Year: 2010
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Video Contest for Pets
I submitted a quick entry to GoodNewsforPets.com’s 10th Anniversary Holiday video/photo contest. They ask for a minute / 5 MB (max) describing a holiday moment with a pet, with emphasis on the human-animal bond. The interesting twist in this contest is that you can submit either a video, or a photo with a 100-400 words…
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Unmanned Cameras
Seems like the big thing these days is home videography is to put cameras on inanimate – or animate objects where they don’t usually go. I’ve come across a number of interesting examples recently. The first I’ll share uses one of those new “Go Pro HD” cameras you see advertised everywhere these days (I want…
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Sometimes a simple video can be a challenge to make
Just outside the town of Oberammergau, in Bavaria, Germany, there is a small cave or niche carved into the cliffside overlooking the road. In this niche stands a statue of Jesus, oh, I’d say about 12 to 15 feet tall. On the other side of the road is a small alpine creek with a walking…
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Lovin’ the Lunch Love
Via Kickstarter.com, which could be a blog post in and of itself, I had the opportunity to take part in a film project. An old friend of mind from college who decided to pursue a (successful) career in film (unlike me, who neither recognized my calling nor realized any success) was looking for support to…
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Chroma Keying Made Easy Part 3 of 3
So in part 1 I talked about the basics and how you can “green screen” for very little money…and then in part 2, a couple of ways you could superimpose multiple “green screen” or “chroma key” elements on top of each other. In part 3, we’re going to kick it up yet another notch, and…
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Chroma-Keying Made Easy, part 2 of 3
The previous post talked about how to use chroma keying (blue-screen/green-screen) techniques in home video, relatively inexpensively. The question is, so now what can you do with that? Really, it’s up to you and your imagination. The most obvious use is to put yourself in front of a background which, for practical reasons, is difficult…
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“Green Screen” Cheap and Easy
Most people who dabble in home video editing know about “blue-screening” or “green-screening.” What they may not realize is that it doesn’t take a whole lot of money – or a great deal of know-how – to apply the technique in their own videos. Technically called “chroma keying,” the technique actually allows you to filter…
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Vimeo Awards Winners
Check out loads of cool videos from over 6,500 submissions in Vimeo’s short film festival. The winners are posted here and the community choice awards are here. Plenty of great viewing from filmmakers you never heard of.
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World Run Day MasterCard Spoof
November 7 was this year’s “World Run Day”. For those who haven’t heard of World Run Day, the organization’s web site states, “It is a day for runners worldwide to join each other, wherever their location, in a celebration of running and charitable giving.” You can sign up, get a T-shirt and a bib number,…
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Sky and Sea Videos – Pitfalls to Avoid
The other day I was working on a home video of a recent vacation to Egypt, and I invited my 12-year-old to a pre-screening of my near-final draft (a shorter version here), and she told me it was all wrong. “Why?” I asked, horrified. “Your horizons are all crooked.” And she was right. I had…
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Full-Length Album Composed on Sony PSP
That’s right, on a Sony Playstation Portable. Killing time at various airports, trains, on the beach, and during the kids’ sports practices, and using the game Beaterator, I’ve composed and recorded a full-length album. I’ve stopped short of designing cover art until the Grammy nomination arrives in the mail. You can try this out for…
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Maintaining Ownership of Your Images
Scott Bourne made some interesting points on the blog Photofocus. He pointed out something many of us overlook in today’s world of social media marketing and sharing – that posting a photo via Twitter (which will apparently soon be possible) or Twitpic, or even on sites like Facebook means you have basically given up control…
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Help Us Win! (please?)
For our latest video contest entry, my daughter and I teamed up. My daughter has become a video editing enthusiast in her own right and checks several online web sites about once a week for contests she wants to enter. She found the Green Eggs and Ham “Ham it Up” Contest being run to celebrate…
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DIY Space Video
Want to make a video of the earth from miles above it (17 to be exact)? This family figured out how to do it, using items you probably have lying around the house. And in the end it didn’t end up costing a dime, because they recovered (nearly) everything they used. This is amazing –…
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Kris Allen performs
American Idol winner Kris Allen came to town. Kinda cool – he’s supporting the USO, and he gave a performance in our small community in the Netherlands – for free – to support servicemen and women and their families. I have 3 things to say about that. Part 1: Lesson learned – I should have…
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Easy Ways to Improve Sound in Your Videos
You could go out and spend a wad of cash on all the latest high-tech sound recording equipment money can buy. Or you can do some easy things that will go a long way toward improving the sound quality of your videos: – invest in an external microphone – it doesn’t have to be a…
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The Blackbirds Came Back – Wildlife Videography
I was pretty excited about the opportunity to do a little more “wildlife photography” in my back yard. The blackbird pair that I featured in the video “Learning to Fly” came back for another brood. I saw one of them fly into the ivy that climbs one side of our house and grabbed a closer…
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Underwater Videography
I posted a few weeks ago about having to “make do” with a still camera to do underwater “video-“graphy – and then using photoshop and effects to make it look less like a slideshow. Well this time I made it work with actual video. Granted, there are a lot sexier underwater videos out there made…
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Too much time on your hands? Try this at home!
So my kids tell me this is SO last week, but I thought this video was HILARIOUS – somehow genius and somehow disturbing that this is what some people do in their spare time: Technology has brought the internet to 2 billion people, and a standard of living resulting in about 2-4 hours of spare…
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Underwater Videography
Last Christmas, I ordered my daughter a last-minute Christmas gift, paying for “guaranteed” delivery by Christmas. It was a waterproof cover for her Flip HD camera – and the timing was important because we were headed to Hurghada, Egypt, for a week of sun and snorkeling – on Christmas day. Thirty bucks for the cover,…
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Videomaker offering Webinars
Videomaker has a helpful web site and magazine chock full of video editing tips and new product reviews; they are nice enough to condense all the latest news into a handy weekly email – one of the few “marketing” emails I actually look forward to. Unfortunately they also occasionally send out flyers for training events I can’t…
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Telling a story in video
The cool thing about all this technology is that now anyone can create just about anything and share it with everyone else. Most of it goes unnoticed by the vast majority, but that’s not why most of us create. Most of us create out of some intrinsic desire to imagine, to create, to make something…