Is it possible to visit Boston without actually, um, visiting Boston? When we rolled into Beantown, we set up camp in a rural area some 30 miles outside the metropolis.
This choice of campground was made partly out of necessity. There just aren’t many (if any) attractive camping options that are near the city center. So we decided to stay in the town of Littleton, and venture into the city via the “T” subway system.
Our campsite was fantastic, a welcome break from the recent deluge of asphalt. Here we were delighted to discover a privately run campground with campsites more akin to a national or state park. The sites were spacious, quiet, and loaded with tall trees. We had our own picnic table and firepit. We made good use of both, grilling steaks and making smores.
It felt great to do some simple, fundamental camping again. “I must say that I’ve really enjoyed our campground,” Kristy said. “Even if we don’t go anywhere, we feel like we’ve gone somewhere.”
We explored the area and found several charming small communities. A nearby ice cream and mini golf establishment called Kimball Farms served up the best ice cream I’ve tasted in a long time. We went to a local Korean restaurant and had the best — okay, the only — Korean food, while sitting on the floor. And I particularly enjoyed our visits to Walden Pond and Sleepy Hollow Cemetary, where we paid homage to that 19th Century rebel, Henry David Thoreau.
Did we go to the city of Boston? Yes, of course. We explored Boston proper. We hopped aboard the “T” and did everything that a committed tourist is supposed to do: whetted our whistles in America’s oldest tavern, consumed a bowl of chowder at America’s oldest restaurant, and topped it all off with cannoli at Mike’s Pastry Shop in the North End. We walked the Freedom Trail. We enjoyed the city.
But most of all? We just enjoyed our campsite. How much did we enjoy this campground? We extended our stay THREE times. Any longer and we might have to pay Massachusetts residential taxes!
Ok…..so I ask myself every time I watch a new episode of “the moon” how can it get better? I watch and DAMN YOU DID IT AGAIN! AS you say little nuggets on video. Just the best awesome. man what a camp site. I forgot to tell you when you were in Maryland to check out Edgar A Poe and Babe Ruth Mary Pickersgill who made the flag the F. scott key wrote about in the Stars Spangled Banner dumb me!
But the way it’s shot soundtrack timing everything. Another home run! I messed up and hit the 3 stars it should have been 5+. Great Job you two I just can’t wait for Maine and Bar harbor.
Thanks Matt! I thought this might be a “love it or hate it” video, meaning some would love it, while others would exclaim, “What the hell is that guy smoking?!” lol
I have always been intrigued by Thoreau and it was a treat to do this video. The lake scenes were indeed shot at Walden Pond, and that’s his gravesite at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. (Some of the other cemetery shots are from Boston’s Granary Cemetery.)
Anyway, glad you liked it! I really like this one too. 😀
I work in Acton, right down the street from Littleton. Kimballs has the best ice cream anywhere. Even though I live here I have never been to most of the places you mentioned to busy RVing elsewhere lol.
We loved Kimball Farm. In fact, we enjoyed our first visit so much, we returned a second time (on Thursday for the car show). We played a round of mini golf. And after much research, we can highly recommend Vanilla Peanut Butter, Chocolate Peanut Butter, & Coconut Almond Chip. Their ice cream is the best!
Not bad.. Not bad at all.. about the only thing that I may suggest is that you use longer transistions (fade out-in) time… I know your under pressure to keep the trailer time down.. but… while the rest is in 3/4 time… so should the fade’s… play with the down time/up times on the camera… and I think U will find some fun with it…
I also suggest that you go back and look at some of your early trailers. I needn’t say more… as each time you produce one.. it gets better and better… with form and visual effects and sound…
This one was very quieting as well as warm and fuzzy feeling… nice… keep up the good work…
And as others who are also reading and are thinking about putting the camera to use while travling… note the form and delivery… in this one … you are still looking for his delivery while enjoying the slow time and feeling what he is trying to visually convey. A tool in the box of video presentation… never get in a hurry… but don’t dottle either…
As to the places and travel… wow.. nice .. looks like the wx also was behaving…
Ya done good You all… **** rating from this end…
FYI…..
Hey did you know that the little light in the gear shift .. which shows when your in overdive… starts blinking .. means?? Neither did we… but when we asked ford about it… they said it means that the transmission is overheating… never knew that… but, we went and borrowed one of these auto tap interfaces… (plugs into a service plug inside the truck) which then works with your lap top.. you can see the engine works from it… and sure enough it said… trans over temp on the code… so we went to the section and found that our trans was telling the computer in the truck that it was reading 1200 degrees…(ya right)… no doubt a wire had come off or made bad connection… so we didn’t worry about the rest of the trip and when we got into station… had it fixed… yep just a bad connection…
The auto tap is one heck of a great tool… as the “check engine ” light doesn’t say much… and you need one of these things to see what the heck the light is on for (by the way if the check engine light starts blinking… bad JU JU… stop right now…. as it means bad expensive thing are happening)… I never leave home without the autotap tool now… FYI
Ahhh wait till you see the new flick were working on…. and the AS trailer that gets blown up from the propane leak… really a open house effect… not to worry though… no real AS were hurt during this film’n … its all done with computer models smoke and mirrors… and junkyard AS items…. blew the top right off the frame…like a cherry bomb and a can … of course the special effects guy addes lots of pryo.. to make it more interesting.. but he said most of it was the propane… hmmm makes one wonder if they have a leak now… grin…
GMAs.
