanied last Saturday’s broadcast of Conditions of Western Wildlife. In addition to ugly resolution, my program was disproportionately cropped, which resulted in off-center text and unappealing shot framing. The blurry images and frequent pixels implied that KIXE neglected to use a DV tape (which I specially provided for them) for source material. Instead, KIXE seems to have used a DVD, which contained a compressed MPG file.
I’m assuming that a lot of quality is lost when compressed video files are harvested from DVDs and forced to acquire the resolution and scan line numbers required by TV broadcasts. However, while KIXE has admitted the poor broadcast quality resulted from an error, I don’t know exactly what happened. Out of my numerous KIXE broadcasts, last week’s airing was the first one with serious problems.
Anyway, the screen quality of the Conditions of Western Wildlife DVDs I sell on this site is much sharper than what was shown on TV. The shots on the DVD also aren’t poorly cropped, and they look more balanced and aesthetically pleasing. The July 3 KIXE broadcast notably misrepresented my technical and artistic skills.
May 21, 2010
Conditions of Western Wildlife is scheduled to air on KIXE TV (PBS Channel 9) on Saturday, July 3 at 8:00 pm.
According to the KIXE TV website: “KIXE . . . covers a 130 mile radius that includes ten California counties: Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity. Today, KIXE is one of the most watched TV stations in this area. The station serves more than 500,000 people with more than 74,000 television households tuning in to Channel 9 each and every week.” --Source: http://www.kixe.org/node/8
July 3 will mark the first broadcast for Conditions of Western Wildlife.
April 3, 2010
NEW WILDLIFE DOCUMENTARY!
I recently finished a new hour-long production: Conditions of Western Wildlife. The synopsis is below.
Geographer/filmmaker Tristan Howard narrates this epic film exploring the prehistoric and historic conditions of wildlife across the American West! Visit the high plains to learn the tragic history of bison and the origins of the pronghorn’s fantastic speed. Wander the wetlands for a look at the remarkable success story of waterfowl conservation. Journey to mountain country to examine elk, mule deer, and predators such as the legendary grizzly, elusive bobcat, and infamous coyote. Climb high peaks to study mountain goats. And traverse rugged terrain to investigate a variety of bighorn sheep ranging from the Dakota Badlands to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
40 MINUTES OF DVD BONUS FEATURES!
- Cut Scenes (sea lions, coots, harlequin ducks, & more!)
- Wildlife Shorts (ducklings, lizards, quail, turtles)
- Tristan’s Showreel (5 years of cinematography highlights)
- TV Spots (PBS pledge drive promos & DVD ads)
I updated my site to accommodate Western Wildlife. Below are links to the new content.
NEW WEBPAGES
NEW VIDEOS
- Introduction
- Bison History
- Pronghorn Evolution
- Waterfowl
- Black Bears
- Coyotes
- Elk
- California Bighorns
- Desert Bighorns
- Harlequin Ducks
Furthermore, I edited movie trailer-like previews for all my documentaries.
PREVIEW VIDEOS
- Conditions of Western Wildlife
- The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley
- Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: A Biophysical Overview
January 9, 2010
I spent the last 5 days working out bugs with my site re-design. Below is a list of my site’s main new features.
- Header featuring the Grand Tetons
- More efficient menu bar with cascading sub-menus
- 25 Flash videos that play directly on individual webpages.
- New wildlife shorts: Turtle Tantrums & Quail Qualities
- Enhanced photo galleries with much larger photos
- Many new additions to wildlife photo galleries
- New, higher quality, & larger photos on non-gallery pages
- Forms for more convenient communication
- Shopping cart option
- Disc cover art on order pages
- Heavily revised text
All my videos should load faster and be more convenient to play because they’re now Flash files. As usual, audio-visual quality was compressed and lowered so I could accommodate a wide range of computers and Internet connection speeds. Naturally, my DVDs have higher quality than the online videos. The new wildlife shorts are musical montages that mostly feature good footage that didn’t quite fit into The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley. Below is a short video demonstrating the Flash format.
Some of my photos have been enhanced with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0’s auto smart fix feature, which according to Adobe: “Corrects overall color balance and improves shadow and highlight detail, if necessary.” Some images may be further from or closer to reality because of the smart fix enhancement. However, computer software can often yield more accurate processing results than the less sophisticated software built into my cameras.
Below is one of my site's many newly enhanced photos.
Now that you know about the new site features, I want to update you on events from last fall. Duckling Dawn and Lizard Lunch made it into KIXE’s online film festival TV broadcast. Both shorts aired on KIXE TV PBS Channel 9 on October 18, 2009. Unfortunately, KIXE never asked for better source material and the audio-visual quality of their broadcasts left much to be desired. I think they videotaped a computer screen. Anyway, Duckling Dawn was the finale of the festival. The festival presenter introduced it by saying something like: “This next video is too cute for words. And it's from our man in McArthur: Tristan Howard."
