"Minnesota: Winterscapes" - Director's Notes

This Minnesota nature film was recorded over the course of four months, from all around the Twin Cities to the north shore around Duluth, MN. It is the best representation I could capture of the beauty of winter. Without having to go outside to watch it, you

can experience all of the wonder without suffering any of the cold temperatures, the slosh, or sinking into lakes that aren't quite frozen.


You can also watch the video on YouTube

Director's Notes


This movie is the most successful video I've shot to date. I'm not talking about YouTube viewership by itself, but all around. Upon submitting this movie to Eagan TV - the public broadcast station for the suburb of Eagan - they accepted it for their programming and have been broadcasting it on one of their channels ever since. The station also left me with an open invitation to submit any future work that I think would be appropriate to public airing. That's exciting.

I also submitted "Rom Com at the Cafe Latte" at this same time, and they have been airing that one as well. If you haven't had a chance to watch it, I recommend you do - definitely one of the better ones I've done.

When you take into account, unlike several previous projects, that I have done no form of advertising for this one, the viewership is actually quite impressive (well, maybe not for YouTube standards, but it is for mine!) 

December, and I did not finish until returning from a weekend trip to Lake Superior at the very beginning of March. I thought that giving myself the entire winter to shoot whenever I happened to have time would make this easy. That's not true. I was out filming every time I got the chance, watching the weather for clear skies, dragging myself out of bed before dawn in zero degree temperatures on my day off, falling into lakes more times than I care to admit. Instead of a project I could just pick away at, it was more of a project that just dragged on....

It was definitely worth it, though. I learned a lot about camera handling that I did not realize I needed to learn. Thanks to the internet and a limited budget, I have built two styles of "poor man" camera rigs. Through filming of this movie I finally got the chance to handle them both and learn their pros, cons, and uses. The biggest con of one of them is when my wife asks me, "you're not bringing that one with in public, are you?" Let me ask you, follow reader, would you find it concerning if you saw a man walked around with a length of galvanized piping with a 5lbs. weight secured to the bottom of it?  Me neither!

There's also a huge difference between shooting a non-fiction piece and a narrative short film.  The way to set up shots is often quite different.  What you focus on, and how you move the camera is the complete opposite.  I found that it looks impressive in a film, it's distracting and jarring in a piece like this.  Conversely, what looks great in the video looks boring as hell in a film.

Editing is also a whole different beast.  In a narrative, you know a general progression of how the footage needs to be lined up.  Beginning, middle, end.  All that jazz.  In a piece like this, there is no progression.  It's like making a collage.  Yet, at the same time, the way you arrange the shots still matters.  I had 1 hour, 40 minutes of decent footage.  It had to be 5.5 minutes long when I was all done!  What shots do I use?  How long do I play each shot?  How do I know how to set it up without losing good clips?!

The first 30 seconds of the movie took me three hours of stressing out to pull off.  I went to bed despondent, saying in dismay "There has to be a better way to do this?"  That method came to me as I dozed off, and I cut rest of the movie in two or three evenings.  Ultimately, it just comes down to a frame of mind.  Relax, mix the clips up a bunch, and don't worry about what you didn't use.  It'll look fine.

Jon: Post-Tsunami

A week or two ago I showed my friend Charlie how I would cut a similar video in that same style.  We cut the whole thing, all 2.5 minutes in one night.  It should be out next week sometime!

Oooo!  Almost forgot!  Fun story! 

So, that final epic shot of the waves breaking that ends with the video flooding with water killed my camera.  I was not expecting the waves to get that high at all.  I saw them in my peripheral, and made the effort to jump up onto rock slabs, the top of which was at least six feet up from where I had been.  The water still slammed into me and rolled over my head.  Immediately after, I panicked.  I have jumped into a frozen lake for charity before, so I knew what to expect to a point.  However, I knew I needed to get inside quick.

I spotted Tonya and started shouting for her, but she couldn't hear me over the waves.  At that point I was grateful that I hadn't lost my balance, or I would have fallen into Lake Superior with the impact and she wouldn't have known.  So I ran for her, shouting over and over again.  I stepped on the ice between two boulders, and the ground gave out.  I sank shin deep into a hole and smashed my leg into the rock.  I now have a lump on my shin I can feel when I run my fingers over it.

I finally got within earshot of Tonya, which meant I was essentially standing behind her.  She had been taking photos of the Split Rock lighthouse, which is why she hadn't seen me.  My terror did not seem to daunt her in the least.  Suddenly, I felt like I was five, worked up about nothing.  In good time we got back to the car, I changed, and by the time we got to Two Harbors my camera had thawed and dried, and I was back up and running.

Photography by Tonya