a TigerRAWk Film

Thursday, April 21, 2022

A Shared Life: Fall In Chicago (October - November 2021)

This project highlights life events starting in October after returning from our second trip of the year to southern states through to the leaving for the holidays. I took some time to continue researching a possible camera to buy after the rain damage to my Canon Rebel T6 and I was able to make a purchase to replace it with a Canon Rebel T6s. This was an upgrade and my hope will be that I will be able to learn to work with it to improve the quality of photography and video going forward.

I created the intro again using some photos of highlights and typing in a title using Motion 4 on a Macbook. I made a mistake on one of the photos so it ends up moving the opposite of what I wanted but I decided to leave it alone.

https://youtu.be/mM2fJiFp-Cw
10.04.2021
I captured the commute coming into work after our trip on Monday October 4th, 2021. There was low cloud cover over the city so I decided to capture it with my CrossTour CR-900. On my commute home, the conditions were similar so I captured some more but also included the Blue Cross Blue Shield building lit up for cancer awareness. I feel perhaps I have captured the commute a bit much so I'm going to try to cut it down to specifically unique occurrences if I can. This really wasn't one of those though.

10.10.2021
While we took Stein to get vaccinations, I took a shot of the decorations for Dia de los Muertos along the street in Little Village on Sunday October 10th, 2021.

10.11.2021
On Monday October 11th, 2021, I went to The Bad Apple to pick up some Poutine to eat on Canadian Thanksgiving. As usual, it was great!

10.12.2021
On Tuesday October 12th, 2021, I watched the Pittsburgh Penguins win their season opener against the Tampa Bay Lightning by a score of 6-2.

10.13.2021
On Wednesday October 13th, 2021 there was a fire in an apartment building in the neighborhood. I decided to go out and see the commotion for a few minutes.

10.19.2021
I ordered a new camera, a Canon Rebel T6s, and it arrived on Tuesday October 19th, 2021. I decided the first thing to do with it to test it out was to shoot the moon. I wish I had watched the footage from this experiment all the way through. I found that while shooting video I could also take photos...BUT, it pauses the video while the shutter does its work (also recording the noise) before resuming the video shooting. I ended up taking photos while shooting live footage of bands at Reggies later in the week and finding this out when I edited those clips for posting. The shots I got on this night weren't particularly good. I had difficulty with the brightness of the moon and trying to adjust the exposure to be able to capture the moon's detail.

10.21.2021
On Thursday October 21st, 2021, I went out to shoot the moon some more. This time I was able to work with the settings to adjust the exposure and reduce some of the brightness allowing me to capture the detail of the moon considerably better.

10.22.2021

https://youtu.be/UrChdMfRo-U
On Friday October 22nd, 2021, I created a little video to document the equipment update. There's a separate blog that goes into more detail on that. that blog was updated after the original posting. I used the last shots I got in New Orleans with the Canon Rebel T6 and the moon footage from the new Canon Rebel T6s along with some other footage from my iPhone 8 while in New Orleans along with footage shot that day showing the new equipment with audio of me explaining it a bit. If I paid more attention, I would have realized the shutter noise and pause that occurs when taking photos while filming. I also noted in this clip the purchase of an Audio-Technica AT-8024 mic after finding out that this camera has a mic input in hopes to have better sounding videos as well. I also note purchasing some extra batteries on eBay but they had not yet arrived from China...little did I know at the time how much of a problem this would be.

10.23.2021
On Saturday October 23rd, 2021, as we drove for groceries, we came up behind a car with ghosts and other decorations taped to its backside. That evening we went to Naperville, Illinois to an event called "Howlin' At The Moon" at the Naper Settlement. There were performers doing tricks with fire, vendors, bands, and food. The fire performers were interesting. There was also a costume contest won by someone dressed as Pennywise from It. The runner's up were The Golden Girls.

10.24.2021

https://youtu.be/23gJjoRlbTU


https://youtu.be/B2jry-yoKzc


https://youtu.be/FSp6GKDsCEc
On Sunday October 24th, 2021 we went to Reggies to see 6'10 play with Jake Blount and Sweet William in the Bananna's Comedy Shack room. It was raining quite hard as we drove there and back. I ended up parking in what may as well have been a pond! Sweet William opened the show. The band features an Ollie Mob member, Jake Book. 6'10 played second and I captured "Peach Farmer." Anastasia Robieson had joined the band for the show! Jake Blount closed the night. Apparently during the tour one of the band members had to leave due to an injury and was replaced. This is the show where I took photographs while shooting the live video footage using my Canon Rebel T6s so I added a disclaimer on the video files on YouTube regarding the video pausing and the shutter noise.

