New Project

I'm excited to announce that preproduction has begun for The Wallflower's Opus, as short drama about bullying and its effect. The script is being finalized and the cast has been assembled. I still need to get some props, mostly costumes, and scout some additional locations. 

I've got one of the blood squirting rigs set up... Oh yes, there will be blood, and have big plans for the GoPro Hero 2 camera to get some cool POV shots. I'm pretty pumped about this endeavor because up until now, most of the productions I've been in charge of have been documentaries or promotional, this one will give access to some new genre aesthetics.
 

Re:Cycling

At long last, the documentary is completed. Check it out!

Bike B-Roll

This Labor Day weekend was perfect for getting footage for the upcoming bicycle project. I go several shots of in the local area and broke in the new rigs from this summer. The Fig Rig worked well for getting shots while cycling. The camera slider also made for some really cool establishing shots of the bike pre-modding.

All in all it was pretty successful. Hopefully I can track down some good interviews this week.

Bellifax

Last night Will, Dustin, Andy, and I finished the final edits to Bellifax: The Not-So-Standard Oil Company.

This was the first summer piece we began working on. It's a short mockumentary, based on alternative fuels. Hope you enjoy!

DIY Camera Slider

I finally got my camera slider done. After watching many of the tutorials online, I decided to take the best aspects of the ones I watched and mash them together into one rig. The overall cost came out to about $30.

Originally, I had a small dolly made out of two skateboard trucks and scrap of board. I dropped this idea long ago because my wheels weren't aligned and it was bulky and unreliable. Then I came across Lolo Two's Big Brother camera rig which used conduit and connectors. After filing down the inner rim of the connectors as the video demonstrates, I realize that it was nearly impossible for me to attach the rest of the shuttle without increasing the friction.

I then stumbled across a video making an over head documentation camera that used bearings. The great thing about this is it doubles the contact points. One skateboard has four wheels and eight bearings, so I was able to get more stability by crossing the bearings along the pipe instead of just using the wheels to run along the top.

This rig uses the same mount assembly as the fig rig. The shuttle is made from 3/4" PVC connector and pipe, 8 skateboard bearings, and 8 5/16" carriage bolt assemblies.

I put 1/4" washers on each side of the bearing to prevent needless grime from getting in, as well as a layer of masking tape around the outside to dampen the metal-on-metal screech.

The rail system is 3/4" EMT conduit, some of the cheapest piping available. I chose it to be stronger and more rigid than PVC. It's screwed down with 3/4" conduit hangers to two scrap pieces of board.

I'm really excited to try it out. Special thanks to Katie Black for helping me acquire parts.

DIY Fig Rig

This is a rig that I designed based off of a tutorial from IndyMogul.com. I made my own custom modification to the camera mounting screw assembly. Their version had long bolt threaded through the PVC cross section secured by caps on each end. I used a 3/4" to threaded 1/2" PVC adapter on the top of mine, allowing me to screw different bolt assemblies onto the rig. Now I can just make various caps instead of a whole new rig.

It should be very useful for minimizing shake and wobble in handheld shooting.

Commissioned Vanity Pack

Recently through WEIU, I've been gifted with the opportunity to film a series of recruitment videos to be embedded in the new EIU sports website this fall. So far rain delays and bad weather have taken out most of the time to shoot the vanity shots of campus for the first video this week. Glancing at the forecast, I'm going to attempt to shoot the remaining half of campus and import the footage this afternoon, after helping in shooting the interview scene for a mockumentary short in the Physical Science building.

For the first of these videos, I'm going to attempt to use a Cinemascope aspect ratio in post production, much like the one used in editing A Logical Conclusion

A Logical Conclusion Production Photos

A Logical Conclusion

As of Monday, Will Addison, Andy Due, Dustin Tylman, and myself began filming a creative short called A Logical Conclusion. The script is Will's brain-child and one of my favorites in the line of summer projects. Filming began at roughly 11:30am in the Coleman Hall lecture room. The footage was captured on my Canon T2i and will be edited shortly. The most difficult shot in this project was the dolly across the chalkboard to reveal Will's character writing. It took several takes to get the timing smoothed out. We're experimenting with a wide screen letterboxed crop that will hopefully look really professional in post. Production pics will follow shortly.