Stopover

In early 2015 my wife Yuchia had to leave the U.S. for visa reasons, so we decided to travel across Western Europe before moving to Taiwan.

Now we're back in the U.S. and I get to embarrass her with my mediocre Mandarin.

Camera: Panasonic GH4
Lens: Lumix GX Vario, 12-35mm, f2.8

Music: “Instrumental” by José González / “Yeah Right” by Toro y Moi

Process

When we first left on this trip, my intention was to record a bunch of fun footage from Europe and cut it together into a really upbeat video. But as I edited the footage together and reflected on the mood of the trip, I realized that it was this unique situation that didn’t lend itself to the typical travel video. I decided to use quieter music and to try recording myself and Yuchia briefly talking about our situation. I think this direction worked out really well.

One part of this video that I’m really proud of is the final timelapse of Taipei. I shot this from a popular hike called Elephant Mountain. But I wasn’t quite satisfied with the camera being static during this clip, as most of the shots in the video have slight movement to them. So I actually brought the timelapse video into Cinema 4D, projected it onto some simple geometry that I built in order to mimic the cityscape, and then animated the camera shaking a bit and moving upwards. The final effect is subtle, but it definitely adds to the overall feel I wanted to create.