Winners - Underwater Videography Contests

December 2017 Video Contest Winner and Review

Published 8 years agoon January 7, 2018

WINNER CHOSEN AND REVIEW BY SCUBAVERSE.COM’S EDITOR-AT-LARGE AND RESIDENT UNDERWATER VIDEOGRAPHY EXPERT JEFF GOODMAN

Winner: Changing Oceans by Katy Laveck Foster & Jeff Foster

Winning Video:

First of all, Happy New Year to you all! Great films again in December and all deserving of a mention. As usual I have written a few comments on each film in the attempt to help with your further endeavours. Please do read them all if you can. Picking a winner is always hard and my opinion is not by any means to be taken as the definitive word. Videos and movie making can be an art form as well as being factual and can be very subjective. The important thing is that you enjoy the process of diving, interacting with the ocean environment and producing videos that you are proud of.

Let’s take a look at December’s entries:

Changing Oceans – Katy Laveck Foster & Jeff Foster

Watch Katy and Jeff’s video here.

Excellent written intro to the video which gave the film a great deal of meaning and purpose. As for the film itself, truly excellent. I know many people would prefer to ignore the poor state and serious decline of all our seas – it seems to be too much for them to take in – but we can’t go on ignoring the problem and this films goes a long way towards making us think hard about what we are loosing, what we have left and why we should try our best to do something about it. Great videography and editing with very good choice of emotive music. It was also the perfect length and style to be punchy without becoming preachy.

Komodo National Park – Tobias Koller

Watch Tobias’ video here.

Well done for having a go at presenting and narration. Both were good and added value to the overall feel of the production. Very nicely filmed with excellent camera work and lighting. Editing was also extremely good although I did find the several openings to the film to be a little disjointed. A good amount of factual information given which made the overall video far more interesting. Nice music too.

Diving with Seal, The Farne Islands – Graeme Parker

Watch Graeme’s video here.

Fun opening which got us straight into seal action. They really are the most charismatic animals. You certainly had some fantastic encounters. I love seeing marine animals interacting with people. Although well edited with good quality images there seemed to be a general lack of contrast and colour saturation. This can easily be rectified by making a few simple adjustments in editing.

Il Cristo degli Abissi – Kiril Ivanov

Watch Kiril’s video here.

That was really nice. Very emotive. Good slow and purposeful camera moves which were complimented well by the music. Excellent variety of camera angles and perspective. A fitting memory to Dario Gonzatti. Well done.

Malta Underwater – Lutfu Tanriover

Watch Lutfu’s video here.

Excellent wreck opening and at first the music fitted well but it then became more powerful than the following images so that the soundtrack was taking over from and detracting from the video itself. The camera work throughout was very nice with good clear, sharp and well exposed images. The wide angle shots were particularly dramatic.

And the Winner is….

December’s winner is Changing Oceans by Katy Laveck Foster & Jeff Foster. It is an exceptional film with a powerful and extremely important message.

Well done to you all. 2017’s overall winner will be announced soon – and following that, I can’t wait to see your entries in 2018!

[hr style=”single”]

Scubaverse.com’s January 2018 Underwater Video Contest is now open! Enter as many as three of your underwater videos here.

Jeff Goodman

Jeff is a multiple award winning, freelance TV cameraman/film maker and author. Having made both terrestrial and marine films, it is the world's oceans and their conservation that hold his passion with over 10.000 dives in his career. Having filmed for international television companies around the world and author of two books on underwater filming, Jeff is Author/Programme Specialist for the 'Underwater Action Camera' course for the RAID training agency. Jeff has experienced the rapid advances in technology for diving as well as camera equipment and has also experienced much of our planet’s marine life, witnessing, first hand, many of the changes that have occurred to the wildlife and environment during that time. Jeff runs bespoke underwater video and editing workshops for the complete beginner up to the budding professional.