Mormons and New Toys

After a year of digital elph filmmaking, I have finally upgraded to a real video camera. I invested in a Canon Vixia for the explicit purpose of shooting the Nikita 2010 Outerwear shoot in Utah. I was enlisted to make daily videos for the social media so this may have been overkill, but it seemed like a good excuse. Of course, it may have been wise to buy it more than a few days in advance and actually figure out how to use it and transfer the footage before showing up to do my job, but you know…

I did get to Utah a few days early to meet up with my family and give my dad the “best birthday ever.” Our day at Powder Mountain was my first time breaking out the new camera, and I was excited that it was tiny, light, and relatively easy to use.

When I finally met up with the Nikita team on Sunday, I realized I had no idea how to convert AVCHD files into something I could use. A few hours of stress, some googling and a few panicked emails and I finally figured it out. Unfortunately, my three-year-old MacBook wasn’t stoked on converting 10-20 gigs of HD footage a night, so it was slow going, but I still managed to make 3 videos over the course of the shoot, and two more once I got home.

After seven days of straight boarding, I left Utah sunburned, goggle-tanned and exhausted. It was a great trip though, and the massive amounts of 3.2 beer consumed seemed not to lower my tolerance any. Check out my full report on YoBeat and be sure to watch all the videos (day four at Park City is my favorite.)