Hallstatt, Austria

Friday, March 30th

This Delta flight was better. Due to it being an international flight, the movies and games were free. Decent movies and crappy games. Except one. A type of “trivial pursuit” that you can play real-time in 20 question rounds against other passengers. It’s great fun to lean over and watch the player in 34E cringe as you just beat him out of a common sense question!

We got into Munich airport and had a 2-hour difficulty in getting our rental car. Apparently they won’t let rental gars go into former soviet block countries, even though they are EU nations. Well, we had to rent from a special company, pay extra insurance, and get a larger car, an Opel Astra, not a VW Lupo like I’d hoped. We also had to buy a 7 euro road permit for Austria and a yellow safety vest before we could enter the country.

The Drive thru the Alps in Austria was AMAZING. Mountains rising nearly vertically on either side for hours after hours. We made our way to Hallstatt, the most picturesque “village by the lake at the base of the snow covered peaks” ever!

We found a B&B at the edge of the lake and got rooms looking out to the lake.

For Dinner we ate at the Gasthof Zauner restaurant, a 110 year old restaurant in town.

I had “Reynanke”, a local fish specialty from the lake.

After dinner we strolled thru the town and listened to a string group practicing in the church for their spring concert.

Atlanta

Thursday, March 29th

We left last night and took the Delta red-eye to Atlanta. Delta has a Jetblue style dish network 30 channel TV deal going, but their system also includes on demand movies and videogames. The trouble is that the movies and games are $5 to watch/play, and the dish network TV shows only work while taxiing. Nice try, but I will take Jetblue with their blue potatoe chips anytime. (Quayle spelling intentional)

This morning we me my uncle David at the airport and went out to see some of the sights of Atlanta.

The one thing I noticed off the bat is that Atlanta is currently under a pollen siege. Literally every inch of every horizontal surface is covered in a yellow film. I’m glad I don’t have allergies.

Our first stop was to see the “Cyclorama”, a slightly post-civil war era circular painting that gives a 360 degree view of the battle for Atlanta.

Very cool except for the WPA era “enhancement” of adding a model diorama to the foreground to liven things up. Kinda cheesy. On the way out I got my picture taken with the “Texas”. (a very important civil war locomotive which I will hopefully go over in the future.)

After that toured the Fernbank Natural science center and they had a great display of Lizards.

Then we headed back to catch a second redeye, this one to Munich.

No Comment...

I'm going to offer these up without comment for a variety of reasons. Although they may create more questions than answers, I think they speak volumes for themselves...

Avid Timeline

So I'm teaching a friend to cut on Avid and opend up the timeline for the Cognito music video. Remind me not to take on an edit job like this again!

Google Sketchup

OK, I found a cool program, Google Sketchup. It's basically a “CAD for Dummies”, but it has a lot of cool features. There are user created elements you can download from Google like building, cars, trees and people, there is even a “film” section with dolly track, a chapaman dolly, a triangle jib, a techno crane, and even sandbags! The best part: it's free.

Here are some sketches I came up with for a proposed set for a music video we have in the works: (the white things are hanging kino bulbs)

Weekend in Tahoe

Siobhan and I had a much deserved getaway weekend in Tahoe. It was the perfect weekend to do so, it had snowed 3-5 feet the week before, but the weekend was comeplely sunny.
Here is a quick summary of our activities. The pics below are from the vendors websites. I am still waiting for my film to come back from the lab, and will update the pics when they come in. (Yes, I still shoot film…)

We stayed in 1920s era logging cabins converted to hotels at the “Rustic Cabins”
I would highly recommend this to any chain, ski lodge, or casino hotel. Rooms start at $59 are nice and private and a step back in time.
http://rusticcottages.com/

That night we ate at near by Italian place “Lanza’s”, and wholly cow! Probably the best Italian I have ever had. I had the Chicken Cacciatore, a whole half chicken! Dang that was good!
http://www.tahoesbest.com/Restaurants/lanza's.htm

After that we took a paddlewheel cruise of the lake onboard the “Tahoe Queen”
http://www.zephyrcove.com/cruises.php

Then we did a sleigh ride at the “Borges” sleigh rides:
http://www.sleighride.com/sleigh.html

SP Auction

The latest spot I worked on was for Sacramento Public Auciton. The cool thing about this spot was the location - inside a hangar at the old McClellan AFB. It's about 5 blocks from my house. My dream of riding my bicycle to the shoot almost came true again, except for the fact that I was providing the camera, tripod, MB, etc... But at least I had a 3 minute commute. The spot turned out well. The location was absolutely beautiful, an industrial building with neurtal tones and soft diffused light. The natural lighting was so nice, we only had to break out the kino 2' 2-bank on a couple of closeups, that's it! I even got a chance to flex my muscle in After Effects on this spot. It was a bit of an effort to time out each of the windows to the beat. Well, you can see for yourself here:

http://www.emrl.com/j/downloads/SPAuction.mov

I'm also using the h.264 codec. It's quite nice, but not everyone has it. If you don't, you can download a free player at www.apple.com/quicktime

Oh the Kitchen...

The kitchen is getting close! If all goes well this week I will be buying the cabinets and installing them and next weekend installing the granite countertop!



Here is a shot of the kitchen with the tiles removed and leveling compound in place.





Here it is with the new tile!

Swing-Away Mod for Formatt FM-500 Mattebox!

Here are some pics from a modification I made to my Formatt FM-500 Matte box to mount on rails and have a swing-away feature. (useful for “checking the gate” on my DVX…) Here are some pics:

Here it is in "Swing-Away" mode:

Here is a shot of the Rail assembly:

Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus!

