This morning I woke up early. Really early. Like 2:00 early and I couldn’t sleep. So I did what I normally do when I can’t sleep. Sat at my computer and stared at the screen for a while. It wasn’t long before I decided that it was time to clean up my pictures and videos. It’s amazing what you can find when you can’t sleep.
I captured a little footage before my battery died and wanted to try my hand at slow motion.
Music by Kevin MacLeod.
Equipment used:
Canon T3i
Canon 50mm/1.8
Final Cut Pro X
Well I’ve got the first short film out of the way, now it’s time to refine my technique a little. Paresthesia was a great learning tool. While it was only forty seconds long, it started out much longer than that. It was only after many, many cuts that I was able to come up with what I thought was the best it could be. Thanks for all your support and kind words!
Speaking of support, I finally got around to building a rig for my camera. While it was fun and easy enough to just hold the camera while filming my beautiful wife in the bathroom, I felt I needed a little more support and options to add additional “stuff” to my camera should I have needed too.
This is what I came up with.
It’s a combination of several ideas I’ve run across on the web. The entire rig (excluding the electronics) cost less than $40 to assemble and creates a solid foundation to build on to. It’s a menagerie of parts coming from all parts of the world with the help of ebay and amazon. It’s even rigged it to accommodate a Cowboy Studio shoulder mount.
I’d love to have a full rail system and a cage but when looking at a price tag upwards of $700-$1000, I’m very pleased with what I’ve been able to pull together. It has a very professional look and feel and I won’t be embarrassed to bring this along for a paid gig, should I ever get the opportunity.
With this built, I’m hoping the stars will align to start filming my second short film. This one will require more actors, more patience, and maybe a little beer consumption. In the end, however I think I’ll have something that you will enjoy.
I finally completed my first short film! It was a challenge and ended up being only 40 seconds long, but I had to start somewhere.
Please enjoy Paresthesia.
Most people that know me (aka my friends)(and family), know that I want to make movies films. It’s not something I’m very vocal about, but it is something that I’m am deeply interested/invested in. About a year ago I was having dinner with some friends. We talked about a number of different things, most of which I can’t recall now, but there were two things that I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday.
The first of which was my friends ability to tell stories. She created a story from five random pictures that were pulled from flickr sources. Awesome story! Check it our here. I guess this is something pretty common practice, of which I had never heard, but it was a great story nonetheless. The second being another friends uncanny ability to create entire stories in few words. Twitter has a 140 character limit, but somehow he is able to craft his words in such a way that whenever you speak with him, you’ve got to ask him about what he writes. These two things fresh in my mind, I realized that I wanted to create films. I wanted to craft stories, shoot, and share them with others.
Not more than a week after dinner I finally got around to asking the other friend about his stories. I kinda hinted at how I felt about turning his stories into something that could be shared with others. To my disbelief but also relief he, like me, wanted to create films. So… We started brainstorming and filling our heads with many fantastic ideas. The things we wanted to see and do. And we knew that we could do it. Because we could imagine it… it could be done. Then reality hit us. This film making thing isn’t as easy as we had once envisioned! We were getting nowhere fast and something needed to change.
Over the course of the year we talked and met several times to try and hammer out the last part of an idea, or to put the finishing touches on a story. But we were never able to finalize anything enough to ensure that others would see the film the way we had intended it to be portrayed. We struggled for many weeks…months to solidify something…anything that we could justify as ready for others, but we couldn’t pull anything together as more than just a “great idea/story” that would make a “great film.”
Fast forward to today. Although we’ve not yet released anything, we’ve got a better idea about what this whole film making thing is all about. It’s not all rainbows and butterflies. There is a lot (A LOT) of hard work that goes into every aspect of creating something that others can enjoy. Last night we finally put the finishing touches on a script that should be just as much fun to watch as it’s going to be to shoot. I can’t wait for this to materialize inside my camera. Then onto my computer. Then into your youtube. Stay posted as we’ve still got a lot of work to do. I just hope that you’re excited as I am!
Thought I’d have a little fun with this fantastic new product of Nintendo. Please enjoy the video.
Oliver loves his hockey! Here he skates alone after visiting the rink only twice.
