Mysterious Pumpkin People – Video Example

Sometimes we come across a pleasant little accident or surprise when we’re traveling. This was one of them, many years ago I was in Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada and I happen to drive into Kentville.  I was unaware that every year they have an October Pumpkin Festival.

I had shot in 2009 these video clips with the intent of stringing them together for some kind of funny little video. There was a rough story idea parked, it just needed the time and the inclination to put it together. A self-imposed deadline for Oct. 31 did it this year.

So the town was full of these “pumpkin people” everywhere. I was staying over at a motel and that night I was thinking… Tomorrow I’m going to go out and shoot some footage and make something of it in the future. Here was some good content; I’ll figure it out when I get home… one day.

Now I had a basic story when I did record the video clips.

This Idea – I was surprised to be in a town where there were no people. Just these pumpkin people and none of them would reply to my questions and I would be a little bewildered.

Years later, I kept thinking about putting this funny little video together around Halloween and put it on YouTube to share with friends.

So finally this past weekend I sat down to edit, for about 5 hours, with Power Director. I reviewed what I had shot and put together a quick 1:49 second little video.

I had a lot of fun doing it, it was creative and it also had some challenges.

The first one was that it was shot with an old Canon pocket camera and the video resolution is rather low at 640×480. The audio sounded, a little distorted but I think that helped with the whole creepy sinister effect.

Now speaking of effects I would not normally have heaped huge amounts of effects like I did on this video. That’s rather a No-No, but it works well here because I’m really just trying to make a kind of confusing, distorted world of odd nonsense.

I think from the feedback it worked and of course one needs scary music. I had thought of making my own scary music with sound effects and my software synth program. (most of my composed music seems to sound scary and ominous, I don’t know why) But I decided I had put in enough time and needed to get on with other things. I found a suitable instrumental from a soundtrack library I had bought.

The music builds nicely and I had the luxury of choosing a few versions of the same instrumental to get the effect which I mixed in low to not distract.

Adding titles that suited the feel, made it that much better. Note how the text at the end is vibrating, unstable, just like the feel of the video.

When you make your shows, keep that in mind. It’s the whole package, everything needs to fit, all elements need to serve a purpose or they may overlooked or worse stand out and derail your intentions.

Keep in mind when you travel, that the trip might offer moments that work out as short niche topics you could potentially create something with. Nothing says your trip has to be completely documented and made into a mega show. Perhaps short little vignettes of the area works out better.

I shared it with the good (real) people of Kentville and they put it on their Facebook page. So Scary! lol

Also I should add, it’s a nice place to visit. You would not believe how beautiful the fall colours are in the Annapolis Valley.

Enjoy the video.