Category: Madagascar
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Madagascar: Paying Attention to the Little Things
Walking through the jungle in Madagascar in search of lemurs, it’s easy to overlook the little things…and trample them underfoot. Bugs, tiny plants, lizards. There are upwards of 100,000 species of insects in Madagascar. We didn’t see the long-necked giraffe weevil, but we saw lots of other interesting creepy crawlies. For instance, this little guy,…
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(Re)introducing Madagascar: Golden Hour in a Roadside Village
So it was our first “real” weekend (i.e. the first during which we were not stumbling around in a jet-lagged haze) and we decided to head out of town. We decided to return to a destination we had visited on our vacation trip in 2012, and a place many visitors to the country go and see…
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…and we’re off – to Madagascar!
When we were posted in Namibia, we took a trip to Madagascar. The thought was, “when will we ever have this opportunity again?” because plane tickets from the U.S. are wicked expensive. How ironic that a few short years later we should discover that we will be posted there for a two-year assignment (extendable to…
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How do tortoises “get it on”?
Ever wonder how turtles and tortoises “get it on”? You’d think they were cursed by anatomy, but yes, they do mate – there’s no “you lay the eggs and I’ll come along after and fertilize them.” Animal Planet’s probably all “been there, done that” but on a recent trip to Madagascar I heard the strangest…
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Free Jungle Sounds
Every now and then I come across some sounds that might be of use to other video hobbyists. These are pretty clean, high quality recordings taken with a Rode Videomic. Feel free to download the sounds and use them for whatever you want. Frogs Sound – the sound of African bullfrogs croaking. Recorded at Kempinski Mokuti…
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Exploring Madagascar’s Jungles at Night
If you ever find yourself in Andasibe-Mantadia National Park in Madagascar, be sure and check out the “night walk”. You can hire a tour guide who will walk you down a quiet, dark road flanked by thick jungle, and alert you to various types of lemurs, reptiles, amphibians, and other creatures you’ll never see by…
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The Right Music for a Video. But Not Quite.
Sometimes finding exactly the right ‘feel’ music for a video is the most fun part of video editing, and other times I dread it. Because I already know that it’s going to be impossible to find music that won’t be too depressing, won’t be too happy, too distracting, irritating – in short, that won’t even…
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Underwater Videography: Things I’ve Learned
If you’ve ever managed to take along a camera snorkeling, you probably had the same reaction I did when you got your finished footage home to the computer: “It looks nothing like it did when I was actually snorkeling.” Colors are washed out, everything is a dingy blue, all the fish you saw are nowhere…
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Madagascar on 12.12.12 part II: the Snake
For my second installment in the “One Day on Earth” project, in which filmmakers around the world are invited to contribute footage which may be used in a feature-length film, I was also in Madagascar’s Andasibe-Mantadia National Park. Technically, we were in the “Réserve Spéciale d’Analamazaotra,” and we were watching an indri (the largest kind…
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Madagascar on 12.12.12 part I: the Lemurs
If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that I have been pretty excited about 12.12.12. Why? Because that’s the day the third “One Day on Earth” film is to be recorded in every country around the world. The first film, recorded on 10.10.10, was in my Christmas stocking this year (you can order yours…
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Preview – Wildlife of Madagascar
Simply amazing – Andasibe-Mantadia National Park. Here is a preview of the kinds of things that will be posted in the near future on video. Though they are wild, these ringtail lemurs are very curious. This white-ruffed lemur is “just hanging around”
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Entering Madagascar
Getting off the plane at Antananarivo, we were greeted by a pleasant, warm humidity…and the occasional raindrop. As our driver took us into the city however, the rain started for real. Soon the rain was gushing down in buckets, and the streets of downtown ‘Tana turned into rivers, and I wondered how some of the…