theBlackandBlue Web site posted an article, with a lot of photos, about building your own follow focus for your DSLR camera. Some of them look really nice. Check it out here.

dslr, filmmaking, cinematography, diy

Related articles

• DIY DLSR follow focus with K’nex (makezine.com)
• Camera Hacks: A Follow Focus Rig For a Few Bucks (pcworld.com)

I’ve been using Google Chrome for a couple of weeks now and stumbled on this Zemanta plugin. It’s an add-on to help bloggers find interesting content to match what they’re posting about. It allows you to connect to your friends at the various social networking sites and pull from your RSS feed reader. Might be interesting.

By the way, I’m dangerously close to changing Chrome to my default browser. Sorry Firefox.

Related articles by Zemanta

• What Is Zemanta? (yearn2blog.com)

I want to start posting more this year, and I thought a “write once, post everywhere” approach might help. This plugin will supposedly post to the FaceBook news feed whenever I add a post to this blog. I’m starting with FB,  but may add MySpace and possibly…gulp, Twitter at some point.

Here’s the link to the plugin: http://www.gilfether.com/socialite/

Update: link didn’t show up. Let’s see if that’s fixed…

The latest Lightwave newsletter mentions a plugin that allows the import of Blender fluids. Blender’s simulator is very cool, and Blender is completely free, of course. Once in Lightwave, you can texture using Lightwave’s awesome surfacing system and render engine. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks great.

You can find the plugin and tutorial here.

Since today’s shoot was canceled due to hurricane Hanna sweeping through our area, it’s a good time to post a bit about how we’re shooting our latest feature.

There were several choices to make before the cameras rolled on the first day. Should we shoot in 24p or 30p? SD or HD? and what camera should we use? We already had 2 cameras available: the Canon XL1s and the Canon GL1. The XL1s is a solid choice, with manual control over every setting, but it shoots in SD and in 60i or 30p only. The GL1 is pretty much the same, but not nearly as versatile. I had also purchased the Canon HV20 last year. It shoots in HD, has a Cinema mode that can be converted to 24p in post, and a beautiful picture. But it doesn’t have the manual control of the XL1s. Ultimately, I chose control over format and went with the XL1s.

Then there was one other decision: should I use Canon’s Frame mode (30p) or shoot 60i and convert to 24p in post? I grabbed the trial of DV Filmmaker, a program that converts 60i to 24p, and did a few tests with both formats, using the same subjects¹. While the 30p footage approximated the film look, the 24p conversion had softer light and appeared more film-like. So, I purchased DV Filmmaker and decided to shoot in 60i.

So, the first day of shooting came and after the 4th or 5th take of the second shot, we get the infamous “Remove Cassette” on the XL1s. Anyone who uses that camera will probably know what I’m talking about. The problem is, it wouldn’t clear no matter what we did. The drive assembly was dead. Ugh! Luckily, we brought the GL1 as a backup.

But we soon discovered that had flaws of its own.

A few takes into the next shot, we discovered 2 bad pixels on the CCD chip–not on the LCD, but the CCD, so it recorded the bad pixels. Okay, it’s an easy fix in After Effects, a minor inconvenience we decided to live with.

Fast forward to the second week of shooting, or, rather, the capture session after shooting the second week. I noticed a few sound drop-offs and, worse, digital breakup on the tape. Luckily, we generally run a lot of takes of each shot, so the glitches were easily avoided in the editing room.

Until week three.

The glitches were getting worse. I was now looking at masking and cloning out glitches. The sound, fortunately, was mostly okay.

Then I discovered, or remembered, a solution. Adobe Premiere CS3 (my editor of choice) comes with a program called OnLocation (OL), which allows you to connect the camera to a PC and capture the signal directly–bypassing the tape. Well, shit, let’s try that.

Holy crap, OL was easy to set up! I had purchased a 500GB external capture drive and planned to use my laptop to run everything. The XL1s (yes, we went back to the better camera since we weren’t using tape anymore) plugged right in and was instantly found by OL. OL’s interface has a nice monitor for our director; it even shows the zebra lines. And, perhaps best of all, no capturing. Each take goes right to the capture drive, and can be labeled as needed.

