Elephant Seals

So here is some footage I shot of some elephant seals just north of Cambria, CA. They gather here every year to molt their skin. And they smell terrible. I used my new Canon Rebel T2i with the 18-55mm kit lens.




We're going to use this camera to shoot some new projects. A new 55-250mm Canon lens just came in today, so I'll be posting some test footage soon.

Back In The Saddle

We're back after a little hiatus, with new projects, beer, and a new human.  That's right, Kevin and his lovely wife Katie are expecting a girl in August!  Can you believe it?  We'll be posting some short stuff soon and are working on a special project for the summer.  In the meantime, get into a comfortable position wherever you're reading this, have a beer, or a shot, or a doob, or some keyboard cleaner - and take a long, hard look at the picture attached to this post (you can click on the pic).  You'll thank me.

4000 Blog Hits

4000 Hits! Thanks for watching.

Amish Condoms Commercial #3

This is our third and last internet spot for Amish Condoms. This is the one the client liked most.

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.