Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
As promised, here is the video I put together of my parents' visit to Grenada. If nothing else, definitely watch the first half so you can see a huge leatherback sea turtle lay and burry her eggs. They go into a sort of trance during this process and so you can only use red light to see them because red light doesn't bother them in their trance. We got to touch our turtle, and our good friends Kayla and Evan were volunteering that night so they got to be the ones to catch the eggs and record all sorts of numbers and measurements for research. Turtles are so rad! And these ones are the raddest because instead of a shell, they have rough, leathery backs. They're like legit sea dinosaurs.
The Limas Family from Laura Lambert on Vimeo.
A few weeks ago I took some pictures and shot a video for this cute family. Brandon is a term 2 med student at Jared's school and their family goes to church with us. Allie is super sweet and was a dance major at BYU. She's in a dance group here with some other friends of ours and they are awesome! And their baby . . . don't even get me started. She is such a fun lil' cutie. Love these guys!
I'm still a bit of a photo/video rookie, but every time I step out of my comfort zone to do something like this I learn so much! And although I'm excited to upgrade my gear later this year, I'm also grateful that I'm stuck with what I've got in Grenada (no technology stores around these parts). It's forced me to focus on technique and do a lot more research than I may be doing if I had fancy stabilization equipment and top-quality lenses to lean on. Plus, I'm grateful that people here want to hire me so I'll actually be able to afford upgrades later on. Lots of things to be grateful for in Grenada.
Oh and hey, I'm getting ready to launch a website in the coming month or two. I'm thinking it'll be half videography website, half blog. I figure if I'm going to pay for a domain name, I may as well put both on it. Thoughts on a name? Unfortunately, "Simpleton Pleasures" proooobably isn't the best choice for a videography website. It may be time to move past this space *tear*. I'm thinking that for simplicity, I may just use my own name for my budding business. You know, Laura Lambert Films or something generic like that. Thoughts? Experiences? Business name suggestions for me? Please and thank you!
As it turns out, I love to make videos. A lot. Sometime in the past month it occurred to me—why not try to expand this videography thing? I've been in the blogging world for a long time, and something I'd often read was, "Just because you happen to have a nice camera doesn't mean you can be a professional photographer." Or in my case, videographer, And simply put, that's not true. I do understand that simply having a nice camera doesn't automatically make you skilled, but if you really love to do something and practice it and actively try to learn more about it, then I see no reason why you can't make something real of it.
With that in mind, I've started to build a bit of a video portfolio. Grenada is a great place to do this because (a) it's interesting, (b) it's chalk-full of young families, couples, and single students who would love a video memory of this incredibly important part of their lives, and (c) I have literally NO competition. At the end of each term there's a scramble for people who are about to leave the island to pay to have nice pictures taken. Although there are quite a few photographers, there aren't enough to meet the demand. Jared and I have a branch friend who bought a basic DSLR camera last term to start taking pictures as a hobby. Within five months he had saved up enough from SGU student groups who would beg him to take their pictures with his nice camera that he upgraded to a really expensive new full-frame DSLR with the money they'd shove into his pockets (even after he told them he'd do it for free). Many of these same people are ecstatic about the idea of a video of them in Grenada, and guess what? I'm the only one who can give it to them. Basically, this place is a hobbyist's dream come true. So as a message to future SGU student wives (I know you're reading this), please take that to heart at the very beginning instead of waiting two years to catch on like I did.
Here is my very first official portfolio video of our friends Cherish and Tony and Baby Bridget. My camera's video quality isn't as crisp as I'd like it to be, but this video still made their family back home cry. Most people either don't notice or don't care about the less-crisp quality, and hey, if I can make this work here, then I'll be able to upgrade when we move back to America. Here's to chasing crazy pipe dreams!
The DeAngelo Family from Laura Lambert on Vimeo.
Some video highlights of our third and fourth terms in Grenada. It's a fun one!
Grenada Terms 3-4 from Laura Lambert on Vimeo.
I knew that the girls in Grenada would relate to and enjoy the video, but for whatever reason (sheer embarrassment) I held off sharing it until last week. I posted it to a Facebook group of some close church friends here with a disclaimer that I had sung the whole thing a capella and didn't add the music in until later, so please just tune out the out-of-tuneness. I had to, since one of the girls in the group is a legit professional singer who spent several months on one of those TV singing shows. #famous.
Anyway, long story short, they loved it and demanded I share it to the SGU SOO page (a Facebook page for the hundreds of SGU student "significant others"). I did, and they all laughed and cried and shared it to their own Facebook walls and it went Grenada viral. Jared started having people stop him on campus to ask him if he was the guy in the the wanna-get-a-suntan video. It was one of those 5-minutes-of-fame things that only lasted a day or two, but it was a good catalyst to get me sharing some of my video work. Also, a girl from my major at BYU found it when she typed in "med student wife" to youtube and it was the top hit. We bonded in the comments section.
