I would like to see more climbing documentaries where there is a timelapse of people making their way up. They look like ants rather than humans as a result. That part is 2 minutes and 20 seconds in.
Canyoning, a sport you associate with warmer weather and low altitude canyons. In this case they go to Nepal, climb to 4200 meters before spending many hours going down a canyon. That’s quite an adventure. It looks as if most of the canyoning part was filmed with gopro.
Although the name of this blog post is bizarre it is inspired by the site of a fountain with a big block of ice, serving as a mirror to the tree, and sun, in front of me. The weather is still nicer, more springlike than it has been. More people are out on bikes cycling together. They are taking advantage of the good weather. In theory we could have rain in the next few days but the likelihood, as usual, is very low. An app said that it could be 90 percent certain, but I think it is 100 percent unlikely.
During the entirety of this pandemic I have hardly seen any rain, and if it did rain then it cleared up by the time I went for my afternoon walk. If we were not in a pandemic then I would love this weather, as it would mean going on adventures every single week. As we are in a pandemic it just means more people to avoid when out on my daily walks.
As things are going I think this spring and summer will be an unsafe one because those that should be working towards covid zero, are being complacent now that hospitalisations are declining. They are failing to take this type of findings seriously: Long Covid study finds abnormality in lungs that could explain breathlessness.
“They suggest that the efficiency of the lung in doing what it is meant to do – exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen – may be compromised, even though the structure of the lung appears normal,”
Several governments are looking at the low numbers in hospitals without spending any time discussing the prevalence and effects of Long Covid. They may be sleep walking into an entire generation of people with damaged lungs.
Solitude hurts, but after having a broken arm for one summer, I have learned that injuries are worse, than playing it safe. I will not expose myself to Covid-19 unless I am forced to.
It is not rare for me to do a timelapse from La Barillette. Several years ago I tried a timelapse with a 360 camera where you saw clouds forming overhead and in a spherical video. I also filmed a timelapse of the Paléo parkings filling up. This time I went up the Jura in the hope of filming Autumn colours but as I got to the top my project changed.
The problem with filming Autumn colours is that you need to be there at the right time of day and with the light coming from the right direction. The light was coming from the wrong angle so stopping in the woods would have allowed me to get three or four frames before moving on to the next location.
When you’re in a car this type of filming is not interesting. It’s more interesting to get to one location and get a greater diversity of shots. The other advantage is that you can always head back down and get the shots you thought were still interesting.
As I looked from above and assessed the situation I saw that clouds were forming and dissipating. I thought that I may eventually find myself in a cloud with poor visibility. I was more interested in capturing the formation of clouds. They did form, but then they dissipated, and then they formed again but more sparsly before dissipating again.
This is fantastic when you’re filming time-lapses because the change is noticeable without being accelerated so you can imagine what it would give if you did speed it up.
The challenge with timelapse is knowing whether something will take minutes, hours, days or even longer to capture. I have one idea that I assess would take six or seven hours which I will not discuss at this stage.
Usually when I film timelapses I set the camera up so that it records one or two frames every so many seconds. In this case I just started recording. I did not know on what timescale the actions would occur so it gave me greater flexibility in post production.
The footage was sped up from 800 percent to 5000 percent. The clouds that were vanishing was fast. The river of clouds flowing down the valley was slower and thus sped up more. The other challenge is to decide how tight or wide you want the frame to be. With the trees and the river of clouds it’s hard to know whether to have a tighter shot where the action may render the frame boring sooner or wehter tom have a wide shot where the action only takes up half the screen.
In the end this is about gaining experience rather than getting things right first time. It’s about learning to see and anticipate how nature will behave. If you get it right then it can be of great beauty. If you get it wrong you ignore it and think of a new idea.
Later in the year, when Autumn comes we can expect the clouds to behave like this. It’s the “Soupe de Pois” as some call it. I have at least two or three ideas to experiment with and two of them can be done from the comfort of home.
I did see something exceptional on the way back down. A herd of five chevreuils as I drove down afer I finished getting my timelapse footage. That’s the most I’ve seen at once when driving.
Fearless is a documentary produced by Netflix, exploring the life of bull riders that come from Brazil, to the US to compete in 26 competitions to see who is the best bull rider. This documentary is interesting because, for the most part it is in Portuguese with English subtitles.
Big in Brazil
In Brasil there is an event Barretoswhere 900,000 people, at the time the documentaries were made, go to watch bull riders compete against each other. Bull riding is a unique sport because a person tries to hold on to a bucking bull as it tries to throw the rider off. The rider gets point for style, but so does the bull. If the bull throws the rider off within eight seconds then the rider gets zero points. If the rider stays on then they can get up to 90 points.
Dangerous
The sport is very dangerous because it’s a small human being, on a big bull. They can get thrown and land on their head and break their neck, trampled, headbutted, and more. They can get their arms or legs caught. They risk injury in a multitude of ways. The paradox is that it lasts for eight seconds. All of that danger and risk, for an activity that lasts a few seconds.
If you look at the stats you can see how often bull riders are thrown off their bulls. It’s impressive to see that people fall from two or more meters onto the ground and often walk away. it’s interesting to watch the helpers get in front of the bull to block its path when the rider is bucked off.
It’s a strange sport because the humans are injured, rather than the bulls. The bulls are fine aftre the competition.
Glimpses of How They Train
An aspect of the documentaries that I like is that we see that it’s not just that they ride bulls, and that is it. They train. We see a five or so year old child try riding a calf and get thrown several times. “Do you want to ride again?” “yes”. We also see a slightly older girl practice riding on the barrel. “Stay on, don’t let go” as the barrel mounted on a spring goes forwards and backwards, and from side to side.
We also see how the adults train, how they ride the grown up equivalent of a rodeo bull, how they react, how they “dance” to keep their balance and to negate the movements made by the bull to throw them off.
Fear
Although the documentary series is called Fearless it explores the riders and how they deal with fear, injury and continue riding. They explore how the riders are confident, until they are injured, and how they recover from the injury and it’s physiological and psychological effects. They use the analogy of broken eggs, and how one or two riders get injured, but seem unphased.
One rider speaks about how he retired, and never once missed bull riding. Another questions whether to retire at the end of the season.
And Finally
I am familiar with Razeteurs, bull fighting and the Running of the Bulls. I have even witnessed the running of the bulls in a small village. Bull riding is one version I have never really thought about, because in Europe Bullfighting, bull running and Razeteurs are more common. I watched this documentary by fluke, and I like the subject matter.
It explores family, bull riding in the US and Brazil, about family, life as a migrant in the US, with little to no English, and more. It’s a good subject matter. It is well filmed, well edited, with good use of event commentator and bull rider interviews.
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