10.25.2021
As I drove to work on Monday October 25th, 2021, Lake Michigan was churning quite aggressively with waves splashing on to Lake Shore Drive! I had never seen it like that before so I saved the footage from my CrossTour CR-900 to share in this project. I'm nor sure that it does justice to what I witnessed that day! I wish I could have taken the time to go out and shoot with my Canon Rebel T6s...somewhere safe from the water though! I learned my lesson regarding that! Somewhere on the world wide web I saw some pretty incredible photographs of the waves that day. It's out there if you seek it.

10.26.2021
On Tuesday October 26th, 2021, while passing through Wrigleyville after getting tickets for Nocturna and another show from the Metro box office, I walked by a haunted house and decided to document that.

10.29.2021

https://youtu.be/g6Q-wJoM82E



https://youtu.be/49PRnXVtvyo


https://youtu.be/90wdnzQFww8


https://youtu.be/sXoMN-ydOds


https://youtu.be/_DJHbY9aJIE


https://youtu.be/BzuEsv1Lx8E
On Friday October 29th, 2021 we drove to Joliet, Illinois for the Prison City Massacre show at The Forge with suspensions by Disgraceland Wasteland, the Last Chance Sideshow, and hosted by a Sven Ghoulie. I captured some of the costume contest as well. The band clips include Hostages, AbsentMind, Misfire, Whut?, and Skarhead. This show had to be canceled last year so it was cool to go again and see some friends we hadn't seen for quite some time. After the show, we drove to Oakbrook Terrace for Flex's birthday party in the hotel room he rented for the night. We didn't stay real long but it was cool to see some folks.

10.30.2021

https://youtu.be/AQy9aXjtKps
On Saturday October 30th, 2021 the annual All Hallow's Eve Ball edition of Nocturna went on at Metro. Due to the COVID-19 resurgence, we had to show our proof of vaccination and we were requested to wear masks...in many cases that wasn't an issue at all due to the costumes! I captured a few shots while we were there including the costume contest. It was another night were it was nice to be out among people again and seeing friends despite some restriction.

10.31.2021
On Halloween day, Sunday October 31st, 2021, Elphie and I celebrated our relationship anniversary by eating at Bree Thai and driving around to see a bustling neighborhood with its decorations and children out for Trick or Treat. We did this last year as well...but this year we were able to actually eat at Bree Thai. I saved the footage from the CrossTour CR-900 of our driving which ends up being about an hour of footage after editing. Back at the house, I captured a couple clips of the decorations on the porch that Moses and Mary put up. They were handing out candy to the children and we hung out for a while with them. The majority of the additional soundtrack falls into this section. I picked some lengthy songs.

11.02.2021
On Tuesday November 2nd, 2021, I was given my COVID-19 booster shot at work. I decided to prepare that evening for the effects so I could hopefully avoid missing time from work the next day. I took some Ibuprofen and NyQuil and it seemed to work!

11.04.2021
On Thursday November 4th, 2021, while going to get some lunch, there were helicopters and a significant police presence in Uptown. There was apparently a hostage situation going on nearby. The situation was resolved without much further incident but it sure brought unnecessary excitement to the area for a bit!

11.08.2021
On Monday November 8th, 2021, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears played a Monday Night Football game! Steelers won! Barely, but they won! 29-27.

11.09.2021
On Tuesday November 9th, 2021, the Pittsburgh Penguins came to Chicago to play the Blackhawks at the United Center. I hoped for another Pittsburgh win over a Chicago team but it didn't work out that way. Penguins lost 3-2 in a shootout. It was nice to go to the game again even with vaccine proof requirements and masking. Maybe someday the Penguins will finally get a win in Chicago when I can see them. It has been a fairly long losing streak for the Penguins in Chicago.

11.12.2021

https://youtu.be/0asEtZNtJjY


https://youtu.be/3uKUP7PYM4U


https://youtu.be/bVZaz7aUjhc


https://youtu.be/0grVtwCh3F0
On Friday November 12th, 2021, I went to Reggies for the Slackers show. It was my first chance to see them. I tried some years ago in the Cleveland area but there was a power outage at the venue. Again masking was requested, specifically by the band because they wanted to be able to do the entire tour without having to cancel. They had the Green Room Rockers, The Free Coasters, and The Concrete Roots open the show. It was a pretty fun ska show overall.

