Ducks in Action

"Ducks in Action"

Director’s Commentary:

One of my favorite things to do on MSU’s campus besides taking walks is to go feed the ducks especially in winter time. I though I would try to making a compelling video about the ducks. I asked my spouse and my son to come with me so they can feed the ducks and I would take a video. They are not in the video. I did not want them to be part of the video because it would distract the viewer from concentrating on my main object of the movie-the ducks.
I recorded about 20 minutes of video with my camera of the ducks. I was thinking to myself how am I going to fit this all in one minute. I was reviewing the videos for a good one to two hours. I realized that there were a lot of redundant shots and they were not compelling at all. What was most compelling to me were the scenes where I captured the docks flying out of the river and flying back in the river.  I was also able to capture video of the ducks trying to catch the bread in the water and because the stream of the water was so strong, they had to use a lot of energy to swim back up or to fly back up to get more bread. What was captivating was their ability to pick up their heavy bodies from the water and their heavy landing in the water. I also noticed the beautiful colors of their feathers, which I showed at the beginning of the video by zooming in very closely to the two ducks just standing there. There were also two gorgeous big geese. There is one compelling these where I zoomed in very close to the two geese and in the background there is a group of ducks flying back in the water.

I used iMovie to create my one-minute video. Once I put all of my favorite scenes together, I realized that I had over 2 minutes of video. I though I would fast-forward some of the scenes which shrunk my video to less than a minute. But when I watched it, it did not look very compelling to me. It looked like a very boring movie about the ducks. Then I thought of showing some scenes in slow motion especially the ones where ducks were flying. And what a difference it made! Their slow movement of the wings flapping and the heavy landing in the river was so captivating.
I also thought a lot about the storyline for my video. When I put all the scenes together, they were just random scenes. It did not make much sense. Then I thought of starting the video with two ducks just standing there and I added a title “Ducks in Action.” At first I show the ducks in action in the river and then show them flying out of the river in slow motion. The next scene has two big geese just standing there and in the background in slow motion a group of ducks flying back in the river. I end the video with one goose just swimming away. I also added the credits at the end of the video.
I shot the video around 5pm in the evening and that gave me the best lighting.
I also added music in the background of the video. I think it goes very well with the video and with the movement of the ducks.
It took me about 5 hours to put this 1 minute video together. At one point I spent an hour working on 10 seconds of video. I made a couple of different videos and I had my spouse and my brother rate them. And they thought the duck video was the most compelling.