Thursday, October 6, 2016

Our Shortest Show But Filled With Stunning Images

A crisp, smooth production of Alan's Italy Show # 127 focuses on our day out from Siena with Lidia driving us to Volterra where we dined and then returned to Siena by way of the amazing hill town of Monteriggioni. Honestly there wasn't much to say about these two towns west of Siena, so I thought it was time to just do a show of much less length of time. At almost 22 minutes it is almost half the size of our previous shortest show. Nonetheless I covered a lot of ground showing the charming towns plus some stunning Western Tuscan images of the landscape.

Two small glitches occurred. First when we took the videos using Laura's Cannon Powershot 16 they appeared to be somewhat out of focus during very brief 2 or 3 second intervals. We went ahead regardless with my superimposing images instead of focusing on me which is not a bad idea anyway. We later called Cannon Tech Support and seemed to have solved that problem. The other problem was some strange background grinding sounds which I edited out of the video using a control on the IMovie panel. I figured that out using the online Apple Teaching Segments which are invaluable. So things looked pretty good. I caught one mistake I made when I accidentally referred to something as being the 5th century when I meant 15th century. See if you can catch that very brief moment. Otherwise, despite some hesitating dialogue on my part at times, the final production was very satisfying.

We utilized some very fine photos Laura took in Volterra and Monteriggioni with some stunning landscapes forcing Lidia to stop for us which she did gladly. Also, of course, we were very grateful to Lidia who as usual just sweet and wonderful. It is such a pleasure going anywhere with her driving and negotiating some harrowing Italian roads. This was show one of the two we will be doing based on our two side trips during our four day stay in Siena. I reminded viewers of that fact once again, that our stay in Siena was predominantly to explore Western Tuscany and also in the next show South Central Tuscany, the area known as the Val D'Orcia. During the latter drive Luca graciously took us around accompanied by his lovely daughter Greta.

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