I began over the weekend and on the morning of the shoot checking over all the equipment to make sure it worked and that we had everything we needed. I also charged up the Go Pros in the Omni Rig and inserted all the memory cards in.
Once all the equipment was checked we were ready to go down to Earnley Butterfly and Bird Park. We drove down there which took us about 1 hour and we arrived at 12pm. Since we had till 4pm in the park we firstly planned to go and walk round the entire park so that we knew how it all looked. Essentially this was a basic location recce to decide which places within the park would be best to set the camera up in. Here are some images I took on my phone as we walked round to assess the best places:
Butterfly Food Tables
Butterfly Food Tables (Close up)
Butterfly House Cocoon Area and Plants
Cocoon Area/House (Close Up)
Plant Area by Cocoon House (Close Up)
Butterfly House Plant Plant Area
Centre of Butterfly House
Birds in Bird House
Parrots in Bird House
Birds in Tree
Birds in Bird House
Parrot in Bird House (Close Up)
Water Fountain in Gardens
Arch Walkway in Gardens
Fish Pond in Gardens
Ascetic Tree in Gardens
From doing this walk round/Location Recce we made the decision that we would film primarily within the Butterfly House as this was the main thing we came to see anyway and also the Butterflies were moving around the space a lot more than anticipated. We also felt some areas within the Butterfly House were interesting to look at anyway especially things like the Cocoon Area. We then had a back up of also filming a few nice scenic shots in the Garden Areas as a back up but also a possible way to introduce our film. We then decided against filming in the Bird House because the birds were freely flying around and were a lot larger than we anticipated so we didn't want to risk the birds damaging the camera as they seemed very confident!
We then went and got the 360 Rig and began setting it up in the reception before we ventured back into the butterfly house. We decided the best way to place it was on the lighting stand as we didn't want to risk damaging anything with the magic arm clamp. We synced the wireless remote up with the Go Pros before we began filming and also we ran over all the settings on the Go Pros just to check they were all correct.
We placed the omni rig in multiple locations that we had looked at and liked with in the butterfly house taking into account the surroundings. We took about 7 short 2 minute shots in here. We would place the rig then walk towards the door using the remote to trigger it to start recording. We would then go wait outside watching carefully through the door to see what was happening. Thankfully the park was very empty which meant we didn't have any other visitors walk into shot while we filmed. The first 3 or 4 weren't as successful because the butterflies weren't moving as much however we found a better approach which was to press record on the rig while we were still in the butterfly house then as we moved round the space it triggered them to all start flying then we would make a quick exit to the door and wait outside. This was a much stronger approach and from what we could tell we got some really nice shots here.
We then moved into the Gardens and as we only had one bar of battery left on the GoPros at this point we decided to only take a couple of short shots in here. We went for our two favourite locations which were visually interesting. This was by the Water fountain and also by the Fish Pond as both this locations also has some movement in shot with the water and the fishes.
Overall it went very well and I feel like we managed to deal with the constraints of the equipment (battery life of 18 minutes) well because we planned everything out first and got everything set up before turning the rig on. I feel like as long as the stitching and editing process goes well we will be able to make a nice visually pleasing yet interesting Butterfly 360 film for Wildlife lovers!
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