And you thought YOU had your hands full…

One-man bands have a hard life, it’s true.  Thinking about composition, color, lighting, audio, content, and whether you are going to get your car towed from the illegal parking spot can really wear on a shooter.  However, other folks are the real overachievers here.  My buddy Mark Suzsko Suszko (sorry dude) sent me this link of a guy that simultaneously - and singlehandedly - sails a 24’ sailboat (in pretty high winds) while flying a kite with a video camera attached!

If you can forgive the egregious overuse of the Enya music, it is a pretty amazing clip.  Have a look.

What’s the craziest shot YOU ever got?  Post it in the comments!

Monsterpod: Stick Your (small) Camera Almost Anywhere

I love gadgets, especially useful ones.  That love is doubled when the device is reasonably priced.  And gadgets that are useful, reasonably priced and related to video put me over the top.  So you can imagine my interest when a fellow member of a video discussion list turned me on to the MonsterPod, which fills all three categories well.

At first glance, the MonsterPod looks like an orange and black nylon-mesh suction cup, with a 1/4” tripod screw mounted in the middle.  It’s once you flip it over that you find the magic ingredient - a large blob of what looks like orange Silly Putty, what the MonsterPod makers call “PodGoo.”  You wouldn’t think something this seemingly simple could stick to just about any surface - but you would be wrong. 

Basically, applying the MonsterPod involves shaping and bending the cup and PodGoo to conform to the rough contours of the surface you want to stick your camera to.  And the list isn’t limited to just flat surfaces - the MonsterPod sticks to poles, rocks, dashboards, cement, you name it.  As long as the surface isn’t wet, made of fabric, too greasy or too dirty, it’s a good bet that MonsterPod will adhere to it, at least for a while.  A good firm press - even on vertical surfaces or upside down - will fasten the MonsterPod in place.  The makers recommend a maximum 10 minutes of attachment at a time, but as long as it isn’t overloaded I can see the hold lasting longer.

A Little More Space On The Shoe

Whenever I review hard-disk video recorders (and I do a LOT of those reviews) my first two questions always are:

How do you power it?

and

How do you mount it?

I remember one review of a unit that was essentially functionally useless, but had a new feature:  A shoe-mount, so it could ride on top of the camera.  At the time this puzzled me, because I had a shotgun mic up there.  What to do?

A hold-over from still cameras, the shoe-mount remains quite popular.  Shotguns, wireless receivers, lights, field monitors, teleprompters, and many other devices all fight for this valuable piece of camera real estate, which is actually less than 1” square.  The good folks at K-Tek are looking to resolve some of these land wars with the release of the K-Tek Shoe Bridge, which elevates all the accessories 4” above the camera and creates a mounting rail 6.5” long.  That ought to make space for almost any accessory, although a smart shooter would watch out for weight & balance issues - the shoe is only so strong, y’know.  Check out the K-Tek Shoe Bridge at www.ktekbooms.com .

Avid:  Editor or Database?

I’ll admit it, as I have before:  I’m not an Avid guy.  Of course, that doesn’t stop my employer from being an Avid house.  We are currently installing an Interplay system, which centralizes all our assets, and allows many different people throughout the plant to preview the video, audio, graphics and such.  As a part of the installation process, all of us who have to edit must get an Interplay tutorial.  I sat through mine this morning, and for four hours I was reminded of a statement I have heard again and again:

“Final Cut and Premiere Pro are great editors with crappy databases.  Avid is a crappy editor in front of a GREAT database.”

Interplay drives that message home - with a sledgehammer.

There are at least three (and maybe more - I’m not sure) ways to tiptoe through the Interplay database.  The one that looks the most useful to me is the Interplay window that lives inside the Media Composer editor.  This window seems to hold the promise of wiping away all of the various bins (except the bin with the sequence in it.)  Big step forward, IMHO.  Next is Assist, which is a standalone app that can offer logging on a desktop, which of course requires database access.  And speaking of access, then there is Access (wasn’t Microsoft using that name just a minute ago?), which is the heavy-duty search monster, with Boolean searches that can drill through your pile of video like an Exxon oil rig through the Gulf of Mexico.  Not to mention the several administrator tools, which I will never hold permissions for (and rightfully so.)

And I wonder…three (or more) applications?  Wouldn’t one be enough?

I suppose that an argument can be made for each, but really - how complicated do we have to make our systems?

Of course, I probably wouldn’t mind half as much if I could just graft the Premiere Pro interface onto it.  Is that too much to ask?

Live From NAB: The SkyDolly

Another aerial-themed post:  As Jim Feeley and I walked past the Silicon Imaging booth, I couldn’t miss the 3-foot fan mounted to the back of what looked like a race car seat.  Upon further inspection, it turns out that this is the cockpit for a powered parachute operated by Norm Bercerra, founder of SkyDolly.  Basically, the powered parachute frame has a hand-made weatherproof camera case mounted to it, but what makes it special is that the camera is actually controlled by radio control from the ground by another operator.  This leaves the pilot able to concentrate on flying the chute.  Early shoots have used the Silicon Optics Mini 2K camera (which shot “Slumdog Millionaire,” 2008’s Best Movie Oscar winner.)  I love the inventiveness involved in this product!  Learn more at their website.

Live From NAB:  A Video Helicopter For $300?

I love the odd finds at NAB.  You can get highly sophisticated massage chairs, straps that keep your spine straight, a brain massager fetchingly named “The Tingler” and more, but at least the DigitTronics video helicopter might conceivably qualify as a video tool.  The one on sale here features counter-rotating lift blades (no tail rotor), 2.4Ghz wireless control, and a tiny wireless video camera that has a claimed range of 1000 feet (best practice:  divide that by 10.)  Still, for a show special price of $299, it had a long line of potential pilots pulling out the plastic.

I’ve been flying radio-controlled fixed-wing planes for quite a while, and the one piece of wisdom I can offer is this:

“You can trim a plane to fly itself, but a copter is always trying to kill you.”

But give it a shot.  I might.

PS:  Don’t hate me for the video - I shot it with a Canon still camera.

Live From NAB:  I Get To See The Inflatable Camera Bag!

Regular readers might remember this post a few weeks back about Kata announcing an inflatable camera bag, to protect your baby in the overhead compartment during commercial airline flights.  Well, today I got to see the prototype.  It looks a lot like the Michelin Man, and it does appear that it would do a great job of protecting a camera.  I can’t wait to see the production version.

UPDATE:  Did you notice?  I got my Kata’s and Petrols mixed up!  Sorry about that - today I’ll go look at the REAL Petrol inflatable bag!!  The Kata does look cool, though.

Live From NAB: The EX3 Gets A Shoulder Mount…

For all of the nice things that can be said about Sony’s PMW-EX3 camcorder, one of the primary gripes I hear is about is the form factor.  Shooters that are used to a camera that sits on their shoulder can have a very hard time adapting to the Canon XL-esque shape of the EX3.  Those moans have not gone unheard, apparently.  While walking through the Anton-Bauer booth here at NAB 2009, I stumbled across the DM-Accessories EX3-Shoulder.  It is a shoulder mount that is built of very stout aluminum parts, with comfy foam padding underneath.  The reason it was being shown at Anton-Bauer was that it had an A/B Dionic battery mounted on the rear.  When I put the EX3 on my shoulder, it still felt a bit nose-heavy, but then the salesman flipped open the back plate, moving the battery back and balancing the center of gravity almost perfectly. 

It may look a little funny, but it really works.  DM-Accessories sells the EX3 Shoulder and other cool stuff through their website.

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