Author: gravitystix

Anna, Pat, and I have created a storyboard for our music video. We also made a schedule for what we are shooting. Hopefully we will have all of the raw footage shot by the end of the week. Possibly afterwards the documentary?

Welcome to the newly redesigned RAMBLER PRODUCTIONS blog. It may not look all that different but there are a few features you should all note. First off we have changed the link bar on the top of the page to include links to the BLOG RULES (which you should know by heart) and BUY OUR STUFF. And you should, by which I mean, buy our stuff. You can find available DVD’s on that page and how much they cost along with announcements of upcoming DVD’s.

The links that were not directly tied to Rambler Productions have been moved to the left sidebar under “links.” Here you’ll find some helpful resources including FreePlay Music which has thousands of tracks you can download for free for use in your projects. You will also find a link to the Videomaker Articles which you can use for your weekly assignments along with a link to instructional videos made by Videomaker that cover some important tips for filming. If you’re a bit more effects-oriented there is a link to Video Copilot, our favorite place for awesome FX. You can find tutorials and more there. We have most of the Video Copilot products. If you’d like to mess with some, talk to Pat Flynn.

We have a new poll up! Be sure to vote! The last poll annointed George Lucas as the replacement name for the Quentin Tarantino computer. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. TARANTINO WAS PWNED.

*cough cough* sorry about that…

You can also subscribe to the blog via email or RSS now! I really don’t understand the point of RSS but the email is very useful. Just imput your email into the subscription box in the left sidebar and you will be notified every time a new post is added to the blog.

We are still looking for ways to improve the blog. If you think of something that would be neat, let us know!

Stumbling upon the internet I found an article that talked about photography. Yes yes I know this a video blog but I also found the article very interesting as well as it connects to video. The topic is taking pictures in public places. Which connects to video taping in public. The article talks about how in the past we were able to take pictures of children and people without having to deal with asking parents permission, and having the rights to taking pictures of people without protest. Today we have to deal with asking the person for permission, and if the person is underage then we have to ask the parent or guardian for permission to photograph of video tape their child. And I haven’t even started to talk about how the article states that public places are starting to ban people from taking pictures. Even though a person can be in a “public” park photographers have been approached by law officials and asked to delete the picture that they just took. Photographers do not have to do this, but it can cause more conflict and law officials can confiscate the camera that the photographer is using. Which as a photographer myself I find it completely appaling that we can not take pictures of common life in public places. Are they going to start to tell tourists that they can’t take pictures of them in front of monuments because there are other people in the pictures as well?
There was not a problem in the past, so why is it a big problem now? Do people really care that much if there is a photograph like this ==========>
Because we don’t have the permission of all the people in the photograph to take their picture.
How do you feel about this? I honestly feel like it is appalling.

– Grace

#1 – Yes, I know I haven’t posted in forever.

#2 – Yes, I saw Dear John.

It was 5:00 on a Friday night, and I was at work feeling depressed because I had no plans later on. Then my friend Victoria texted me begging to see this chick-flick. I asked her who was going, saying I’d only go if those people went. She said that they were going, so I agreed to tag along. I was lied to. I rode with my sister to Fairfield, only to find out that there were only like five of us going. It was fine, but all of the people in our group were movie talkers – people who just don’t know when to shut up when I’m trying to watch a movie. I don’t care what movie it is – just stop talking. So, I decided to sit next to Victoria, the best whisperer of them all.

The movie was, for the most part, pretty predictable: guy comes home from the military on spring break, meets a girl, they fall in love (in just two weeks, by the way), then he has to go back, they write letters, her love fades away, they break up, the end. What I didn’t expect, however, was for her to marry some dude that was like twenty years older than her while soldier boy was away! I literally shouted “Ew!”

This was also just way too melodramatic, giving off no laughs or moments of joy or even just a little happiness.

However, there were definitely some tear-jerking parts that were pretty well-executed. The scenery by the beach is pretty neat as well. Amanda Seyfried is a pretty good actress and played this part perfectly, even writing her own song and performing it in the movie. I think we’ll be seeing some pretty impressive things from her in the future.

Overall I’d give this a 5 / 10 just to give Amanda Seyfried the credit she deserves. Otherwise, not a movie you want to watch in order to get in a good mood.