Sigh, I don’t know if I should just keep trying or go back to still photography. This is so good, has such a tone, a mood …. hell with it , I’ll go and try again.
that the sprit Restlessole…. Like the rest of us… nothing comes easy… you try it .. review it and then improve on it…till its the way you want to present it… as any good video person will tell you… it gets good with experiance and playing with it. That is why books really don’t help much. You have to keep trying. .. real time.
But….
your videos may not look like Seans. Each have their own abilities and signature. Yours is not like mine, Seans is not like mine and while we all paint pictures and turn them into non verbal expressions it is that signature which set us all apart. i.e you could tell John Wayne from his cloths and walk..and talked…. yet you can tell Clint eastwood by his stance. Ford , Spielburg, Lucas all have signatures in the way they film. Each is unique and different… we know them by how they tell the story visually to the viewer.
As you keep trying you too will develope your own signature. so don’t try and think yours should be like someone elses… it never will be …as you view things differently through your eyes than we do… Sean even has his signature as such, that he sub’s into. We can see it develope as he presents more of his trailers… However, it didn’t just happen over night or with the idea you just go pick up the camera and instanly become versed in film’n.
If you go back and look at Seans first trailers and then jump to the latest ones you can see how he progressed and improved each time he made a new one.
While still photo is nice to show one picture of grandure … video is as different as night and day. Video is the use of not only the picture but also of fluid motion and telling the story through the use of visual… suggestion…. and not necessarly verbal. (it s not as easy as it looks… as now it takes plan’n and time’n to get your idea/story as we call it/ across to the viewer.) We also use several … call them… conditions… to set the viewer .. into keeping their attention on what we are trying to show/say. some of the “conditions we have discussed with Sean through the ones he has done here.
The best advise I can give you is ….Never give up… and you will achieve what you want to show.. Even the best sometimes don’t get it right the first time and so we do it again…and again…. lucky we now have digital and just overwrite the previous or can record it again and again… with old film you had a greater expense as once exposed you could’nt use it again .
Looking forward to seeing some of your good video work… by the way my best and only critic is my dog… if he whines and growls at the screen… its a looser.. unless its a bad guy getting his… but if he barks and gets excited..like he wants to go outside…. life is good. .(I bribe him with a doggie treat sometimes too as payoff) .. sometimes though he really does want to go outside… which makes it hard to tell if we have a winner.. but when ya gota go.. ya gota go…. grin…
I would ask Sean for some pointers on DIY video shooting…
Thanks very much GMAs. I really appreciate the advice. It is all new at the moment and I am still struggling with some of the techy stuff but slowly getting a handle on it.
I purchased the camera to chronicle our year traveling around the US starting next month but after watching some of Seans videos I know I will never be satisfied with just shooting memories. As with most things worth doing in life, once you start doing it you discover much more than you bargained for.
My best and usually only critic is my better half , Michele. Whether it is a poorly played piece on a guitar, a badly lighted picture, poor fitting or badly matched clothing, an unpalatable gastronomic creation, ANYTHING , she chirps right up and gives her opinion. It can be deflating at times but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Again, thanks for your comments
Hmmmm, where to begin. First of all, thanks much for your comments. I’m glad you guys like the Thoreau video. I think this is a case where the ingredients gelled. If only they all could come together so well…
As GMAs well knows (and restless, you are finding out) these things take some time to put together, especially when you are doing the heavy lifting yourself with no crew.
There’s a saying: “fast, good, & cheap; pick any two.” I usually pick good and cheap. Which means we can’t crank ’em out on a daily basis. If we were posting videos more frequently, our quality would suffer. Or our costs would skyrocket. There are always tradeoffs.
Making quality videos (or “digital filmmaking” if you prefer) is a comprehensive creative challenge. When you think about all the ingredients that are involved, it can be intimidating. Obviously there’s the visual cinematography, but there’s also the challenge of capturing quality audio…and then the challenge of putting the pieces together in the editing suite in a manner that is compelling and makes sense. So there are multiple skills to master. It’s like a soufflé — if one element fails, the whole thing can collapse. 🙂
As GMAs says, even Hollywood experts who are gifted with talent and vast financial resources don’t always get it right. That’s because there are elusive elements of artistry and creative chemistry involved. Why haven’t they figured out a formula to create hit movies? Because doing so is impossible. Yes, there are certain bankable elements, but the end result is always a mystery. They just put all the ingredients together and hope it gells. Every summer there’s always a $100 million flop; there’s also always a relatively cheap film that makes it big.
