May 2004

May 2004
AVI (DivX 5.0)
352x288 22.7 MB
MP4 (QuickTime)
320x240 21.7 MB

May 2004

The video for May was filmed on location at Middle Wallop kite festival and features a beautiful sunset backdrop and some technical Mutex, Duplex and Triplex combinations, among other things, to keep you entertained. This is the longest kite movie in the series so far and, dare I say it, perhaps the best? Well, it's definately worth a look for the sunsets if nothing else...

Introduction

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We're taking a break from Stoke Park this month. I did shoot a whole bunch of footage in the park throughout the month, but because it is the site of the Surrey County Show in the last weekend of May, the park has been steadily filling up with fences, marquees, seating, and other paraphenalia that served to push me in a corner behind the big trees, or obscure any half-decent shot I had in mind for a scene. So among the ten or so hours of film, I was scraping around to find anything interesting or innovative enough to warrant using.

So on the last weekend of May, feeling by now slightly disheartened with my grand plan to film a kite movie every month, I left the local farmers to show off their livestock in Stoke Park and headed down to Middle Wallop kite festival, located not far from Stonehenge, and conveniently less than an hour away from me by car.

On the saturday evening the sky was full of kites for almost 270 degress around the point where I was standing. As beautiful as they are, they don't make a good backdrop for filming against as they tend to confuse the shot and jump around in the sky when you edit clips together (as illustrated by the one or two kites that did make it into the background). So I picked the only direction left to me, and set up the camera with a couple of sunset-lit aircraft hangars to frame the shot. As the sun went down there was a beautiful sunset sky to film against and the perfect breeze kept everything flowing smoothly. I flew and filmed for just under an hour - a perfect hour of blissful calm and relaxed flying in beautiful surroundings. Needless to say, I got all the footage I need in that one hour and all my other efforts from that month hit the cutting room floor (metaphorically speaking).

The emphasis this month is on more technical combinations, and in particular the Mutex, Duplex and Triplex. The original mutex is a flic-flac interspered with 360 degree flat spins, but it has come to mean more generally, any combination of flic-flac with a spin trick. Hence we have the flat spin mutex and backspin mutex. A duplex is combining two different spin tricks with a flic-flac. For example, a backspin/tailspin duplex as shown in this month's video. A Jacob's ladder is another example of a duplex trick, combining backspin with lazy Susan, albeit with only half a rotation in each case rather than a full one (which I guess would technically make it a half-duplex combo rather than full-duplex or even multi-duplex one?)

A triplex is then a flic-flac combined with three different spin tricks, such as the back/tail/lazy triplex in the video. There are plenty of different variations on these basic combinations. I hope you don't get too bored watching me exploring them, but I went for a slightly longer and larger movie this month, coming in at 4 minutes 30, and a reasonably respectable 20 Mb in file size.

The music is the full and final edit of my composition entitled "Fly Me to the Sun", which also featured in last month's video, albeit in an earlier and shorter form. My apologies for using the same piece of music twice. Hope you haven't got too bored of that either.

Breakdown

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00.00 Opening credits
00.09 Pop up from a belly down landing into a 540 backspin, then fly up and out.
00.12 Fly in from right into a fade, then flic-flac into backspin and repeat for a backspin mutex, ending in a triple backspin.
00.21 Cross fade to the cyberman starting with a cascade down the window then popping up into a fade, a half backspin and an axel out to fly up.
00.32 Cross fade to another cascade down going into a backspin mutex converting into a 360 tailspin then back into a fade landing.
00.41 Enter down from the top in a flic-flac, ending up in a belly wrap on the ground (a taster for what's to follow later...)
00.50 Enter from right and snap stall. A small cascade sequence ends in a fade rotating round for a backflip into a tailspin down to a tip stab.
00.57 Enter from right and axel over into a lazy Susan. Flip out and fly off.
01.01 Enter from right and fracture an axel into a fade. Then we have the duplex sequence with the flic-flac interspersing the backspin and tailspin. It ends in a double backspin followed by a single barrel roll. The two tricks are very similar, but the subtle difference between them can be seen here. Notice how the nose rotates away from me for the first two (which makes them backspins), but when I apply harder line pressure for the third, the nose stays pointing towards me and the kite rotates around the spines (making a barrel roll).
01.12 Similar to above, entering from right, fractured axel into fade, then backspin/tailspin duplex down to land on both tips.
01.17 Rolling axel fly-by from left to right.
01.19 Enter from top right with a small cascade into a fade ready for the triplex sequence. Here we start with a flic-flac and then intersperse it with a tailspin, a double backspin, and then a lazy Susan down to land.
01.33 Enter from top right in another small cascade, fading into a backspin mutex converted into a duplex with the addition of a tailspin on the end, also down to tips.
01.43 Enter from top right (again!) and back axel into a fade, rotating around 540 degrees for a back flip into a lazy Susan, once again down to tips.
01.50 Enter from right and fracture an axel into a fade, then a backspin mutex flaring the kite right out above the ground and back up for a half backspin and out.
01.56 Here's the belly wrap landing and launch. Starting from a fade you flare the kite out as if for a flic-flac and let it over extend all the way into a wrap. Walk forwards and let the kite belly out on the ground, then pull both lines to launch and unwrap.
02.04 Gound pass from right to left, with a fractured axel into a fade and then backspin/tailspin duplex to tips.
02.09 Right handed double axel corkscrew from top right down to bottom left.
02.12 Another belly wrap land and launch, this time coming out into an axel each way and exit stage left.
02.19 Flic flac down from top, backspin mutex converting into a Jacob's ladder at the bottom to land on the tips.
02.31 Lazy Susan down to a backside landing on both tips, drop the kite and pop it up into a Jacob's ladder into tailspin to hit the tips, then axel out and fly away.
02.43 Another sequence combining backspin mutex, tailspin and landing (hope you're not getting bored!)
02.52 Triple axel corkscrew down from right to left, popped up into a multi backspin, then flipped out into a tailspin to land.
03.01 Another triple corkscrew into multi backspin, with a direction switch half way through, ending in a barrel roll and fly across from left to right.
03.13 Cross-fade to sunset and a slo-mo axel take-off.
03.18 Slo-mo axel down and fly up.
03.20 Also in slo-mo, fly down into fade then backspin out to right.
03.24 Backspin cascade down from top left to right, shown twice.
03.29 Enter from left, and flare into fade for multi backspins.
03.36 Slow-mo backspin mutex, showing flic-flac then backspin.
03.43 Cross fade to later sunset and another slow-mo axel, this time popped up into a rising fade out of camera shot.
03.48 Jacob's ladder sequence from left to right, flared out to belly down landing, then popped back up into a barrel roll, flipped back for a lazy Susan, then fly out.
03.56 Fly down into the belly wrap land, then launch and unwrap into a backspin moving out of shot.
04.01 Acid drop to tips.
04.03 Cross fade to sunset and some kiter dude walks past.
04.12 Cross fade to another sunset and same kiter dude shows off his frisbee skills.
04.26 Closing credits.