The subsequent iMessage I sent to my brothers: "Brosephs. Over a thousand people have watched me sing my embarrassing 'want to get a suntan' video on youtube. WHAT HAVE YOU EVEN DONE WITH YOUR LIVES?"
I had to give myself a pep talk to write this post. And then I had to give myself a few more pep talks to overcome the physical nausea I experienced as I cropped down these pictures for your viewing pleasure.
Sometimes people back home ask me what it's like to live in paradise. I'm sure many of you have wondered a few times, and perhaps even pined for it once in a while. To all you people wondering what two years of gorgeous, not-a-care-in-the world tropical living is like, all I can say is "see for yourself":
These pictures were all taken within the past week. And I assure you, there were plenty of other bigger, juicier friends who were not fortunate enough to get their pictures taken because they were immediately smashed.
The first shot is of some sugar ants coming through the ceiling slats above my computer desk. The sugar ants find their way in here through anything: ceiling slats, electrical sockets, solid cement walls. . . . You may remember that this was a common problem during the first half of the year, but we haven't had too many ant problems recently until this. I squeezed some ant bait gel on the wall to distract them from finding any real food, and that seemed to do the trick. Unfortunately, these ants are even tinier and faster than the ones last term, so if we do end up having another ant infestation before we leave the island, it will be miserable (because they bite and eat literally everything).
The second shot is of a relatively small cockroach for this corner of the world. Usually they're about twice that big. Jared always checks the walls for them before we fall asleep, because our first encounter with a Grenadian cockroach came a few minutes after we turned off the lights one night and Jared felt one running across his neck.
The third picture is a flood of ants in our lobby, chowing down on the sad little skeleton of a baby gecko. I truly am sorry to show you that one, but you did want to know all about paradise.
The final picture haunts my dreams the most. This is an island centipede that I spotted on our bathroom wall one evening, and yes, it is poisonous. I knew a girl last year who put her hand in an oven mitt to get her dinner from the oven, but then she felt something scratchy in the mitt and was bitten by one of these terrors. She got some help and was fine, but they are truly terrifying. As much as I hate to recommend this, you really should watch at least the last half of the short video posted below so that you can see how they move. I'd never seen anything like it in Utah.
Normally we don't get quite so many big, freaky bugs in a week. However, this month is known as "Sweaty September" in the Caribbean. It's the hottest, wettest, sweatiest month of the year, and the bugs just love it. In the past we usually only see one nasty cockroach a month, and during our first year in Grenada I only ever saw two of those centipedes. But these past few weeks have thrown us four juicy cockroaches and three of those poisonous centipedes. In our house. I even spotted one camouflaged into our area rug one day (see video), so basically we are terrified to walk around barefoot now.
Also of note are the giant spiders that live on our balcony and the tiny bugs that eat through paper. They ate the dried flowers in my journal that Jared picked for me on our honeymoon. They chewed through the spice necklace that was hanging above our bed. They ate ate their way into all our gravy packets, and they even ate through and broke the wooden curtain rod in our kitchen. (And no, they are not termites.) Maybe some day you'll be blessed with another blog post from me entailing all the creepy crawlies that did not appear in this one. Until then, please observe this video I made of some of the bugs we saw this week. Then replay it over and over again on your bigscreen TV this Halloween.
(I know people always say this, but you really do need to click the little gear button in the bottom right corner and turn the settings up to an HD setting. You can't get the full effect of these exotic bugs otherwise. Also, Jared and I are very aware that we are kind of weird.)
I'm so glad I married an expert bug killer. (Unless they're "nice bugs." If they're "nice bugs" like worms or little millipedes or something else unthreatening, he will actually move them from wherever they are into safety.) The expert bug killer I married also happens to be the man who brought me to all these bugs in the first place, but that's irrelevant.
p.s. As far as foliage and beaches go, this place really is paradise. But it's like my mom (who served an LDS mission in the beautiful Philippines) said, "Paradise comes at a price."
Sometimes people back home ask me what it's like to live in paradise. I'm sure many of you have wondered a few times, and perhaps even pined for it once in a while. To all you people wondering what two years of gorgeous, not-a-care-in-the world tropical living is like, all I can say is "see for yourself":
The first shot is of some sugar ants coming through the ceiling slats above my computer desk. The sugar ants find their way in here through anything: ceiling slats, electrical sockets, solid cement walls. . . . You may remember that this was a common problem during the first half of the year, but we haven't had too many ant problems recently until this. I squeezed some ant bait gel on the wall to distract them from finding any real food, and that seemed to do the trick. Unfortunately, these ants are even tinier and faster than the ones last term, so if we do end up having another ant infestation before we leave the island, it will be miserable (because they bite and eat literally everything).
