One of my avocations is to travel with a local choir when they make summer performing tours to places like Austria, Italy, and other interesting places. Last summer the younger choir (kids aged 12-14) traveled through France for nearly two weeks and sang at a variety of wonderful venues.
One of the highlights of the tour was performing at Omaha Beach in Normandy on the 4th of July, 2007. This is the location of one of the Allied landings on European soil on June 6, 1944 and was immortalized in the stunning opening scenes in the movie "Saving Private Ryan." The landing was a disaster and it was later revealed that a retreat was very nearly called for this particular location, but by nightfall the beachhead had been secured and the Allied forces moved inland to join up with troops from other landing locations. The march to Berlin had begun.
I am in the process of completing a documentary of the choir tour to France. A few days ago I uploaded a 10-minute portion of that documentary to YouTube
. Although it was the 4th of July, the day was bitingly cold, blustery, and rainy, and the poor kids were freezing as they performed. The wind played havoc with the audio, but I think the end result was worth the effort.
Some of the shots use DeShaker; I think both of the scenes where I was walking through the graveyard crosses did. It was also used in the shot in the bus facing forward as it passes through a small village. The kids sang inside a marble alcove with massive columns directly in front of them, so I had to set my camera (an FX1) up at the extreme left in order to see them at all (they were in the alcove so the rainshowers that moved over us every 10 minutes wouldn't soak them). Another dad manned the BabyCam (my Sony HC3) but rather than doing something creative with it he just set it up and let it run, so I was only able to cut to it a few times.
Anyway, the YouTube video quality isn't very good, but you get the idea.
One of the highlights of the tour was performing at Omaha Beach in Normandy on the 4th of July, 2007. This is the location of one of the Allied landings on European soil on June 6, 1944 and was immortalized in the stunning opening scenes in the movie "Saving Private Ryan." The landing was a disaster and it was later revealed that a retreat was very nearly called for this particular location, but by nightfall the beachhead had been secured and the Allied forces moved inland to join up with troops from other landing locations. The march to Berlin had begun.
I am in the process of completing a documentary of the choir tour to France. A few days ago I uploaded a 10-minute portion of that documentary to YouTube
. Although it was the 4th of July, the day was bitingly cold, blustery, and rainy, and the poor kids were freezing as they performed. The wind played havoc with the audio, but I think the end result was worth the effort.Some of the shots use DeShaker; I think both of the scenes where I was walking through the graveyard crosses did. It was also used in the shot in the bus facing forward as it passes through a small village. The kids sang inside a marble alcove with massive columns directly in front of them, so I had to set my camera (an FX1) up at the extreme left in order to see them at all (they were in the alcove so the rainshowers that moved over us every 10 minutes wouldn't soak them). Another dad manned the BabyCam (my Sony HC3) but rather than doing something creative with it he just set it up and let it run, so I was only able to cut to it a few times.
Anyway, the YouTube video quality isn't very good, but you get the idea.