Jonathan Palfrey

Paignton Zoo: Mascot Race

Over the past two years I have been lucky enough to produce videos for the Paignton Zoo website. I really enjoy creating videos for them as they allow me to experiment with new techniques and ideas while also getting my content out to a wider audience. Also the subject matter is often very interesting and a lot of fun, whether that be filming the UK’s number one mountain bike trials rider on Baboon Rock , getting to see the crocodiles be fed up close or playing football with Tortoises theres always something new and interesting to film. I have to thank Lynne and Vicki at the Zoo who have invited me to do all these videos and more and I look forward to creating more in the future.

This is no different with the latest video I have made for them. This time its the Mascot Race at Goodrington Beach with Mascots from across Devon taking part in an epic race! It cetainly caught the attention of the tourists and beach goers and was a lot of fun to watch and film.

Now on to the technical info. As you may have known from my previous blog, I now own a video DSLR, the Canon 550D. This is an amazing camera with cinema like image quality thanks to its large sensor and wide choice of lenses. Now these cameras aren’t perfect but the images they produce are so great I think they are worth the effort.  One issue I was concerned about was going to be the lack of footage for the edit only using one camera and one lens. Luckily however a few months ago I managed to persuade my friend, Lucy Smith, to purchase a 550D, so on the day we had two 550D’s one with a Sigma 105mm 2.8 lens the other a Sigma 18-50mm lens. These are great lens with amazing picture quality and I will review soon. Filming with these cameras on a tripod was surprisingly easy and we managed to get some incredible looking shots with them.

For the post production I wanted to try some new techniques, I already had this great looking footage but I also wanted to experiment with some super slow motion and unless you own a very expenisve high speed camera there’s really only one choice and thats Adobe After Effects. Now, I do know how to use AE quite well and have self taught myself from watching the great tutorials at www.videocopilot.net. I highly recommend you check out the website, some of the things you can achieve on this programme are truly incredible. I  converted all the footage to Avid DNxHD with Mpeg streamclip as this made it easier to edit with. Then once I had done all my slow mo shots I placed them with the rest of the footage in Sony Vegas Pro 9.

I personally think the results look very impressive and I hope you like them too. It was really interesting using the 550D’s which have produced amazing looking shots, bang for buck they are by far the best cameras out there right now. Below is the Mascot video, please feel free to leave a comment or ask questions. Also don’t forget to visit Paignton Zoo, its a great zoo and great charity so please check out there website, paigntonzoo.org.uk