Lotsa Shootin

And not all of it with a gun. I played Junior Cinematographer this weekend, trying to incorporate up to three cameras into my 3-Gun match coverage, but only squeaked out one stage with two cams. The tempo of the match and the angle of the winter sun talked me out of stationing my Flip Cam down range to capture the most unusual view of my practical shooter Jon, the scary-business end.

It's just as well that that plan didn't work out; reciprocal camera angles commit the cinematic sin of "Breaking the 180, " often confusing the audience as to where the subject is supposed to be facing. That's not nearly as serious as "Breaking the 180" in the shooter's vernacular, which will get you disqualified for poor muzzle control; I had to Disqualify a beginning lady shooter for this during my turn as Range Officer for the stage in the video.

I pretty much sucked with the shotgun and had equipment issues during the hoser rifle stages... but my "prescription rifle" came through for me on the long range steel. Fighting a strong crosswind, I still managed to ring up the 400-yard MGM bonus steel target to knock 12 seconds off my stage score!

I had worse troubles with Adobe PremiereTM, my high-dollar video editing program. It would only show the first half the movie I exported, so I wound up going back to iMovie. Premiere would have let me separate the audio tracks from the video so that the viewer wouldn't be subjected to jarring effect of switching from the Taccam mic to the PowerShot's. Of course, if I was really good, I would have replaced all of the audio track with Foley effects and pre-recorded, realistic-sounding gunshots... but I had things to do this weekend... like eat and sleep.