Categories
Uncategorized

Arizona in January / Flying with Red

Tonto National Forest, Arizona

Work can be hectic, work can be stressful, but work can also be fun.

I got the chance to fly out to Arizona for a shoot last week. When we left Milwaukee (at 5AM) it was 0° and a few hours later we were in Arizona where it was about 65°. A nice change of pace from the harsh Wisconsin winters. We also went out to the desert for some shooting while we were there. Sure, it got cold at night (in the 40’s) but we survived.

The first day I think we wrapped just before 1AM, and since we’d gotten up around 4AM to get to the airport, well, it was a loooong day. The second day was a bit more laid back, but we still hustled and got everything shot.

BTS

This was our first out-of-state shoot with the Red One and our biggest worry was traveling with it. Scott Bourne’s blog post Traveling? Better Get a UPS Account had me a little worried, and we decided that checking in our baby was not a good idea, and shipping it all was not a good option due to the tight schedule of the project, so what we ended up doing was buying a ticket for the Red One. Yup, it ended up being a passenger, with it’s own ticket, and it’s own seat. (Sadly, it didn’t get it’s own carry-on or snack.)

We had two other crucial pieces of gear, and since we had 3 people flying out there, two of us just took the gear as carry-ons. This let us know where the gear was at all times, and as I said more than once “equipment is more important than clothes!” meaning, we could buy new clothes, but lenses, filters, matte box, etc. would be near impossible to replace if it was lost along the way.

Making sure the Red One could go on the plane took quite a bit of legwork and phone calls. Between the TSA and the airline, we got conflicting information, but eventually we were armed with printouts from the TSA web site and reassurance that what we wanted to do would work… and it did.

Categories
Uncategorized

Red One

Red One

Yeah, it’s pretty amazing…

The Red One (seen here with the Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 lens mounted on it) is a digital cinema camera. It just can’t be considered a “video camera” by any means.

It’s interesting how much of what you know from photography and film seems to come into play when using it, as opposed to what you know about video, and your old fashioned video cameras.

Not that I’m much of an expert yet, as I’ve spent just a very short amount of time working with the Red One.

But I do have to agree with anyone who has used the word “amazing” to describe it.

Red One. Amazing.

Categories
Uncategorized

MPEG Streamclip MP4 Encoding

MP4 Encoding

Settings in MPEG Streamclip for encoding to an MP4 file.

This is mostly here for my own reference, but if you find it useful, or have another suggestion, I welcome your comments…

Categories
Uncategorized

MilwaukeeDevHouse4 Time Lapse

MilwaukeeDevHouse happened and you missed it… or you didn’t. Either way, you can watch this video that Time Lapse Bot and I created…

We used a real MiniDV camera this time, so we got double the resolution of the old camera, which is nice. We also had Sam Dodge doing a bit of Time Lapse Bot camera operation, so that’s cool…

I love how these time lapse videos encapsulate the events… I’m also in talks with SmallSharpTools.com to do another Time Lapse Bot upgrade, which will result in greater roaming capabilities of the unit.

You can also watch on blip.tv or grab the hires version if you like. Just adhere to the Creative Commons license and be cool…

Stay Tuned!

Categories
Uncategorized

HelmetCam 2.0 at BarCampMilwaukee4

This is the initial run with the HelmetCam version 2.0 at BarCampMilwaukee4

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

This video is also available at blip.tv and Vimeo.