Sunday, April 9, 2006

The DV Show Podcast Brian Alves and Colleen Thibault have a weekly podcast on all things DV called, not surprisingly, The DV Show. On their site, they posted a list of DIY devices (including everything I've put up on the last three days). Their podcasts are good, the tutorials useful and links unbroken. They're definitely worth checking out and aggregating. Here is their master list: JIB Arms/Cranes Nice jib arm, well designed, and it allows tilting of the camera. Heavy Duty with lots of instructions and pictures. Nice looking Jib Arm rig Cool but simple Speed-Rail jib arm. Bob Vento's jib arm, simply and very professional. Another crane with very detailed instructions and images. Heavy duty. Cody Deegan's Jib Plans with VERY VERY DETAILED .pdf files! Exact instructions with photos and drawings. Dave's Crane. It's .zip file with a lot of BMP images inside with detailed drawings. A great .doc file instructional tutorial, with very detailed diagrams and instructions. Dollies Very simple but easy to build dolly with skateboard wheels. Nice dolly with simple diagrams and easy instructions! The oringal $14 skate sheel dolly tutorial Very, VERY simply PVC dolly with good instructions and photos. A great .doc file instructional tutorial, with very detailed diagrams and instructions. Stabilzers/Steadicams $14 Steadicam for the poor man in us all. GREAT article with even some useful addons. Very detailed step by step instructions with photos. Detailed Stabilizer with photos. Nice design. Probably the simplest stabilizer explanation/tutorial. Simple stabilizer with instructions and a few photos. Simple design. Building a steadycam with anything heavy, save yourself money! A great .doc file instructional tutorial, with very detailed diagrams and instructions. Bluescreen/greenscreen Make a portable blue/greenscreen with PVC and cloth, for under $50! Nice design! Build a large greenscreen in your home (non-portable) for under $30. 11:09:58 PM    comment []

Do-It-Yourself $14 Steadicam It's all over the internet and was even featured on MAKE MAGAZINE but another great Do-It-Yourself tool is Johnny Chung Lee's $14 Steadicam. Since the primary goal of a steadicam is to stabilize footage and minimize movement, you can't build this tool out of PVC pipe! You need the weight to settle down "human jitteriness." Lee's device is down-and-dirty but effective with practice. On Lee's steadicam, the side handle is used to stabilize side-to-side rocking. The vertical shaking is pretty much dampened by the weight. Don't expect this thing to perform miracles, you have to practice using your arms and body to create a smooth motion. Watch your hands while you walk, and see how level you can keep them relative to the ground. Watching the shadow of your hands on a sunny say is an easy way to isolate thier movement. Keep your legs bent and learn how to "glide". ??WARNING: Improper or irresponsible use of a steadycam can quickly result in the destruction of your equipment and/or injury to yourself and others. Be careful, watch where you are going, pay attention to where you are swinging your camera. 10:59:34 PM    comment []

Do-It-Yourself Dolly & Stabilizer I'm on the budget filmmaking kick again. On SOFTWEIGH.COM, I found three really good tools for getting motion in independent MOTION PICTURES. The PVC Dolly, Camera Stabilizer and Boom Jib are my favorites in the bunch. I've used the PVC dolly many times before and found it to be very effective (and inexpensive). I love the Boom Jib shots although I have yet to build one. Here's what you need : Some 40 mm PVC pipe 2 x "T" pieces 8 x skateboard wheels 4 x right-angle brackets 4 x 100mmx100mmx50mm timber 1 x 30mmx30mm timber 2 x threaded rods and nuts A few wood screws Simply bolt the wheels onto the brackets and fasten onto the block of wood with a hole thru the center. You need a total of 4 sets. Make up a "T" shaped PVC frame using the pipe so it's slightly larger than your tripod. Cut the 30mmx30mm timber into short lengths and drill a hole the same size as the threaded rod thru them. These are pushed onto the rod that goes thru the PVC pipe to keep it balanced and centered. Bolt everything together and make 3 holes in the pipe frame so your tripod drops into them. Refer to the site for the instructions on the other items. 10:47:00 PM    comment []

Do-It-Yourself GreenScreen Jeff Geerling has posted an effective, economical how-to on his website for building GuerillaGreenScreen or BudgetBlueScreen using PVC pipe for the frame and either paper or fabric for the screen. The estimated cost is $16.03, not including tools (hacksaw and PVC pipe cutter). The tools you can use for keying include Photoshop, AfterEffects, Final Cut Pro and, my personal favorite, Shake. The trick to getting an effective key is even lighting with no shadows unless you're very skilled with making garbage mattes and holdout mattes! Additionally, you'll do much better if your digital video camcorder has 3 CCDs (charged couple devices) or the new, high end CMOS with 4:4:4: or at least 4:2:2 color compression. If the camera can't capture sufficient color data, you're not going to be able to pull it out very effectively (for example, you may notice the "green spill" on Jeff's Photoshop background replacement). If you want to understand color, I strongly recommend listening to the podcast with HD for Indies Mike Curtis on digital color. It's excellent. 10:15:27 PM    comment []