Below are some viewer comments regarding my film festival shorts. They were copied from the KIXE festival website (http://naturecaughtintheact.homestead.com/Comment---Vote.html).
“This one was interesting! I've never seen a lizard hunt before! How did he film that? The music got kind of annoying though!”
“Those lizards are adorable! Nice work! I also like your choice of music - it all works well together.”
“Wonderful, Comedy in motion, It is amazing how calming & refreshing it is to find joy in something so simple. TV today is full of attacks on morals & family values. It restores my faith in human nature when I can watch a program that I know will not drop material which is unhealthy for children in the middle of an otherwise decent program. Thanx”
“The duckling are still my favorite!! Jumping lizards are interesting but baby ducks are just flat cute!!”
January 4, 2010
“The whole gosh darn website’s new: that’s what!”
I can’t help but repeat myself from August 27, 2007 when I first launched this site. Anyhow, I recently re-did my entire website with new software. The changes are numerous. Everything’s more streamlined and flashier (literally in the case of my videos; now Flash files instead of MPG files). The free content is also higher quality and there’s new stuff.
I originally designed my site with the simple server-based software provided by my Web hosting service. Software limitations explain why my old site layout was fairly clunky and why my photos were always so small. In the last few months, I learned how to use some professional Web design software, Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. It lets me do almost everything I always wanted to do.
Feel free to explore the changes.
August 10, 2009
Lizard Lunch was posted on KIXE TV’s online film festival website today. Check out it and other northern California wildlife videos here: http://naturecaughtintheact.homestead.com/Comment---Vote.html
August 7, 2009
I recently learned that Duckling Dawn has been accepted in KIXE’s online film festival, “Nature: Caught in the Act.” More info on the film festival is in my July 25 news posting. I also finished a new wildlife short, Lizard Lunch. Below is a synopsis.
Fun entertainment literally jumps at you in this video featuring western fence lizards attempting to ambush dragonflies in northeastern California’s lava bed country. In their dedicated quest to snatch lunch, lizards go to extraordinary lengths as they hop, climb, twist, turn, and bite at their colorful, airborne quarry. The lizards act goofy, energetic, nimble, and determined as they demonstrate a telling lesson in tenacity.
I shot Lizard Lunch last July and that was a lot of fun. After careful, patient observation, I learned of a spot where lizards often wait to attack dragonflies in late morning and early afternoon. Once I found a lizard lying in wait, I’d record it for many minutes at a time and hope it did something interesting. I did this for several days. While I rolled through a lot of tape, the rewards were well worth it.
July 25, 2009
I recently added two new sections to the site. The new “TV SPOTS” section features four TV spots I designed for local PBS stations. The spots are basically little commercials for my work. Two of the TV spots promote The Wildlife of Little Hot Springs Valley and KIXE TV pledge drives. The other two spots are DVD offers that ran at the end of my documentaries.
The new “DUCKLING DAWN” section features an embedded Youtube link to my latest production: Duckling Dawn. As I say on the webpage: “Cute antics abound in this 3-minute short featuring duckling wood ducks feeding and relaxing at a remote lava rock pond in northeastern California.” Duckling Dawn was shot from May to July 2009 in high definition with my XLH1A video camera and it was edited with Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro. The video shows what I can produce with my latest equipment. I posted the video on Youtube as part of the guidelines for entering KIXE TV’s “Nature: Caught in the Act” online film festival. I have yet to receive word regarding the possible acceptance of my film in the festival. The festival started on July 11 and runs until this fall. Below is more info.
“North state public television station KIXE is assembling its biggest production team ever—viewers from its 10-county coverage area—and sending it out on assignment. The goal: produce video footage of wildlife and the natural settings it enjoys in our region. It’s “Nature: Caught in the Act,” a new festival that matches emerging video technology with the abundant outdoor opportunities in the north state. KIXE is telling filmmakers of all ages and abilities to go take a hike. Seriously. This summer and early fall, the member-supported station is urging people to take camera in hand and venture out into the great outdoors to create short, nature-themed films of wildlife or interesting natural settings.
KIXE, which has proudly aired the PBS flagship program NATURE for the past 27 seasons, is urging people to get out and in to nature, see it from a new perspective/set of eyes and share that view with others. According to Rob Keenan, KIXE’s director of content, the festival is designed to encourage a greater appreciation of our natural surroundings—the mountains, meadows, forests, lakes, rivers and streams—and the wildlife these areas provide homes for. Your short film just may end up being aired on KIXE during a live broadcast of The Best of Nature: Caught in the Act immediately preceding the airing of NATURE at 8 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18.” –Source: http://www.kixe.org/node/2153
For rules, instructions, and more information about the festival, visit: http://naturecaughtintheact.homestead.com/
Don’t forget that my Praire Creek film airs on SOP TV’s cable channel 21 and digital channel 8.3 on Saturday, August 1 at 6:00 p.m. The airing will be the program’s Oregon debut.
