Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
Blogcast
Millimeter"Snow Guardians": Collaborative Production, Innovative Post
Apr 20, 2011 3:49 PM
New Jersey-based cinematographer, visual artist and editor Jim Geduldick previously worked as a professional snowboarder, so his work on the feature documentary “Snow Guardians” combines two of his strongest passions. Geduldkick, who served as editor, postproduction supervisor and one of many videographers on the film, is eager to see it come out because he's proud of the work everyone involved put into the project and because it covers its topic from an unusual perspective.
Produced and directed by the successful documentary photographer Carson Garner, “Snow Guardians” focuses on the rescuers and ski patrollers who help keep winter sports enthusiasts out of danger — and come to the rescue when things go wrong. "You see documentaries about avalanches and how they can kill you, or stories about people being rescued," Geduldick says, "but they don't talk about the people who do the rescuing, and that's what ‘Snow Guardians’ is all about: the actual people behind the rescues and the people educating about avalanches and safety on mountain."
Geduldick segued into a filmmaking career by capturing cool snowboarding and skateboarding maneuvers. He developed on his own, teaching himself editing, visual effects and graphic design and bringing those skills to a variety of projects, including music videos and commercials. His arsenal of tools included Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects.
“Snow Guardians” came about in an unusual way: Videographer Tyler Ginter started tweeting about the idea for the project, and soon an entire crew came together via Twitter. "A lot of us met through Twitter, and we all were interested in making a film about this subject," Geduldick recalls. "We had people of all levels, from novices to ski patrollers, people who live on the snow. We wanted to get people involved and get a crazy amount of gear and see what we could do. That's where the whole www.collaborativefilm.com site came from. We didn't have much of a budget. A lot of us decided to just fly ourselves out to Montana and go it alone. People shot. We pulled focus for one another. Everybody pitched in."
Many productions these days use a mixture of camera technologies, but “Snow Guardians” might set some kind of record. The team went to the mountain locations with a whole slew of cameras. Geduldick says, "We had two [MX] REDs, which are great because you can shoot at 4K at up to 120fps and you have a RAW codec that gives you a lot of room to push the look around during color grading. We shot most of the interviews with Panasonic AG-AF100s. We did a lot of work with multiple Canon EOS 5D, 7D and 1D Mk IVs, which are so small and light and give that shallow depth of field. We used those for some interview work, too, and we did a little bit of 60fps shooting with the 7D for slow motion. We brought 18 of the really tiny GoPro cameras, which were great for mounting to a helmet, a ski patroller's chest, a rescue dog or a snowmobile."
With all those cameras, Geduldick, as editor and post supervisor, naturally had to work with quite a mixture of codecs, including .r3d, H.264 and AVC-Intra. He has used quite few NLEs over the years, and while he loved the effects and graphics packages from Adobe, he hadn't done much in Premiere Pro because he didn't feel it had the total toolset he needed.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
