Homemade Steadycam

We made a homemade steadycam based off of plans we found online prepared by Johnny Chung Lee. It cost us more than the $14 he claims it will, but we are very happy with the steadycam. Here's how we did it.

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We've tried this steadycam with our tiny Sony DCR-HC20 and a Canon GL1. It works really well with both cameras. It works great as a "hand held" option.

This is our first "how to." It's mainly an experiment with the format, trying to give information in a concise and helpful way that is also entertaining. Let us know how we did.

Unicorn

Hi everyone. Here is a short film that we shot a really long time ago. In fact, it is probably the first CarBoy Film. We shot it on my little cheap Sony MiniDV camera, a DCR-HC20 to be exact. We finally got around to finishing it. The footage has been sitting on a firewire drive for quite sometime. I'm glad we get to share it with you. Enjoy!

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Contributors to CarBoy Films

Contributors to CarBoy Films:

WILL BOWLES - Creator, Executive Producer, Writer, Director

BOB DEROSA - Writer & Actor - provided the voice of Shirt and Tie McGrueder in "Dog School Part 1"

JOSH FLAUM - Actor & Writer - provided the voice of Blue Shirt McGrueder in "Dog School Part 1"

JESSICA FUNCHES - Producer & Filmmaker - gave us a great interview about managing her rheumatoid arthritis

COPLIN LEBLEU - very talented Graphic Designer & Animator - gracious enough to let us borrow his Canon GL1, as well as a wealth of technical and creative advise

MCGRUEDER - my dog

TARA OCHS - Actress and funny lady - gave us some greenscreen floor panels to use

BEN ROCK - Director, Filmmaker - always a wealth of helpful info and advise and generous with gear, was kind enough to loan us all the equipment needed to shoot "Silent All-Nighter" - Instant Film

JOEL SVENSEN - All around swell guy - was kind enough to give us a roll of greenscreen material.

UNICORN - both a terrific actor and stuffed animal

KEVIN WARD - Creator, Executive Producer, Writer, Director

Above is an ongoing list of contributors to CarBoy Films. We will update this list as more people share their time, talents, stories, and stuff with us. So please check back with this posting to see the list grow.

Cowboy Hat Logo

So here is a new CarBoy Films Logo from something Will came up with.

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6 secs

More Cell Phone Animation

So here is another animation made with a notepad, a marker, and a cell phone. The only media came from my Treo 650 and even though I monkeyed around with it in After Effects some, it's still a very basic idea. Animating something in a simple way is a fun little exercise and gives me some ideas about how things can work on a larger scale.

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(37 secs)

Anatomy of Santa

This is a sort of a holiday homage to the famous title designer Saul Bass. He did everything from "Vertigo" to the original "Ocean's Eleven" to "Good Fellas." It is based on his opening title sequence for "Anatomy of a Murder" and features Santa Claus.

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And here is a split screen of the same piece with Bass' original artwork included for comparison.

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"Your LA" News Piece

So I saw someone I hadn't seen in a while and he told that he saw me on TV a couple of months ago. I immediately thought he was mistaken. Why would I be on TV? But he insisted. It later donned on me that maybe there was a news story about Instant Films, the 48 hour film festival I entered in November. (You can see my submitted short below.) Sure enough "Your LA", a local news show aired a piece. It is all about my film. I remember a little crew on set and being interviewed, but I didn't know what it was for and that we were the only film being followed. In any event, here it is:

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Also, it is a new year (Happy New Year by the way) and we are really trying to commit ourselves to getting this blog off the ground. We are setting a goal of posting a new video every two weeks. I can't imagine us generating a finished short film at that pace but we can at least post videos related our movie making activities and show you what we are up to in a raw form as well as a finished product.

Thanks for watching!

Halloween Pic Logo

The WGA is on strike and I had a little more time on my hands at work today than I am used to. So here is a stab at a temporary logo I made today using a photo of us from this past Halloween. Will has something in the works for a real logo, but until then I thought I'd monkey around:

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Silent All-Nighter

This is a short film we shot for a 48 hour film festival call Instant Films. This is the exact cut that showed at the screening on Sunday night. It has not been altered or re-cut in anyway.

We received a script and three randomly selected actors on Saturday morning at about 9am and turned in this movie Sunday night at around 7pm. With daylight savings being Saturday, that's a turn around of about 35 hours. We had an amazing crew and were lucky to pick three great actors. It was a really cool event, we had a lot of fun (a specific kind of fun), and I hope we get to do it again sometime.

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Safari or Firefox?

Try using Safari when viewing this blog.

I just looked at our blog with both Safari and Firefox. I was surprised to see that Safari worked better. The video played back weird with Firefox. There was a little bar on the right side that would freeze on the last frame. Safari did not have this issue. I'm a mac user, so I don't know about Internet Explorer on a PC.

If anyone has some insight or you are having the same issues, please let us know. We are trying to get this thing working as well as it can. You can email us:

carboyfilms@gmail.com

I know we've been slacking on this project, but we are trying to get back on the train and we've got some videos to post soon. Over the weekend, we shot a short film for a 48 hour film festival call Instant Films. It's a really cool event and the short turned out pretty good considering it was shot in 13 hours or something like that. That will be up in the next couple of day.

Cell Phone Animation

This is what happens when you have a notepad, a marker, a cell phone, and a little extra time at work. Done right, it looks like you're really working. (Unless you're a stripper!) Union work is awesome.

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Greenscreen Test

A little while ago, a good friend gave us a roll of greenscreen material. (Thanks Joel!) We made a frame to hang it on with PVC pipe using plans we found online. It was easy to make and it works great. So, in a continuing attempt to show people not just what we are doing, but how we are doing it, here is a sample of some footage that we shot with the greenscreen. We used the "Green and Blue Screen" effect in Final Cut Pro to key in out.

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FCP Greenscreen Test

Launch!

Hello. We are Kevin and Will. CarBoy Films is our attempt to explore the world of film and video through available basic technology. We want to use this blog as a container for ideas and finished pieces. We will try to post as much of our "process" as we can in the hopes of communicating and corresponding with like-minded folks. We've also been experimenting with homebrew, so there's going to be some of that mixed in as well. Really this is going to be used for whatever we want; but I needed to put up the first post, so this is it.