This video was shot in a few hours at Ashland State Park in Massachusetts. The weather was finally beginning to warm up and people were out enjoying the outdoors.

I brought my PMW-EX1 camcorder with the Letus Extreme, a Vinten Vision 3 tripod, my homemade dolly system, three lenses and two filters.

I used PVC pipe and my dolly for the slow slides and trucks. I do have to be careful because even a speck of dirt makes the camera vibrate in the dolly system.

The three lenses I used was a Sigma 18mm f3.5, a Nikon 24mm f2.8 and a Nikon 300mm f4 telephoto. I used the telephoto lens to get tight shots of people fishing from across the lake. I also used it to get shots of the turtles basking in the sun.

I recycled a few shots from previous trips to the lake. The macro shots of the Garder snakes was from a video I shot a month ago called “Snake Eye View”. I used a Nikon 55mm f2.8 macro lens for these intimate snake shots.

I used a Tiffen 52mm circular polarizing filter to help with the sky and water reflections. This made the water a deep dark hue and created a very blue sky. I also used a four point start filter for the sun smear you see at the end of the video.

I edited this in Final Cut Pro and color graded with Magic Bullet Looks. I over-saturated the colors in the video.

TRT: 4 minutes

Music by: James Newton Howard
For more info go to: tomguilmette.com