The second shot is of a relatively small cockroach for this corner of the world. Usually they're about twice that big. Jared always checks the walls for them before we fall asleep, because our first encounter with a Grenadian cockroach came a few minutes after we turned off the lights one night and Jared felt one running across his neck.
The third picture is a flood of ants in our lobby, chowing down on the sad little skeleton of a baby gecko. I truly am sorry to show you that one, but you did want to know all about paradise.
The final picture haunts my dreams the most. This is an island centipede that I spotted on our bathroom wall one evening, and yes, it is poisonous. I knew a girl last year who put her hand in an oven mitt to get her dinner from the oven, but then she felt something scratchy in the mitt and was bitten by one of these terrors. She got some help and was fine, but they are truly terrifying. As much as I hate to recommend this, you really should watch at least the last half of the short video posted below so that you can see how they move. I'd never seen anything like it in Utah.
Normally we don't get quite so many big, freaky bugs in a week. However, this month is known as "Sweaty September" in the Caribbean. It's the hottest, wettest, sweatiest month of the year, and the bugs just love it. In the past we usually only see one nasty cockroach a month, and during our first year in Grenada I only ever saw two of those centipedes. But these past few weeks have thrown us four juicy cockroaches and three of those poisonous centipedes. In our house. I even spotted one camouflaged into our area rug one day (see video), so basically we are terrified to walk around barefoot now.
Also of note are the giant spiders that live on our balcony and the tiny bugs that eat through paper. They ate the dried flowers in my journal that Jared picked for me on our honeymoon. They chewed through the spice necklace that was hanging above our bed. They ate ate their way into all our gravy packets, and they even ate through and broke the wooden curtain rod in our kitchen. (And no, they are not termites.) Maybe some day you'll be blessed with another blog post from me entailing all the creepy crawlies that did not appear in this one. Until then, please observe this video I made of some of the bugs we saw this week. Then replay it over and over again on your bigscreen TV this Halloween.
(I know people always say this, but you really do need to click the little gear button in the bottom right corner and turn the settings up to an HD setting. You can't get the full effect of these exotic bugs otherwise. Also, Jared and I are very aware that we are kind of weird.)
I'm so glad I married an expert bug killer. (Unless they're "nice bugs." If they're "nice bugs" like worms or little millipedes or something else unthreatening, he will actually move them from wherever they are into safety.) The expert bug killer I married also happens to be the man who brought me to all these bugs in the first place, but that's irrelevant.
p.s. As far as foliage and beaches go, this place really is paradise. But it's like my mom (who served an LDS mission in the beautiful Philippines) said, "Paradise comes at a price."
I made a video. It contains all of the random little clips I took during our first year in Grenada (which technically spanned from August 2014 to May 2015, but I think I only started pulling out my camera for film in November).
I know it looks like it's 8 minutes long, but the entire first minute is just Jared's white coat ceremony and the last three minutes are clips from Jared's birthday and Thanksgiving. I had to put them somewhere, but you can pretty much skip those unless you want to see how weird we are/how unconventional and awesome our Thanksgiving was. Also, I just noticed that if you turn the volume up during those last Thanksgiving clips and listen in-between our talking, you can hear all the chirping tree frogs and insects that come out at night here and are super loud. I would recommend that.
I know it looks like it's 8 minutes long, but the entire first minute is just Jared's white coat ceremony and the last three minutes are clips from Jared's birthday and Thanksgiving. I had to put them somewhere, but you can pretty much skip those unless you want to see how weird we are/how unconventional and awesome our Thanksgiving was. Also, I just noticed that if you turn the volume up during those last Thanksgiving clips and listen in-between our talking, you can hear all the chirping tree frogs and insects that come out at night here and are super loud. I would recommend that.
password: grenada (no caps)
This is a video I put together of all the footage my brothers and I got while they were visiting us here in Grenada. For jokes, I wanted to pick a Grenadian dancehall song for the background, since that's what all the taxis played the week my brothers were here. There are random sound effects all throughout the songs, like sirens and horns and girls saying "are you serious?" Unfortunately I couldn't find a good one for the movie, but this song comes from an album called "Dancehall Places," so I figure that counts. I'd recommend watching in HD on Vimeo. Enjoy!
(The best part is when Jordan accidentally lets go of his kite at 00:51.)
p.s. I'm new to the world of video making, so for all you more seasoned filmmakers out there, I have a question. Where do you go to find quality free music for your videos? I don't want to pay $40 to license a new song every time I want to make and publish a personal video. I also don't want my videos removed from the web if my music isn't licensed properly. Suggestions?
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