Amazing Guy Walks Across America video

There’s been a great new “viral” video making rounds recently, Guy Walks Across America. It’s currently at over a half million views on You Tube and will likely continue to rise as it’s buzz grows. It’s kind of like a stop motion / time lapse and is quite an amazing accomplishment technically. There’s a behind the scenes video as well that offers a glimpse into how they achieved the effect. It’s embed after the jump.

Parents, take your kids to Apple’s filmmaking camp

Apple has made great use of their retail stores as place of learning. Many of the locations have small theaters where pros lead classes on everything from Photoshop to Mac troubleshooting. Another fun thing they do is offer a number of youth programs. One of those upcoming programs is Apple Camp - Lights. Camera. Camp. It’s a “fun, free workshop where kids become filmmakers.” This 3-day even takes kids from 8 - 12 basically through the pre-production, production, post-production and exhibition of a mini-movie. How great it would have been to have such a thing when I was a kid! And speaking of that, a little story ...

Editing a multicamera concert shot on Canon 5Ds

It’s no secret that Canon 5Ds are everywhere. They’ve shot music videos, short films, commercials and more Vimeo videos than anyone can imagine. One place where I haven’t heard about a lot of usage (as of yet anyway) is in multicamera concert production. There’s very real reasons why you wouldn’t want to use any small-form-factor DSLRs (with no gen lock, timecode input or external monitoring) in a multicam production. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t get the job done.

From Wired magazine: The Good Enough Revolution

Continuing with the links to other good articles that are great reads for our particular industry comes a link to a Wired article called The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine. That kinds of sums up a lot of what is going on in film and video production today wouldn’t you say? That Flip camera footage that comprises a large part of your program would have been flat out rejected on broadcast television at one point in the past but today ... it is good enough.

My first Sticky Pod test

Just about one year ago I joined my brother-in-law up in the Pocono mountains to shoot video for his website The Garage Blog at the International Motor Press Association’s test days. This is an event where automotive journalists converge on the Split Rock Resort and the Pocono Raceway for two days of driving, testing and writing about cars. In the case of The Garage Blog, we shot video as well. This year we are doing more of the same. I’ll be taking my trusty HV20 camera (probably minus the 35mm lens adapter in the interest of traveling light and saving time) and pretty much all the same gear I took last year with one addition: a Sticky Pod.

Please label tapes and disks: An open letter to DPs, camera ops, DITs

Man, there are a lot of high definition formats out in the world today. Just to spell them out would be a dizzying array of letters and numbers. 720p, 1080i, 23.98, 30p ... this list could literally go on and on so I won’t even attempt a partial list other that what I have above. Just take a look at this HD format chart. That’s a lot of different formats and it doesn’t even take into account the different flavors of a particular format that camera manufacturers often come up with on their own.

With that in mind this PVC post is an open letter to all DPs, ACs, camera ops, DITs, anyone and everyone associated with the camera department to please label their tapes and hard drives with the usable, relevant information of shooting format and frame rates, codecs and cameras so post-production will at least have an idea of what is being handed to them.

Science of the Movies premieres tonight on Science Channel

If you’re a movie fan then tune in to the Science Channel tonight or (more likely) set your DVRs accordingly as tonight premieres the show Science of the Movies.

What is the show about? From the Science Channel website:

Science Channel invites you on a geektastic journey to the cinematic intersection of art and science in the all-new “Science of the Movies”, Tuesdays at 9 PM (ET/PT).

Appealing to the movie junkie in us all, the new series explores the remarkable - yet rarely celebrated - scientific world that exists behind the screen, spotlighting the visionary artists, entrepreneurial spirit, innovative technology and remarkable techniques responsible for creating unforgettable, edge-of-your-seat moments in blockbuster films.

In tonight’s episode titled Spider Man Motion Control we get “Host Nar Williams explores the motion-control technology behind cloning and the famous “Spidey-sense” shot from “Spider-Man”; Nar rides a CG elephant created by the creature special-effects team behind “300”; Nar embarks on a chase scene using wireless camera mounts.” There’s a complete episode guide over on the Science Channel website. Man I hope it’s not too cheesy.

Want an ikan monitor? Enter their contest.

If you are in need of a small external monitor for your video shoots or maybe a small supplemental monitor for your edit suite then head over to ikan corporation and enter their Wish I had an ikan contest. From the ikan website:

If you can create a short narrative film either featuring an iKan product or the Ikan name, then you are eligible to win cash and prizes from Ikan.

Start Date: April 27th
End date: August 1st

1st place: $2,000 cash

2nd place: $1,000 and a V8000HDMI LCD Monitor

3rd Place: a V8000HDMI LCD Monitor

It seems strange that the 1st place winner would get cash and no ikan monitor but with $2,000 cash you can spend it how you want! Rules are available here. Good luck!

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