Glyder Fawr & Glyder Fach (with video)

It's been a while since I've posted on here. Back in mid-May I made the most of the great weather and headed up from Ogwen Cottage up the Devil's Kitchen, then the dreaded screes up to Glyder Fawr.

Back in October I had a bit of a mishap with my camera on Bleaklow whilst filming at the B29 crash site (it doesn't work anymore...) so I got myself a proper video camera - which I took with me up into the mountains.

Up there the views were outstanding -  which I've hopefully managed to portray in the video - the air was so clear that even Ireland was popping in and out of visibility - and the Isle of Man was obvious - although there wasn't enough contrast to capture that on the camera.

I finished off the day with the short hop over to Glyder Fach and the obligitory stand on the Cantilever Stone.  Despite very nice conditions, I was amazed just how few people there were up there.

I put the video on YouTube:

Hi Richard, I thought there was some great stuff in your trip report. The best bit for me was the close-up of Tryfan - pity you didn't get someone doing the leap between Adam and Eve - and then the cantilever stone bit at the end. I really liked the way you cut that, and genuinely 'lol'ed at your bounce - you should definitely have done a star jump!

Great views, lucky you!

For constructive criticism feedback - I can't give you anything really on the filming, though it must have been tough doing it all solo, but here's a few things:

Try to avoid starting every sentence with 'well'

Water is noisy! If you can do something about the balance of the sound that would be good.

The intro music was great, and I liked the background music - at least for some of the time; I found I'd have liked a bit more variety as the video went on.

Maybe a look at a map at some point so your audience can see where you're going. I ran up Memory Map to see where you were going, but not everyone will be able to do that. One of my undergrads last year did an awesome little powerpoint slide showing Hannibal's route round Italy during the 2nd Punic War with wonderful elephant's footprints appearing on the map to show Hannibal's progress.

I hope you don't find this off-putting; I genuinely liked your video and your presentational style and with a couple of tweaks it can be excellent. Let's have some more!

Metric Kate wrote (see)

Hi Richard, I thought there was some great stuff in your trip report. The best bit for me was the close-up of Tryfan - pity you didn't get someone doing the leap between Adam and Eve - and then the cantilever stone bit at the end. I really liked the way you cut that, and genuinely 'lol'ed at your bounce - you should definitely have done a star jump!

Great views, lucky you!

For constructive criticism feedback - I can't give you anything really on the filming, though it must have been tough doing it all solo, but here's a few things:

Try to avoid starting every sentence with 'well'

Water is noisy! If you can do something about the balance of the sound that would be good.

The intro music was great, and I liked the background music - at least for some of the time; I found I'd have liked a bit more variety as the video went on.

Maybe a look at a map at some point so your audience can see where you're going. I ran up Memory Map to see where you were going, but not everyone will be able to do that. One of my undergrads last year did an awesome little powerpoint slide showing Hannibal's route round Italy during the 2nd Punic War with wonderful elephant's footprints appearing on the map to show Hannibal's progress.

I hope you don't find this off-putting; I genuinely liked your video and your presentational style and with a couple of tweaks it can be excellent. Let's have some more!

Thanks for the feedback. It's always good to see someone else's perspective on the footage;

Yes, I know I say "well" a bit too much! It's a bit of a bad habit, and you don't notice it when you say them 15-20 minutes apart, but when you compress it down in the editing phase, I guess it begins to sound very repetitive!

I did think about including maps, but the only drawback is that on YouTube you have to be very careful with copyright etc. I'm contemplating setting up a little website/blog which can accompany the videos - perhaps with more information - e.g. locations, places to park, route maps, distances, other items of interest I didn't fit into the video etc. - and perhaps anyone interested in following the action along can see that.

If you are interested in seeing some more, I have a little playlist of videos I've created over the last 12 months. Not all of them are from the hills/mountains. I apologise in advance for the music on my video from Shining Tor!

"Out and About" playlist

Metric Kate wrote (see)

Disappointed your camera broke in the Bleaklow one, I was really enjoying that!

Yes, it doesn't quite end where I was intending it to end - and in fact I never got to film anything of the aircraft wreckage that day either - I had to use photos that I'd taken a year earlier on a previous visit. I was just going to re-shoot the introduction which has quite a bit of wind-noise over the speech, when the tripod went over and the camera landed lens-down.

In the end, I didn't really like the camera for videoing, although it was good for stills. It was plagued by constantly focusing and re-focusing - and there were no settings to keep a manual focus setting.

geekinthesticks wrote (see)

Thanks for that, I really enjoyed it. At the start of the film, I never knew about the top of that gate being a representation of the skyline. I must have been through it dozens of times, something to pause and look at next time.