With Army boy Andrew taking charge of camping and routes in return for some homemade bread, yesterday we set off to the Yorkshire Dales weighed down with Bergens to carry provisions and filming equipment. A bright but cold day greeted us when we arrived at Kirby Stephen with the intention of reaching Tan Hill by nightfall. Our expertly co-ordinated maps would hopefully help us get there...
We got sidetracked within the first few minutes of our hike, but who couldn't resist photographing these cool Ponies?
We then left civilization and headed out into the great wide open.
We walked for over an hour into the hillsides helped us escape the buildings and wildlife that I didn't want to be a part of my footage as I wanted to focus more on the 'natural' landscape.
So off we set, walking from Kirkby Stephen through to Birkett Hil and beyond.
After coming across appropriate scenery we cracked open our lunch - homemade chicken stotties, and commenced filming.
Adopting a very warm color balance with an enhanced contrast enhances the depth and richness of the imagery.
The ironic thing of the trip was that my intention was to go out and capture the natural beauty of the landscape but in reality the environment was very harsh and bitterly cold, as shown by my wind-chilled hands above.
We didn't catch on just how cold it was until our equipment failing to work several times in a row confirmed that our batteries were in fact freezing!
This wasn't something we had accounted for but we nonetheless had to overcome this. Filming until the batteries gave up was the tactic we had to revert to, which was ok for the video equipment, unfortunatley when the batteries fail on the sound recorder you loose the piece it is currently recording! This resulted in only being able to record short snippets of sound which is not what I had in mind and means I will have to piece a soundtrack together from the snippets, which whilst not being as 'natural' as I'd hoped, will allow me more control over the sound and tone of the piece.
After stopping for firewood we spotted another variant on the landscape, this dense patch of moor grass which was great to film in the wind and provides further breadth to the footage.
One of the sticking points for me was, as I previously stated I would try to eschew as much evidence of humans from the landscape as i could, whether I would keep in the fences and dry-stone walling that covers much of the flat ground. I have always enjoyed the aesthetic of these walls as although clearly man-made they look natural and unimposing, so this is something I will have to decide upon in editing.
One of the aspects I was keen on documenting was both the height and scale of the landscape, in particularly it's vastness.
With the light getting increasingly darker it was time to retire for the night, not to a tent but a sleeping bag under a sheet of tarpaulin, this being the beginning of March and with temperatures below 0, you can tell how good a nights sleep we got!
Rather than one continuous piece due to failing battery life I had no choice but to make the piece using short excerpts, which isn't the only reason. I feel the piece will show a greater range of the varying landscape if it is made up of varying scenes and will also create alternating moods which coupled with the soundtrack will make an astounding environmental piece.
The above footage shows just how difficult filming is with prevailing winds resulting in the tripod tipping over.
