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Guardian of the River won a 4-star award at BIAFF 2008

Making Guardian of the River

I had been interested in video work for a few years, but with the purchase of a Canon XL1S, it opened up other avenues and I was keen to shoot a wildlife documentary.

I thought about suitable subjects and finally chose dippers for a number of reasons, but mainly because they are reasonably predictable, spending their whole lives on the river.

Having chosen my subject, I then read about them (actually surprisingly little in the scientific journals) and scouted my local area for them. Even early on, my aim was to provide a record of the lives of dippers throughout the year, so I made notes on locations, behaviour and dates, hoping it would come in useful the following year.

I used my XL1s with an adapter and 100-400mm Canon zoom lens; this enabled me to obtain some good close up shots. However, the auto focus capability of the lens is disabled when attached to the adapter, and there were a number of potentially good shots spoiled by being slightly out of focus. Also, I used manual exposure; the dipper is fine to film in overcast conditions, but a nightmare when the sun comes out due to the contrast between white chest and dark brown back.

I spent many hours pacing up and down the riverbanks - there is really no substitute, but in early spring, spotting a dipper may lead you to its nest, and its preferred perches can then be watched and filmed. Often the dipper can be heard before being seen and this adds to the cameraman's ability to creep up on them. I tried to choose favourable conditions for filming, but because I wanted a year-round record of its life, I did shoot in heavy rain and snow using a protective waterproof liner over the camera.

I had a list of sequences I wanted; I never got them all, and some would have required specialised equipment. I hoped to be able to film them underwater from a bridge, and even bought a polarising filter, but the dippers proved to be too unpredictable and I soon gave it up. I also thought about buying a specialised, tiny camera to film the dippers inside the nest, but was worried about the well-being of the birds, and the potential loss of my equipment so I decided against this too. I did film a dipper eating fish however (this was late in the shooting) and some male-female interaction, but no actual mating behaviour.

With masses of film on my computer, it was important to be organised and, using Adobe Premiere Pro, I organised my clips into categories and made up lots of different sequences. I didn't wait until I had finished filming over the year. By doing this, I quickly realised what I should be mindful of during the filming; getting close-ups, establishing shots and thinking about the sequences then.

For the sound, I had very little experience, but decided to purchase a mini-disc recorder and borrowed a microphone from Perth Camcorder Club. I then recorded the background sounds of water and bird song at the bank side and experimented with other sound effects - riffling pages in a book, splashing water in a pan and scraping dry Weetabix with a cocktail stick! I then layered these to give the effect I wanted.

The commentary came from a girl at Strathallan, the school I teach at. She had impressed in a role in the school play and happily agreed to it. I quickly realised that recording sound in a large classroom is not a good idea! Some of the music came from another pupil at Strathallan School; a very talented musician. Again, my inexperience here meant that a lot of the music I recorded was wasted because of distortion (too close to the piano?).

Overall, I am happy with the product, but did find it difficult to delete some of the sequences that, in hindsight would have made it a better film. I can definitely recommend either doing the editing some months after shooting (and therefore being less likely to hold on to shots that took some time to get, but do not necessarily add to the film) or get someone else to edit!

- Jeff Goddard, Perth Camcorder Club

An indication of Jeff's meticulous planning and revision can be seen in the marked-up script:

Page updated on 07 April 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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