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...

Yellowstone

We went to Yellowstone park for a vacation. I took advantage of the dark skies to shoot some long exposure timelapse. Below is a test shot. In the crossed lines you can see the blinking lights from a jet flying East to West. The other solid line is the International Space Station. The white cloud in the background is the milky way.
Click to see a larger image.
Canon 7D 30 second exposure at ASA 5000, 8mm lens at f3.5

County Fair Judging

judging short films for the county fair.

In the background you can see the other judging stations: Arts, Crafts, Photography, ect.

In the foreground is my judging station: a DVD/VHS/TV combo along with entries and forms. I have to say the high school student project compare very well to our 1st year college projects. Perks of the gig: pair of passes to next week's fair. I'm hoping for a demo derby experience...

NAB 2011

blinky lights - always good.

I bought a boat...

Well, a kayak actually. $40 on Craigslist. It's looks a lot better from 15' back than it does once you get up close. It's old. Lots of bumps and bruises but it seems to stay afloat (so far). If it doesn't go underwater, I'll do some live streaming when I take it out on the lake.

My New Favorite Thing...

My new favorite thing is "The Big Score". It's a streaming radio station that plays film scores - Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, John Williams, et al. It's great to have on in the background but can be a bit dramatic during dinner. Oddly enough, the business and programmer is near by in Antelope.

Here is their site, scroll down 3/4 the way to "The Big Score".

http://www.gotradio.com/MusicRoom.mvc/All

Oakland Goodwill Clock

We had an hour to kill between field trip locations, so I stopped by a goodwill store in Oakland. I found this 1970's era wind up wall clock. The face and case are 1970s faux american colonial style. Too tacky to use in in real life, yet not tacky enough to be cool. It was $9.99 and had nice mechanical movement under the face, so I bought it with then intent of making a cool steampunk exposed movement style clock. We shall see once I rip it apart.

Field trip to Chater Camera and DTC Grip Electric

I took the cine and advanced cine classes on a field trip to DTC grip electric and to Chater Camera in Oakland. John Chater and some of his staff were nice enough to keep the shop open a couple of hours to accommodate the students. The even set up for us several note worthy cameras to play with including the Panasonic AF100, the Sony F3, the Arri Alexa and the Phantom Flex - super cool. There were also other gadgets like the Hot Rod GH2 PL mount and more lenses than you can shake a siemens star at.

John Chater demoing an AF100.

We shot footage from all cameras and John set up a very nice impromptu Phantom demo. Some splashed water and a flip of the hair at 2,500 fps. I'll put up some footage soon... it's flipping amazing.

John Chater giving a great overview of cameras and cinematography and business advice and...


A very quick setup for the Phantom demo. Student Tiffany Ireland stood in with a Joker 400 as the only source backlight with bounce fill. Simple, elegant.

More cameras filming than at 2nd grade recital.

Here is the video: awesome.

You can see a much cleaner version on Vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/20728422

The obligatory water splash @ 2,500fps.

As I get older, I find I look more and more like a bird.

At DTC I found 50+ students waiting for me - far more than I figured would make the trip... I guess that says good things about their dedication and bad things about my planning skills
.
The tour was led by operations manager Dan Mode.


Inside the shop they got a chance to see a fully equipped rental house.

This is the group. This is what I get to look at all day...

;-)


Upstairs was something almost as menacing...

same.

jogging

jogging while blogging while blogging while jogging. Android is cool.

cool shoes

I got some cool shoes.

I like to run, but my running Nikes were just no good. Too much padding - it felt like I was running in clogs. Feet should not go numb while running. In an effort to find a more subtle shoe, I found online references to the "Vibram Five Finger" shoe or as I like to call them "Monkey Feet Shoes".

http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/
Those are cool, but expensive, hard to put on, and just too goofy.

They remind me of the kung fu shoes I wore in High School:
I did find a reference to someone recommending running in the Feiyue kung fu shoes.



Super thin sole and very flexible. I got a pair off EBAY for $20 with shipping. I love them, and I love running in them. It's like running barefoot with soles. It feels like wearing socks. I ran off track on dirt and gravel and even a bit on river rock, no problem. Super cool.

Bluffs

I went out to the bluff overlooking the river this weekend and shot some timelapse. (These are all straight out of the camera, uncorrected.)




I also went out at night and shot some star and moon shots - I wanted to get some timelapse, but my battery in my remote died - ugh. I'll reschedule once the daylight savings time falls back and it gets darker out sooner. It was also a full moon. I'll try it again with a half or new moon. I do like the way the moon reflected off the water, that should look great in motion...

Kentucky - lightning bugs and bolts

Went back to Kentucky to visit relatives and attend a wedding. While there I had an objective to capture fireflys on camera. I tried before but my camera wasn't fast enough (400ASA f3.5) This time I brought my 7D and tried with 6400ASA and an f2.0 lens.


While taking these pics a storm moved in. The thunderless lightning pulled me away from spending more time on my quest. The lightning was so frequent it seriously reminded me of the fight scene in "War of the Worlds"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JJDQGRGWsY&feature=related

Here is my clip. Just after I shot this, all heck broke loose with hail, rain, winds and flooded streets. Cool.

(pending upload)

Jay's Class

If you've ever wondered what it's like to sit through one of my 4-hour classes, this may give you a glimpse of the experience...

It's 2 hours of one of my classes distilled down to :30 seconds of audio bites and set to motion graphics.


Produced by Jeremy Kashatok

Stereo Realist

I found my beloved Stereo Realist! It was in a box in the garage. I thought I sold it on ebay in film school to pay for food and gas. I'm hoping to put on a 3D demo/symposium soon and was lamenting the loss of my favorite camera. This makes me happy.

From Wikipedia:

This is why you hire a pro...

One of the projects we are working on at the school is to make a commercial for the Sacramento Zoo. I'm working with one of the students, Casey Neal, to create the storyboards. She is very talented, and I expect to see her working for Disney or Pixar in the next couple of years.

For your entertainment, I've included a comparison between my original storyboard drawings and her final product.

This is why you hire a pro:


Click on them for an even bigger laugh. My favorite is the giraffe...