Samstar

After getting my blanket, a cup of Gatorade and a couple of pillows I laid down on the couch this Wednesday. As most people do when sick, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. This first of which is to complete my biweekly movie review and the other is to amuse myself and take my mind off of being sick. My movie of choice for being sick was There Will Be Blood written by Paul Thomas Anderson. The two main performers were Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. As I watched, I believe that this movie was not all that it was acclaimed to be, however instead of thrilling and filled with drama I personally viewed it as being filled with satire. Starting with a short overview of the movie, It starts with a small time oil and coal operation. As the team was fixing equipment and digging, oil came to the surface trapping and killing the one man trapped inside the well. This mans son was then taken in by the main character Daniel Plainview. With his new son, he begins to take control of vast stretches of land in the South West, with his ideas of the oil industry. He finds himself at the house of the Sunday’s, he tries to buy their home as it sat on top of a large oil field. Later he takes in the Sunday’s half brother and learns about flaws in the family, with this he gains control of their family farm through flaws and money. After which he begins creating the oil tycoon he is to become. With the construction of modern oil drilling equipment (at the time) he and the town around third operation grew extensively. When the oil area was finally completed, the church asked for him to repent of his sins and donate to the church in return to bless the plant, which Daniel declined. Later, Daniels adopted son who is back from a private school in California was sitting on top of a building near on rig. Of course coincidence decides that there should be a problem, and the rig breaks due to mistakes and failure leading to the deafness of H.W. (Daniels son). Unable to personally deal with his sons problems, as Daniels short fuse gets even shorter with the greed of money creeping in upon him and his son aggravating him with disabilities. He was later sent away. From that a native of near land contacts Daniel, wishing to sell him his land claims. After much dispute, Daniel proves that the oil pooled into his section of land and this man’s land was worth nothing. They fought and although worthless Daniel took the land for self greed. At the end of the movie H.W. confronts his father who denies him never to see each other again, then the movie title comes into the spot light to my enjoyment as Daniel kills the pasture who has annoyed him throughout the movie with a bowling pin in his basement. This movie is definitely not a shining piece of glorious work, however I found it to be quite funny. With constant intrusions by characters which force the plot into new twists, Daniel brings almost everyone who gets in his way through words, violence or other such actions. The ending represented my favorite part of the movie as the pasture constantly bugged and annoyed Daniel. Some slight emotion is brought up through Daniel stealing family land through treachery or his actions towards his son. Personally I felt bad for his son, as even before his deafness, his father was disconnected and used him rather than loving him. AS the movie progresses you see the stages of Daniels decent into insanity through the greed for money and land. Overall I personally enjoyed the movie, and would suggest it to those with a somewhat violent sense of humor.

In this Videomaker article, the topic is slow motion. I have always been fascinated by slow motion, because I have no idea how the video software inserts additional frames in order to get slow motion. The article discusses how overcranking works, by which I mean the process of getting less material on more film, and then playing it back at normal speed so the events are stretched out. This is interesting, but not very applicable to us, since we use a bit more modern technology.
Next, the article discusses when one should use a slow motion event. One uses slow motion when they wish to slow time down and capture a dramatic event, such as a bullet being fired, somebody getting caught, or something. This creates audience tension, and when the audience is tense, that means they’re paying attention. Plus it’s fun to mess with the audience; play with their emotions. (Reason number 512 why Edward should have fried at the end of the Twilight movie.)
But I digress. The article wraps up by saying that slow-motion video is usually reserved for people who have special cameras that can either shoot at greater FPS, or people with really expensive and good editing software. I’m not sure about the camera, but we definitely have the technology. All I have used slow motion for as of yet is to make lip-synching work, and I don’t believe I’ll have much of an opportunity to do so this quarter. I don’t see much use for slow-mo in a documentary.

I recently read a article in the magazine VideoMaker that critiques the new Canon EOS 7D DSLR camera, for those of who don’t know DSLR stands for Digitial Single-lens Reflex camera, which in other words is better then your normal digital camera in quality, resoluion, has many more settings to them, and also has interchangable lens’ that you can buy for the cameras.

The article talks about how the Canon EOS 7D now has the ability to record HD video, as well as take still RAW and JPEG photos. It critiqued the camera on having to just change one switch to have the ability to record video which is very common in small digital cameras. They say how the camera is well balanced out with the lens because the the camera is obviously going to be a bit heavier then most DSLR cameras would be. The camera allows the user to change the lens and the zoom, which we don’t have on our cameras here at school. Another function that is very important to the camera is they commeneded Canon on the fast focus that the 7D has. They said how very fluid and quick the focus was able to change, which causes me to question if the still camera of it has the manual focus and if the manual focus is any different from the focus that “normal” DSLR cameras use. There is one very new quality that the camera has which is very essential for the video camera aspect of the 7D, which is the ISO can go extremely higher then most DSLR cameras. The camera can go up to 12,800 ISO which for my Nikon D40, it only goes up to about 800 or a setting called “High” which means it will go higher then 800 but you can not specifically put up to 1,600 ISO. Anyway! The high ISO that the camera can go to will allow video to be shot during the night, without excessive amounts of light in the shot. AKA “Night shooting is a REALITY” Which is very big for a camera like the 7D.

Overall Canon normally has rather good video cameras, but with DSLR cameras I tend to stick to Nikon because I don’t like the set up that Canon has opposed to Nikon. So it would be interesting to try and use the 7D and learn how to use it as a video camera in addition to a normal DSLR.

– Grace

Anna and I have almost finished the Winter Carnival montage/DVD, the only thing standing in our way is making the Menu. We plan on finishing that by the middle of the week. 

Right now I’m working on a bunch of stuff.