11.13.2021

https://youtu.be/qzqpXu5oIKo


https://youtu.be/Q8eSbmOAXhw


https://youtu.be/0pRQjOFZeSc
On Saturday November 13th, 2021, Elphie and I went to get some Christmas gifts for our families, we got some things from Pet Supplies Plus in hopes to make traveling with Stein easier, and stopped at a Food 4 Less to try to find some Mountain Dew Thrashed Apple for my mom. It is a variant exclusive to stores associated to Kroger. While there, we also found some Gingerbread Snap'd that was apparently the holiday variant for this year. We gave the Thrashed Apple variant a try and it was good. To me, it seemed to lack the usual Mountain Dew kick.

That evening we had friends playing at Uncommon Ground in Lakeview. It was, in a way, a going away party for The Castros and they were leaving us with a gift of a new tune! I believe I captured that on video. I used my Canon Rebel T6s again for this show...this time remembering to not take photos while filming. I did take photos with the camera during different songs rather than using my iPhone 8. The Uh Ohs were opening the show wearing their new Dia de los Muertos design shirts! I captured "Bootstraps." Also playing was Celia Rose. Each clip I shared included the other artists in the performance. It was a nice communal evening.

After the show, we took the cat shelter Elphie had made to Anastasia and Josh so that they could utilize it. As we were making this exchange, the snow began to fall. It was the first snowfall that I witnessed for the season!

11.15.2021

https://youtu.be/SPvGL1AjieU


https://youtu.be/-AUSLxNhwAg


https://youtu.be/_YlX91Dc9nU


https://youtu.be/WeSKJXk9RDE
On Monday November 15th, 2021, I decided to attend Neon Moon Mondays at Reggies in the Bananna's Comedy Shack room. It is a country, folk, Americana focused night hosted by Brandon Good. Tobin Bawinkel was playing this one so that was mostly why I decided to go. It turned out that the Castros were still in town so they came out to the show! Also playing besides Tobin Bawinkel, and Brandon Good were Cody DeWindt and Evan Indiana. Again, I used my Canon Rebel T6s for the live footage and photos I shot.

11.18.2021

https://youtu.be/uHQNJ0JTUfY


https://youtu.be/xI-Idii_-lM
On Thursday November 18th, 2021, Nitzer Ebb was playing at Metro. Panterah opened the night. Elphie was very interested in going so I got us tickets. It was a good show. I used my iPhone 8 to capture the footage and photos for this show.

11.21.2021
After missing a year due to the pandemic apocalypse, we were able to go to Disgrace-giving with Disgraceland Wasteland Suspensions at Wasted Youth in Romeoville, IL. It was good food and good hangs for the day. We brought White Fence Farm Chicken and Fritters...the Fritters were a big hit. They're quite good!

11.22.2021
Though I was pretty tired, after Monday Night Football on Monday November 22nd, 2021, I went out to set up my target and take some practice shots using my Excalibur Bulldog 440 Crossbow in hopes of using it for hunting season. It was dark so I used a flashlight to see the target. I set it up at about 20 yards using my range finder I had purchased. I ended up shooting through one of the bolts damaging it to the point it was unusable. I was hitting fairly consistently at least by the time I was done...I'm not sure the video shows that though.

I'm pretty happy with having been able to get this project done fairly quickly. I had finished editing the footage about a week ago (prior to a quick Easter trip) and added in the soundtrack in one evening earlier this week. the editing was really only two or three sessions of work. I hope the Holidays project goes quickly as well so I can get sort of caught up on footage and perhaps work on some other things I have in mind sooner rather than later!

Additional soundtrack includes "Factions" by The Fast Feeling, "13 Peilearan Airgid (13 Silver Bullets)" by Leper, "Haunt" by All Hallowed, "The Old Gods" by Shriven, "The Promise" by Saviour Machine, "Bring Out Your Dead" by White Collar Sideshow, "Omens" by White Lighter, "Underneath" by Starflyer 59, "Monster" and "Bad Dream" by Bon Voyage, "Nightmares" by Soda Shop, "Feeling So Blue" by Kissing Cousins, "Ghost Town" by Lauren Lakis, "Deadman's Party" by Stop The Presses, "My Short Lived Shadow" by Black Swift, and "Tonight" by Destroy Nate Allen.

Footage filmed using a Canon Rebel T6, Canon Rebel T6s, CrossTour CR 900, and iPhone 6 and 8 by Elphie and Joel A. Swanson. Titles created using Motion 4 on a Macbook by Joel A. Swanson. Edited using Final Cut Pro on a Mac Mini by Joel A. Swanson




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