"Hairy Bikers" Widescreen

[Guest Yachtsman1]

A word of explanation first for our non UK members who may be wondering who the "Hairy Bikers" are. They are a pair of male chefs who travel around the countryside on high powered motor cycles searching out new recipes for their TV shows.

We obtained tickets from the BBC to attend a live recording at Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire. It was a dull overcast day & flash photography wasn't permitted, so the pictures aren't at their best. My camera at the time was a Canon 50D, can't remember the lens. The show is mean't to depict the manic activity of a live TV recording session, so none of the paraphenalia associated with TV is excluded, it is mean't to be there., There is an initial period of silence at the beginning and end so don't assume your speakers are faulty. I edited the pictures on my 5-4 monitor as my 16-9 hasn't been commissioned yet, so any converging verticals or dodgy perspective is as good as I can get with the current set up. The live recording at the end was done by my wife who forced her way through the crush around the rear of the action, so is as good as we could get in the circumstances.

Mechanics. Mediafire 26MB, 6m 18s run time, 85 slides, 16-9 aspect ratio, slide size fixed at 1920x1080 pixels quality 5 in Elements 10. Comments as usual will be gracefully received.

http://www.mediafire.com/?67a51lb5u560nrl

Yachtsman1.

[Ken Cox]

Eric

start the band

you have no black bands on my ws monitor -'twas edge to edge

welcome to ws heaven

the intro screen 3-4 slides in could of had a different font

great color

ken

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Ken, not sure what you mean about the font? glad you liked it.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1 only 47 more to go.

[Ken Cox]

Eric

your choice of font appears "crunched"

the fonts used earlier is "open"

ken

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Ken

I think visit to spec savers is in order, the picture in question is a photo of the sign outside the venue pinned to a five barred gate. BBC font department

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

I suppose the original would have clarified it better, zoomed it in close to try to make it clearer.

[Ken Cox]

I think visit to spec savers is in order???

ken

[trailertrash]

Eric, this is very good. However with a little refining it could be superb. I offer the following ideas [ which are only how I would have done it.

Trim it to 5 minutes and loose some of the duplicate shots. Cameras etc.

Vary the push left transition it lasts to long.

shorten the fade transition by 50% make it faster.

Reduce the actual speech portion of the soundtrack by one third.

Photography excellent.

WS superb.

Post on beechbrook.

This could be your best yet.

Andrew

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Thanks TT, I take on board your comments, however, I think you are basing them on "Camera Club" philosophy. I know I've been there. My current philosophy is based on my audience of post 65 year olds & their enjoyment. I base this on your comments about the side transitions? I assume you are referring to the amount of slides using it? I carried them on to a change in the picture & sound content, I had shortened them prior to releasing the show as I thought they went on too long. To shorten the fade, I believe old eyes need longer to transmit what they see to the brain, which is why I set them as I did. The ST I needed to cover the sequence where the bikers were demonstrating whisks, which at the time was extremely funny & contained many more pauses for laughter and directorial instructions, I did cut it quite mercilessly. I don't know if you've been to a live recording at the BBC?, we went to Granada Studios in Manchester to a recording of Mastermind, it took over 3 hours to record 3 half hour programmes, & we left before they'd finished. When we saw the transmitted shows the order of sequences had been changed so that it was difficult to follow what we had seen. Anyway I'm chuntering on again & I have 47 conversions to sort, Monochrome Hawes is next. Beechbrook! another reason I don't post them on there is the fact they have a time limit, whereas Mediafire can be used as an additional storage facility.

Thanks for lookin Andrew, onward & upward.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

PS How do you like the new font & can someone advise if I can make this my default

[Barry Beckham]

Eric

I admire your enthisiasm to convert all those shows. I recall saying over 3 years ago that once you see your old shows on a large flat screen monitor, you regret staying with 4:3 and 5:4 so long. I certainly did, but then its easy to be clever with hindsight. I have converted a few of my older shows to widescreen, but to do them all would have been more than I could have coped with.

Time to isolate 6 of the best, but move on with new work for your new monitor perhaps.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Barry

I don't think you are keeping up? maybe all that sun? (10 degrees in Southport today). I've also acquired a widescreen projector & the old stuff doesn't fill the screen, so a mixture of 5-4 & 16-9 in a public show doesn't work IMO. However, although I've gone WS I still like 5-4, as crops don't have to be as destructive as 16-9.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.

PS I'm using my new monitor & it's like watching a tennis match, playing hell with my vertigo this constant head turning.

[Barry Beckham]

You will get used to the 16:9 and in a month or so you won't be able to take 5:4 anymore, that is a prediction.

Your right that the 16:6 format can be a bit limited, I have spent a lifetime trying to make sure I crop in camera, so now and again I go to crop an image to 16:9 and run into trouble, it just won't fit. I like 16:10 better, or even 3:2.

All formats play OK on my old 1024*768 projectors.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Barry

I can use 5-4 on the new projector, but my last public show had a DVD in amongst the PTE 5-4 shows, so I had to set the projector to fill the screen width for the DVD & height to match the 5-4 so in my eyes it looked odd, hence the decision to go all widescreen. I'm keeping my XGA projector as a back up.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.