We were rolling smoothly now. The only real–shall we say…inconvenience–is the camera’s wired connection to the computer while shooting, which makes camera moves somewhat limited. Add to that the signal loss when the cable length is too long², and you have to be really creative in how you shoot. But we use sticks more often than not, so we’re managing. We’ve even established a rhythm when moving the whole rig (camera, laptop, drive, etc.) from one shot to the next.

In the future, of course, I intend to purchase an HD (probably HDV) camera that can shoot in true 24p, so we get the best cinematic look possible for our budget.

Stay tuned for more behind the scenes stories and pictures.

¹I used my daughter’s Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals, the battery-operated ones that move and talk, and staged a scene as if they were talking to each other. Silly? Yes, but it worked for the test.

²I’ve seen several references that say a firewire cable can be 14′ without a signal loss, but I used a 10′ cable and noticed some degradation in the image. It works, but should be use sparingly. I use it for hand-held shots that require a lot of movement.

For months I’ve been trying to figure out why all of my state-of-the-art Adobe products — Premiere, After Effects, Encore, and Photoshop — have been, for lack of a better term, twitching. The screen would shake and redraw, menus would disappear, and only show when I moused over them. It was maddening! Sure, the programs would work, but productivity was at a crawl.

I tried everything I could think of: uninstalling old programs, cleaning the registry, updating video drivers (I was convinced it was a video thing), and I scoured the internet. Nothing.

Finally, after using every search combination I could think of, I found the answer on the Adobe Forums (duh). Here’s the link.

Quote from user tl_woods:

This is what I did to fix this.

Uninstall all microsoft intellimouse driver versions. Export your registry settings and then search in registry for intellimouse and delete all references.
I dont think this is necessary but thats what I did.

Reinstall with IntelliPoint 5.5…

http://www.download.com/IntelliPoint-5-5-64-bit-/3000-2110_4-10734878.html

Its as easy as that.

The problem solved, at last.

And here’s the 32-bit version of the driver:

 http://www.download.com/IntelliPoint-5-5-32-bit-/3000-2110_4-10734867.html?tag=lst-2&cdlPid=10734866

Welcome to talesfromthecellar.com.

The old domain will remain active for a while, and will resolve to the new one.  So it will mostly be invisible. But it’s a lot easier to say, “go to talesfromthecellar.com.” Don’t cha think?

Stu Maschwitz, author of DV Rebel’s Guide, turned me on to a free tool for creating storyboards, without sketching your brains out. It’s called Sketchup, an architectural tool offered by Google. There is a pro version that has a lot of bells and whistles, but the free version (along with a downloadable library of models) is perfectly capable of generating detailed panels, and can even offer a sketch-like style to the images if you wish.

Give it a try.

P.S. I plan to review DV Rebel’s Guide when I’m finished reading it. Stay tuned.

Blender, the open-source 3D application, has come a long way. According to a 2007 comparison of 3D applications published on the TDT 3D (The Dream Team) Web site, Blender performed well against Maya, Softimage XSI, Cinema 4d, and Lightwave. And considering each of the others costs at least $500, Blender should be especially appealing to a low-budget filmmaker.

As the comparison chart shows, Blender scored Good or Very Good in animation, rendering, particles, and dynamics. In fact, it outscored Cinema 4D in character animation, and Lightwave and XSI in UV tools. It was also listed as the only package with built-in compositing; though, XSI’s higher-end versions (the entry-level version was used for the comparison) do have compositing as well.

Blender does need work in some areas. It scored poorly in NURB and curves modeling, and low in 3D painting. Plus, it’s still doesn’t have an industry-standard interface. But the developers are constantly working on updates, and there is a tremendous 3rd party community adding plug-ins and scripts all the time.

Blender’s growth can mean a lot for those who need to use CG for their movies but can’t afford a $500+ price tag. Do you need matte paintings, pyrotechnics, space ships, dinosaurs? Try Blender. It’s free!

A couple months ago, I started uploading videos to YouTube (you can find my videos here); basically, some of my old shorts and a couple of Timewarp’s trailers.

The first thing I noticed was that the format in which a video is uploaded can make a difference in how it looks and sounds on YouTube. My first attempts had muffled and distorted sound and a pixelated picture–yuck!

So, I did a little research, and here’s what I found:

First, YouTube makes the requirements for the best quality clear in the help center. They are: