Marius Staicu’s Blog

A few days ago we have made a classic circuit starting from Sibiu and traveling to Transfagarasan, Balea Lac, Vidraru Lake, Arges Monastery, Olt river and back home. Here you’ll find the first part of the trip, the Transfagarasan and the Balea Lac stops. When I’ll get a few hours of free time I’ll do the Vidraru lake with its power plant and the return to Sibiu. Unfortunately the Arges Monastery was cover with a wood and plastic framework for preservation / restoration so I could take only a few minutes of footage from the gardens (anyway the price to film in a dark church - nearly 3 Euro - was a little bit too high for my tastes - it’s not about money but about what you get for them). Until the second video is ready enjoy my first attempt…

Please note this video is my very first attempt to video production:

- shooting - Panasonic GS320 camera, from hand without tripod - you’ll notice on closeup scenes, at 10x magnification the optical image stabilizer is useless - lesson learned - use a tripod next time (I have a cheap one, for photo cameras, I doubt it is smooth on panning).
- scripting - no script, just taking a lot of scenes and hoping something is usable
- music - maybe not the best soundtrack (big words :D) but I like it. If I found a better one I’ll replace it (or if you have a better idea we can work on it).
- film editing - too many transitions (the quality of original scenes is not so big - there a lot of short scenes, under 10 sec, wrong camera movements, shaken closeups, wrong focuses and contrasts…)

You can find other mistakes. If you spot them just let me know my video art needs improvement.
And a final mistake - it seems youtube is unable to convert a 16:9 video to a 4:3 one. Too bad, I’ll have to do the dirty work by hand, next time.