Amish Condoms Commercial #2

Here is another internet spot we shot for www.amishcondoms.com featuring our very own Will Bowles and Katie F. Ward.




...and don't forget to visit our website to see all our videos www.carboyfilms.com

Amish Condoms Commercial #1

Here is the first of three internet commercials CarBoy Films shot for a company called amishcondoms.com. These guys literally sell wooden condoms. They look like tall skinny birdhouses. We shot these back in April, but we are just now at liberty to put them up on the blog.

George Washington - Beerthusiast

The Father of Our Country loved his beer.  English–style porter was George Washington’s drink of choice and whenever he could he would seek out the product of Robert Hare, a brewer in Philadelphia who was one of the first to make porter in the U.S.   Washington was no stranger to homebrew either and this recipe from a personal notebook he kept will make 30 gallons of ale, enough for a large household like Mount Vernon.

"Take a large Sifter full of Bran, Hops to your Taste---Boil these 3 hours.  Then strain out 30 Gallons into a Cooler put in 3 Gallons Molasses while the Beer is scalding hot or rather drain the molasses into the Cooler. Strain the Beer on it while boiling hot let this stand til it is little more than Blood warm. Then put in a quart of Yeast if the weather is very cold cover it over with a Blanket. Let it work in the Cooler 24 hours then put it into the Cask. leave the Bung open til it is almost done working---Bottle it that day Week it was Brewed."

"To Make Small Beer” is the title of this recipe.  “Small beer” is normally brew made from the second runnings through the mash for strong ale and the beer that is created has very little alcohol (about 3%).  However, a note on the NPR website says that the above recipe produces a beer with an alcohol content of about 11 %.  If this was George’s “small beer” then consumption of his “large beer” must have somehow disrupted space-time for its imbiber. Compare that ABV to a popular modern American brew, say Sam Adams Boston Lager at 4.9%, and you realize that “Town Destroyer”, as the Iroquois nicknamed Washington, wasn’t effin around.   In fact, I think he might have been trying to kill himself and the people around him.

So if you try this recipe use caution (or just less molasses) and for God’s sake send us pictures of the aftermath.

Image by cliff1066 

3000 Blog Hits

Hey we got 3000 hits on our blog. Hurray!!! Thanks for watching. (and reading)

Unicorn Obstructions: Bob DeRosa

Having been inspired by the film, "The Five Obstructions", we went to friend and screenwriter Bob DeRosa. He gave us a demanding list of obstructions to remake our short film: "The Unicorn." Take a look at the most recent installment to the Unicorn Obstructions.

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See all our videos at our new website: http://www.carboyfilms.com

The CarBoy Films Website is Up!

We just officially launched the new CarBoy Films Website a couple of days ago. We are really excited about it. All our videos are there as well as some nice things to look at. Please go visit the site and let us know what you think:

http://www.carboyfilms.com

We're still going to post new videos to this blog, but now we also get to use the blog as more of a blog. We'll be posting more CarBoy Films news, articles, and essays about the things we think are interesting enough to be on a blog. You'll find many of our usual favorite subjects like filmmaking, beer, and filmmaking about beer. But we'll be sharing so much more. Stay tuned and go to the website!

Betty Cocker

This is a sketch we shot for our good friend Jason Moyer featuring a character from his live show: Betty Cocker. Enjoy!

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Urthel Hop-It - CarBoy Films Beer Review

Here at long last is our second beer review where we discuss a Belgian beer called Urthel Hop-It.

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Will gave this beer 4.4 out of 5 Gnomes while Kevin gave it 3.75 Gnomes for an official CarBoy rating of 3.975 Gnomes. Not bad.

You can learn more about this beer at: http://www.urthel.com

2000 Hits Celebration

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CarBoy is celebrating its 2000th Hit. Thanks so much for watching!

Daniel's vlog

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This is the first sketch we shot for our friend Jason Moyer in a series we are shooting for him to use in a contest for "The Big Gay Sketch Show."

Homebrew Blooper

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It's not often you get a blooper clip on video when making beer in your kitchen, but we got one. Enjoy!

The Unicorn Obstructions: Proposal

We are big fans of a documentary film called “The Five Obstructions” in which Danish director, Lars von Treir, challenges his mentor, Jorgen Leth, to remake a short film of his from 1967 entitled “The Perfect Human.” He has to remake the short five times, each time incorporating some of Lar’s “obstructions.” Under the guise of making Leth a better filmmaker and in turn, a better person, von Treir’s obstructions are more mean-spirited attacks than helpful suggestions. They include making a cut in the film every 12 frames and shooting in India or Cuba for no apparent reason. Lars will ask him questions so that Leth will admit to things he doesn’t like. He will then make him do these very things. This is generally followed by a light snack of caviar. Much to Lar’s chagrin, Leth’s remade films turn out to be very good. The man is a terrific filmmaker. It forces him to make interesting variations on his original theme. It is a brilliant movie, breathtaking in its pretension.

So in the spirit of experimenting and doing things for no other reason than, “It sounds like fun,” this film has inspired us to propose our own obstruction experiment. We’re no legends of Danish cinema, but sometime ago, we made a short film called “Unicorn” in which Will plays a guy with a mustache who is stalked by a stuffed Unicorn. It is riveting, some of our best work. It is also a pretty good “neutral” scene (at least we think so.) The goal is now to find people we know to challenge us with their own obstructions. We will try to choose people who not only have strong feelings about film, but who we think can push us creatively and as filmmakers to make a better, more interesting film.

You can watch “Unicorn” in one the posts below. We plan to post all developments that arise from The Unicorn Obstructions as they happen on the blog, so please stay tuned.