I agree that everyone has their own filmmaking style. I’m not sure that what I do on LongLongHoneymoon.com, in its present form, is necessarily the best method to build website traffic and entertain on the Internet. A lot of the video content on the Internet is done in an (ahem) “fast and cheap” style. This is understandable: people like it, and you can do it cheaply on a regular/daily basis. When I first started doing blog videos, I did some “vlogging” in this style: one shot, no cuts, speaking to a static camera that was positioned on a tripod. But as a filmmaker, I’ve chosen to pursue quality, to develop certain techniques that might transfer into other projects (such as feature length documentary and narrative films). The Thoreau video has dozens of shots, cuts, camera movement, etc. They have gotten more complex — maybe too complex! If I’m not careful, this will start to feel like work. 😉
Anyway, to restless, my main advice is to persist. If you are passionate about filmmaking, you will learn something new every time you pick up your camera. That is both the curse and the joy of filmmaking!
—-
BTW GMAs, I will check out the auto tap. It sounds like a great tool.
And did you really blow up an Airstream for a movie? LOL I know, I know, it’s all CGI… But that is a funny coincidence.
By the way, I might add that I am in awe of what many still photographers do. Even though I have a nice Nikon digital camera, I have a hard time producing the type of results I’d like. My photos are okay, but I lack the skill to fully utilize the capabilities of the camera. There are similarities between cinematography & still photography, but there are also many differences. A different skill set must be developed. One of my goals this year to to improve my still photography…. and I’m workin’ on it!
Thanks for the encouragement Sean. I of course WILL stick with it and eventually might just be able to produce something I am willing to share with anyone but my “small” critic. I can “see” what I want to do in my minds eye but being able to get that into a moving picture is, at least at this point, impossible. I am an artistic person and a wee bit of a perfectionist which is probably a disadvantage, at least at this point.
I have been shooting still photographs since I was 16, won a couple of competitions, have lots of my work on peoples walls and have owned a myriad of expensive cameras. It took me a long while to realize that the equipment, as long as it was of a reasonable quality, didn’t matter. Expensive Nikons can take some really lousy pictures 🙂 Anyway, for that reason I have resisted in upgrading to HD already and will continue with the Panasonic SDR-S26 until I can at least say I have produced something worthwhile with that.
The rain has finally ended up here and the sunny skies are coming your way!
Restlessole…
How its done in the big time… Take your still camera and shoot shots of the area you want to video… then make a story board to help you decide what you want to do with the video… story line is next… (story being what you want to tell others with the audio and video… we call them story lines and action info…
When you have your shots ready.. now take a couple of 3/5 or 5/8 cards and write on them how you want to get from one shot to the next… (cut to, fade out/in ) when done you should have a good story board to follow when you go out into the field….
Ahhh yes Equipment needed… Next I think I would get a wireless mic for you/subject to wear… and direct input into the camera audio… This works great for normal talking… and not having a long cord going from the camera to you holding the mic… their are some that can be used as stereo 2 channel inputs then also which work when your talking or discussing things infront of the camera with some other person.
Still photo guys /people… are constantly taking pictures while were shooting video… I get a copy of them after so I can see problems in lighting/or background .. as most of the time we are more conserned with the subjects and delivery when rolling. The Still guys the can provide us with what was taken… and proofs that we can draw on to give the tech’s showing what we would like them to improve if we have to reshoot… most of the time the team usually gets the .. next time could you improve this… (again directors signature on the shot kind of thing. )
Restlessole…
Indeed… how will you know if its good or bad if you don’t share it??? what may look bad to you… is great to others… in the eye of the beholder… and not to mention help in achieving your goals… we have all been their… and to help is part of the band of brotherhood cinematographers…
Many times we take shots that were taken by others (such as a news reporter in the field) and blend it into the big picture… is it lower quality.. yes… but that is what we want… kind of thing. so its all good… and like first time actors… gunshy is not what you want…to be… if you think critics are just for the little guys starting… ahhhh well… I just scrap’d out 40 hours worth of filming because the actor was not that good with her delivery… so we got a new actor.. and while she is brand new … she is coming across as scared… exactly what we want…
You will be surprised at what you can accomplish with what you have… just keep trying… you will go from the home travel movies… to more warm, deeper tone moods…
Of course you can always come here and Sean (now a expert notable traveling TV star cinematographer is always ready to assist.. hint hint Sean)
And NO we did not only blew up A.. AS . We blew up two of them… as we had to retake the shot after getting our new co-Star -actor… it was great… wait till you see the movie… you won’t leave the propane on at night anymore.. grin…
Hey they were filming the movie “come dance at my wedding” over yonder last week… watch for it on TV…
RV’n is in the movies… grin…
GULP! OK … I need to re-read this a few times. TY ….. I think ….. GMAs
(and I will share it , really I will, I just need to feel even just slightly good about it first.)