a gaggle of kleigls

ktxl fox 40 was getting rid of some old tungsten lights. I was more than happy to swing by and pick up a few for the school.

To find the perfect Christmas tree...

This weekend we went up to Pollock Pines to secure a Christmas tree.

After about an hour wandering through the forest, it occurred to me to turn on my GPS tracking program on my G-phone. I captured the second hour of wandering. After two hours and about 2 1/2 miles of uphill, downhill and through the sticks all the way we found it...

But it's not about the prize, it's about the journey:

3d camera pan kludge

I wouldn't even go so far as to call it a hack. my 3d web camera's lens is too narrow so I strapped it to a fan to make pan back and forth.

Snake!

I'll give this one right of way...

48 hr 3D project

A little while ago I had a chance to work on a 48 hr project. I swore I'd never do one of those again but an old friend Erik Espera called and invited me to crew. He's a hard one to say no to but he not only assembled an all-star crew, but also wanted to try and shoot it in 3D, possibly the first 48hr film to be shot in 3D. I couldn't resist the offer, so I said yes.

I originally signed on as a camera operator when the original DP Eric Maddox, decided it would be too big an undertaking to be both DP and the stereographer for the shoot. He decided to focus solely on the 3D technical and he asked if I could take his place. Of course I said yes but it was quite a courageous decision for him to turn over that creative controls in order preserve the integrity of the film. I applaud that, I don't think I could have been able to do that. And as it was turned out it was the right decision.

Working with the 3D rig was incredibly complex and required constant fine tuning - a full time job in itself. Every time the camera was moved, even if just lifting it off the dolly and setting it on the ground required about 20 minutes of adjustments. Yes, this slowed things down a bit but on the upside 3D actually benefits from less coverage. You actually should linger longer on shots and cut less frequently in order to give the eye more time to adjust, so it evened out. We had to cut out quite a few beauty shots I wanted to get in order to keep all the scenes with minimum coverage. But then, what 48hr film doesn't have that happen...

Here is a link to the film and a BTS featurette:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/stereoscopic-3d/last-man-standing-3d-anaglyph/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/stereoscopic-3d/behind-the-scenes-of-last-man-standing/

Thanks to Erik Espera, Adobe, and every person who worked on the crew to produce such professional results in such a short time.

My New Favorite Thing... Posterini

I found this website that will let you take a picture and build a movie poster out of it. It's not that bad, I crapped this one out in less than two minutes. Imagine if I spent three! The picture size is limited to about 1k resolution, but I'm talking with the developers about increasing it to a larger size. Right now it's free, but I could see charging for a larger sized option. Here is the site:
http://www.posterini.com

Philo T. Farnsworth

What I did for my summer vacation:
I went to visit the Philo T. Farnsworth museum in Rigby Idaho.
If you don't know who Philo is, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKM4MNrB25o
Unfortunately we got there at 11am and missed the Philo boat...