Doritos Commercial

We shot a spec Doritos commercial for their "Crash The Superbowl" contest. Take a look and please go to their

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Hop 15 - CarBoy Films Beer Review

For this, our first ever CarBoy Films Beer Review, we tried a beer called "Hop 15".

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According to our sophisticated and ever-changing rating system, Will gave this beer 3 out of 5 Reindeer while Kevin gave it 2 1/2 Reindeer, giving it an official CarBoy Rating of 2.75 Reindeer. Which is certainly a score to be proud of.


Hop 15 is a double IPA from Port Brewing Company in San Marcos, CA. You can check them out at http://www.portbrewing.com

The Necessary Evils of Video Compression

Compressing video is terrible. You spend an absurd amount of time finessing and tweaking your short film just for it to look like some washed out, pixilated shell of its former self. Of course, by “short film” I mean footage of your best friend hurting himself in some hilarious yet life altering way.

There are as many opinions about video compression as there are for making a Thanksgiving turkey, who made those crop cycles, and which presidents were in the Illuminati. This is just the best way I have found to compress video for the internet after trying a lot of time consuming and frustrating methods. I’m sure there are some who will read this and have all sorts of rage to share on the subject, but they can write it on their own blog.

Most of this comes from advice I received from our friend Coplin. At his suggestion I started using Compressor for all our compressing needs. If you are using Final Cut Pro to edit your video, which is my recommendation for almost all low budget productions, then you probably already have Compressor. It is a program that comes with the Final Cut Suite. It’s easy to use and produces great results. If you don’t have Compressor, find the guy who installed it on you computer or burned you the disc and have him give you this too. It’s worth it.

So from your Final Cut sequence, make sure you don’t have an in or out marked and go to > File menu > Export > Using Compressor. This will open compressor and place you sequence in the Batch Window.

In the Setting Window find the plain old h.264 preset. Depending on which version of Compressor you’re using, it should be under Apple > Formats > Quicktime.

H.264 is by far the best codec for the internet. It gives you more bang for your buck: quality vs. file size.

From here hit the Encoder tab in the Inspector window and adjust your audio and video settings.











Under video just move the quality slider to just above medium.

















You want your audio to be AAC, Mono, 44 khz. This should be plenty of quality for internet use.


Now go to Geometry tab in the Inspector window ad make your dimensions width 640 x height 360 for 16:9 or width 640 x height 480 for 4:3.















That’s it. Hit the Submit button and you’re done. Enjoy uploading all that footage of getting kicked in the balls.

Women for Sarah Palin

CarBoy Films teams up with One Hott Mess.

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This is a sketch we just did for an all female sketch group called One Hott Mess. Some of you may have already seen it. As of right now, it has been viewed on funnyordie.com 18,235 times.

Prohibition Style Beer "Sneaky Pete" (a.k.a. Alaska Bush Beer)

This is a recipe I pulled from The Alaskan Bootlegger's Bible by Leon W. Kania, a fascinating DIY reference for the homebrewer. This book has recipes for wine, beer, liqueur, and whiskey; and it also covers equipment and brewing techniques.

This recipe was handed down to Kania from his grandmother. He admits there are a few flaws, "i.e., no fermentation lock, bottling the murky wort before it clarified, using bakers yeast and not much hops", but it's basic and cheap. "There's probably been more of this beer made in Alaska than any other style. The ingredients are easy to get and when you're packing in several months of provisions to a remote homestead or mine, it can mean the difference between beer or no beer." Indeed, I think many of us are from time to time haunted by visions of remote homesteads with no liquid bread.


So if you're looking for an easy first homebrew experiment, this might be it. Kania says the Blue Ribbon Malt is available in most grocery stores (I haven't done any recon on this yet). Let us know if you make some and if you do send us pics/video and if possible, a sample.


SNEAKY PETE
3 Lb. Can Blue Ribbon Malt Syrup (hops flavored)
4 Lb. Cane sugar
5 Gal. Water
1 Pkt. Bakers' yeast

In the biggest pot you can get your hands on, boil and dissolve in a total of 5 gallons of water, the malt and sugar. Put this wort in a primary fermenter (a crock in my younger days) and when it's cool, crumble in a cake of bakers' yeast. When almost all the little bubbles stop, bottle it, adding 1/4 teaspoon of sugar to each bottle.

Our Trip to the Stone Brewery

So we recently went to the Stone Brewery in Escondido, CA just outside of San Diego. We took the tour, ate some great food and drank some terrific beer. Here are some of the things we saw.

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Carboy Films Arts and Culture Series - Agriculture: Demon Engine of Civilization

In keeping with our commitment to improve the world through beer-making and the Video Arts, we humbly present to you the Carboy Films Arts and Culture Series - a panoply of significant contributions to the human experience that we feel should be savored like a fine wine (or beer). From time to time this blog will highlight such items for your edification and enjoyment.

First up is John Zerzan's inconvenient essay Agriculture: Demon Engine of Civilization. Zerzan is an anarcho-primitivist philosopher living in the Pacific Northwest who doesn't pull punches.  Some of you may consider this work a big downer, but sit with it a while and you might find a certain resonance with your inner gatherer-hunter.   

Agriculture, the indispensable basis of civilization, was originally encountered as time, language, number, and art emerged.  As the materialization of alienation, agriculture is the triumph of estrangement and the definite divide between culture and nature and humans from each other...

Read more here

Pic by Gabu-chan

Setting Up the Greenscreen

It's hard work making films about talking dogs. So to prove it, here is an old-timey silent film to show you how we did some of it.

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A friend of ours, Joel Svensen, gave us a butt roll of greenscreen material and we built a pvc frame to hold it based on plans we found online. It's a very inexpensive way to have a lot of fun.