In the last month I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about my latest film, Travel Geek: Documentary Taiwan. This latest film doesn’t represent my latest film “capturing” efforts, but certainly is inclusive of my “post-production” skills gained at film school this past summer (2012). So while the critiques about camera work are solid and I will be implementing these insights into my upcoming films, I have to say that the good reviews on my latest editing technique are really rewarding.
The other compliments have been very nice as well. But I just wanted to point out that last bit because of what I’ve decided to do based on the other comments from the video views.
I currently have somewhere around 1,200 followers on this blog with an additional 300-or-so blog followers through WordPress. I get around 2,000 visitors from Twitter each month. I have more than 120 regular followers through my YouTube channel. And more than 2,500 through Facebook (from several pages and non-friend users). So, while I am eager to get more followers (wink, wink), I am happy to receive comments from these various sources. And this latest film has really drawn some great responses.
But one of the recurring comments that I have received is that it’s a bit too long to just sit and watch in one shot. So, to assist those of you without gobs of time on your hands, I am releasing the film in 10 separate parts over the course of the next 14 days (one part every two days with the Intro (Part One) and Part Two on the first day).
And that starts today. So below, I have uploaded the first two parts and if you’ve already seen them, you can feel free to just wait until I get caught up to where you’re at in the film, and start watching from there.
Included with subsequent parts of each new section, I will also be adding blogs as to the background of the filming from the personal journals that I kept along the way.
———————————————————–
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P87sbEzJ14c&w=560&h=315]
———————————————————–
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfrJ9yusDpg&w=560&h=315]
———————————————————–
In this first portion, the Taroko Gorge, I spent a few days driving through the entire park, camping in random cut-aways and hiking around the myriad trails, rope bridges and cliffside temples. It was an absolute blast. And it was splendid to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city grind and step back into another realm of this mysterious, geological jungle of sheer rock faces and strange fauna.
Along the trip, I saw wild pigs, what looked like the back of a giant dog (but what was later what I found out more likely the Asiatic bear) and some amazingly diverse species of winged creatures – not all of which were diurnal.
From the swell of sounds bellowing around my tent at night to the breathtaking natural vistas during the day, this trip was amazing.
Most of the footage that I have of the trip wasn’t even used for the film. It was a memorable collection of short, voiceless footage of birds landing all around me, not caring (or perhaps knowing) I was there, snakes lazing around the abandoned trailside, or waterfalls slowly chiseling away at the earth from far away on top of a mountain pass or overlook. I guess, looking back a year after I captured this footage, I was likely taking this footage more for me than anyone else.
And as I spent many hours reliving my mindscape of the time, it brought back many sobering memories of the entire time period surrounding all those moments in Taiwan.