For my observational video, I wanted to focus on the natural world and it’s often overlooked movement. Initially my intention was to film at a more micro level, with the activity of an anthill or a spider spinning its web being some of my more promising ideas, to try and appreciate the complexity of life that is commonly dismissed as simply pests. However as I found out, these parts of nature are often overlooked for a reason; they can be extremely hard to find, even when someone is actively searching for them. After lugging around my equipment for about an hour with no success and the knowledge that this would probably be my only opportunity to use this camera before Sunday, I changed my approach and decided to film the natural world at a larger scale. I’ve always found the movement of trees to be a pretty calming thing to observe, and thought that the fineness of pine needles would create an interesting sight in the wind. That said, I’m overall dissatisfied with the footage I finished with; while I think they would likely look quite good as stills, I think there was very little value gained in capturing them in a video format, as the trees’ movement was very unengaging and there was very little else to observe besides the constant lens flare from the sunlight (which I do enjoy the effect of in still image) and the clouds that moved too slowly to focus on with any sort of interest. After reviewing the first attempt, I decided that focusing on a smaller section of the tree would allow the viewer to focus their attention more easily, and that I could incorporate the sunlight as another source of movement by angling the camera in such a way that would allow varying levels of sunlight to pass through when pine needles moved in a particular way. I am overall happier with this second shot, but despite the smaller subject I still found it hard to focus my attention for the full 50 seconds. If I were to do this exercise again, I think I would need to plan further ahead and have a backup subject to film in case the initial plan falls through for whatever reason. I would also need to consider the differences between film and photography more, and capitalise on the advantages on each instead of assuming interchangeability.