Merry Christmas, and Happy Festivus!

What am I doing? Working on the house... We bought the floor tile and I was about to lay it down when the wall heater died. Yes, during a record breaking cold weekend, our heater died. Thank goodness we have a fireplace, and thank goodness for presto-logs!

lately...

been working on the kitchen... the walls are sheetrocked in and should be painted this week. Hopefully this weekend I can start laying the granite tile floor, then we can finally get the stove and fridge out of the living room!

Prayer photos

Here are a couple of more set photos from the "Prayer" shoot:

This shot is Gaffer Jeremy Moore scaling a power pole to mount a 1k. Handy having those baby-sized pegs...

We put the light up with full CTS to simulate sodium, which worked well. The cool thing about mounting to the existing pole was that when shot the wide establishing shot, it totally played as a working practical!

Here is a CU w/ the sodium light:

This scene was easy to light, just a little skirting to the existing fluo fixture...

Here is the crew shot at the hospital scene in the former McClellan AFB hospital.

Binary J

Hey I found a cool site on the net that takes a picture and converts it to ascii art. There are lots of options, but in this case I opted for "random binary greyscale" (click the image to see it bigger...)

Prayer of a Righteous Seed

We've completed shooting on a nice little short film called "Prayer of a Righteous Seed" We shot it on the DVX at some very nice locations, including a great little church with nice stained glass windows, and here below at the American River.

Time Lapse Edit

I've compiled some of the time lapse stuff I've been working on into a 30-second file.

It is downloadable here: www.emrl.com/j/downloads/TimeLapseEdit.mov

It's 13.5 megs

DIY 15mm support rods

So I went ahead and made myself a set of support rails for my camera. I’d been wanting to build some as they are extremely expensive, but I don’t have access to a metal shop, and couldn’t figure out how to build some of the items. That is until I found these:

http://ebusiness.ilsco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=1&categoryId=192

These are electrical connectors that just happen to be exactly 15mm – the industry standard width for support. They are made of aluminum, so they are lightweight but strong. Perfect, especially at $5 a pair! (If ordering I would get the TA-250)

So I went ahead and bought all the parts and pieces, then found Cavision came out with affordable (~$160) and well made rods:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=335222&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

I’ve also seen these very affordable rods at ~$90!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rod-Support-Tripod-Spacer-for-Century-Mattebox-Sunshade_W0QQitemZ140014946081QQihZ004QQcategoryZ79322QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem

So why put myself thru the grief of a DIY epic when I can buy some well built rods for an affordable price. That’s what I though until I got tired of looking at all the raw materials just sitting there – potential unfulfilled. Well, two weeks later I was able to put them together, and I’m quite happy. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t already have the pieces, but since I did, I’m quite happy. Below are some pics. I plan on blacking the aluminum and bluing the steel parts, but I thought I’d grab some shots so the parts are easy to see. The rods are 14mm, so they are a little small, but work just fine when clamped down. (It’s darned near impossible to find affordable SS or Aluminum 15mm rods in the US!)

The Studio of Tomorrow

After two years, we are finally finishing production of a short film I crewed on. As luck would have it, two days of production were filming in Oakland.

I jumped at the opportunity to work with some long-time friends on what is quite possibly the best short film I have been associated with. Lots of cool people on this shoot, and I can’t wait to see an end result. I’m sure you will see something, as this project should be verry good. My job was Key Grip, I got to work with old friends Eric Petersen, who gaffed, Aaron Rattner who produced, as well as many new ones, including the director, Teddy Newton (of Pixar fame!) Life is good when you are working on a great project with a great crew, thanks guys for the opportunity!

I got to make my second cameo – look for the back of my head in the final edit!

Demolition Derby – State Finals!

This weekend was the demolition derby state finals, a two day event at the California State Fair. For those who have never been, you may snicker but everyone I bring to the derby gets hooked – guaranteed. This year was no different. The first night my wife and I went with her best friend Tala and her husband Mike. Then next night I brought my friend Erik Espera. Here are some shots:


Dinner - Fair Food!!!



Derby participants...






My Wife and I.





Erik and I.




The aftermath...

Everyone's a winner!

It couldn't be that easy...

So I’m experimenting with timelapse with a digital still camera for a promo shoot I‘m doing. I wanted to mount the camera to the front of my truck, and since it has a brush guard, that should help with additional mount points. But how to do it…? I’ve done lots of carmounts before, hostess tray, hood mount, even the doggie cam mount which worked very well. But I’m not near a rental house for such equipment, so how to mount on to the front of my truck… I could clip a couple of mafirs or cardilinies, then bolt on an “L” bracket and mount the camera to that, with reinforcement of course… So I went to take some measurements of my grill guard to figure it out when I saw this:







No way! Could it be this easy?!? The brush guard has two mount points for off-road lights. This goes against the second law of thermodynamics! All I had to do was unscrew a $2 garage-sale tripod head (thanks mom for that find!) and screw it on to the mount point:







Put the camera on, safety cable it to the grille and off we go, easy!








Below is a grab from the sequence, I put 2 ND.6 filters on in addition to the internal ND filter to help the camera take a slow picture for lots of motion blur:

It's been a while...

It's been a while, and just in case anybody was wondering, here is what I have been speinding most of my free time working on:



We have no kitchen. It's stripped down to the 2x4s and concrete floor. Even the ceiling is torn apart. I'm removing the soffets, adding new outlets for the dishwasher and garbage disposal, and extra outlets for the counter, and new lights above. We are getting new cabinets from Ikea and I am installing a black granite tile counter and floor. Right now I really miss home cooking...