One man's JUNK

Sorry that it has been so long since I last posted.  I just wanted to talk a little about junk, yes junk.  Everyone has some. You probably have some pretty cool junk stored away somewhere right now.  I have found a great use for it, prop building. You would be surprised how many props you can find or make with just a little imagination.  Old cloths make great costumes, old bits and pieces of worn out electronics can be hot glued together to create some great scifi props. Here is a short video on my junk props.

Inspired

Sometimes I am inspired by the simplicity of objects for example a shoulder rig built from PVC.  I thought many times how nice it must be to have a high end shoulder rig with a matt box and follow focus attachment.  The cost of such a rig is however not within my budget.  I then finally came to the conclusion that it made no difference what I used to stabilize my camera as long as the camera was stable.  I then set out to build my own version of a shoulder rig inspired by the frugal filmmaker and knoptop.  I came up with a hybrid of their versions of PVC camera rigs to create my own rig. CHECK IT OUT!

Lights

I apologize that my post have not been more detailed and frequent.  My new camera has taken up a great deal of time with trying to learn how to use it.  There is something to be said for the convenience of the Flip Cam (just point and shoot). No focus, no iso, no Fps, and no adjusting for light. The T3i is a bit overwhelming for the novice (like myself) the first time you try to use it.  I suggest that you read the owners manual first before trying to take pictures or do any filming.  Next watch tutorials and there are plenty of them on YouTube.  The biggest challenge for me is going to be understanding light.  LIGHT can make all the difference in the world as to how your final product comes out.  Starting out I plan to keep it simple and cheap by using clamp lights with CFL bulbs.  Here is a big tip that I learned as I did my research. Whatever  CFL bulbs you decide to use try to make sure that they are all the same type of light for example I like to use the daylight type.  The best feature of these lights are the price and the low heat.  With some experimenting you should be able to find a combination of lights that will work for you.  In a later post I will put in some pics of the lights I have put together so until then, "LET THERE BE LIGHTS".

Well I think that I may have figured the three point lighting thing.  The camera settings took some time. Here is something that I did to test the settings.

NEW CAMERA

Wow! My awesome wife, daughter,  mother-in-law, and brother-in-law all pitched in together to get me a EOS Cannon Rebel T3i 600D for Christmas!  Now all I have to do is learn how to work this thing.  I will keep you posted on my progress.  Step 1 is to read owners manual cover to cover.

Audio with an iPhone 4s

So I have been experimenting with some different ways to record audio an found that my iPhone 4s with the iTalk app by Griffin captures audio quite well.  The app is free and easy to use.  I was able to record audio with the phone's built in mic and with an  ATR6550 Condenser Shotgun Microphone plugged into the headphone port of the phone.  The audio was easy to transfer from my phone to imovie and I was able to sync it with my video footage with a little effort.  I will be trying to perfect this in later projects.  Stay tunned.

Camera Crane

Work in progress