Got 8 hard drives laying around?

Most people probably don't, but I do have a bunch of hard drives laying around. The shame of it is that there's no space left in any computer to make use of them. They're perfectly good, and with all the video projects (not to mention the 100's of gigabytes of movies we have), I'm low on space. Enter the eBox-U:

It's an 8 bay USB hard drive tower. What's that, you ask? It'll take 8 hard drives of any make or size, and let you get access to all of them via USB. It has it's own power supply and everything. You can configure the box to let you access each hard drive individually, or you can set them up in 4 groups of 2 drives, or 2 groups of 4 drives, or one giant group of 8 drives.

So now, I can easily store all the HD video footage I've acquired, as well as have space to do all kinds of processing. I've got five drives in there now, and I'll be adding more very shortly...

Jenny will not be left out of the stage action

No to be out done by her kids, Jenny taught the musical theater class, choreographed the numbers, and played Anna in the performance all at the same time! One important thing to note about this performance is that the sound guy messed up their music; during one of the songs, the music skipped to the exit music. The well taught kids quickly found their places and continued, but once that music ran out, they were left in silence! However, undaunted, they finished their routine singing acapella (with no music, for you lay people), and masterfully, I might add. The show must go on!


Jenny: The King and I from David W on Vimeo.

Kids videos right here

You can watch JJ and Weston on stage right here by clicking the play button, or if you want to see the HD version, you can click on the video title in blue, and it will take you to vimeo.com where you can see it in 720p. I recommend clicking the fullscreen button (lower right corner), and then turning scaling off :)



JJ's Stage Debut from David W on Vimeo.



Weston's Stage Debut from David W on Vimeo.

Another milestone met

Aaron has been promoted from rear-facing baby seat to big boy front facing seat.


JJ, consequently, has been upgraded to a booster seat, and Weston gets to inherit JJ's previous car seat (just like any good middle child):


I think Aaron approves of his new digs:

Dance Concert Shooting Done

I'm done shooting all dance concerts, now the real work begins! Footage must be edited, titles added, menus and DVDs to be published. Also, I've discovered that my computer is laboring under the weight of HD footage; it's quite a bit more work for the computer to handle. So, I've put together my own 'render farm':



Instead of just one computer processing the HD to it's final output, I've got 8 (these 6 plus my office computer and the media center computer). The video is split up among all these computers, and each works on it's own piece until all pieces are re-assembled at the end, all over the network in my house. There's nothing quite as cool for a computer guy as having a render farm...

I've posted a 720p HD clip of one of the dance numbers from the Bunker Dance concert so you can see it in HD, found here: http://www.vimeo.com/1222248.

Still Frames From The Hope Falls Footage

You've seen plenty of the behind the scenes stuff, here are a few individual frames pulled from the footage I shot in NY. Pretty dang good, if I do say so myself...

The boys all get shots at the same time

The only thing worse than having to take all 3 boys to the doctor at once for their well checkups is arriving there and realizing that they all need to get shots while they're there!

Father's Day

My Father's Day has been good. My main present was a new laptop! My 6 year old one didn't survive the trip to NY :( Plus, I needed one that could handle transfering video from the camera for the dance concert gig, and Best Buy was having a 2 years no interest deal, and there was space on my Best Buy card, so...new laptop! I initially walked in to Best Buy with my mind set to buy a Mac Book Pro - until I saw how much they are. $2000! It's hard to justify that when there were PC laptops 10 feet away with the same and better specs for less than half the price! I ended up getting an HP with 3GB RAM, 320GB drive, core 2 duo cpu. Looks like a Mac Book, Pro or otherwise, will end up just being a luxury (unless I can somehow justify it for a work related thing...).

Where has all the blogging gone?

I've been so active on my blog because of my New York adventure, but now that it's over, I've slowed down...the last couple of days were grueling. We were just trying to get as much shot as possible before I headed out. We did pretty well, and Peter and Stephen will be picking up the couple shots we couldn't get. I will do my best to post some video clips of this project.

Even though this project is drawing to a close, I arrived in Vegas and hours later was jumping on my next project! My plane got in at 12:30am, which put me home about 1:30am. I got up and headed over to Cashman Theater to sell DVDs of the Bunker Dance Center concert! I've videotaped the concert for several years now, and we sell a lot of DVDs. Thursday is dress rehearsal day and a good day for selling. Saturday was the concert, and I was there for about 12 hours. There are four shows, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, & 7pm, each one about 1.5 hours (the last one is longer than the rest). This was another great job for the Sony EX1, my new HD video camera. It records onto express card flash memory. There are two slots, and when one card is full, it automatically rolls over to the second card. At that point, I pop the first card out, pop it in to a laptop, move the files off the card, and pop it back in the camera. It worked out really well, and the picture looks amazing. At the end of it, I've got 110 GB of footage. Again, I'll post some footage eventually...

Reviewing footage

At this point, with one and a half days of shooting left, we have
about 130 GB worth of footage. Thats about 7 hours. Peter
is starting to go through it between shot setups.

The old building's elevator

This is the kind that you have to operate, and you have to know what
floor its on. Theres no "up" or "down" button. If you're on the 3rd
floor and its on the 4th, if you want to use the elevator, you gotta
hoof it up to the 4th floor.

Need curtains in your shot?

Grab any random bolt of fabric, put it on a C stand, and wa-lah:
curtains! Notice the framing on the monitor to the right. Looks just
like curtains, eh?

Garrett drinks and is generally upset

More day for night stuff, we've got the windows blocked out and lit
with tungsten lights: instant night!

Jen has gone home and its back to work

By this time, Jen is halfway to vegas. We had a great time and it was
sad to see her go, but I think she had plenty of adventure!

Back to work for us. This is the ground floor where we've been storing
our equipment.

Jen and I at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The view of Manhattan from the Staten Island ferry

One of our Hope Falls cast

In the post below, I mention Sydney; here he is!

Jen arrives in NY!

After long hours of travel by plane, subway, train, and 1983 Lincoln
Town Car Stretch Limo (total of 9 hours), Jen arrived in Philmont on
set in one piece! And even after her ride from the train station was
pulled over by a cop. I guess a 20 year old beat up stretch limo
driven by a big black man (Sydney, who plays our cop character)
driving around lost at 2:30 am in the small town of Hudson, NY might
arouse suspicion.

Running scared through the forest

There is a scene where one character is bolting through the forest
after having heard a strange sound. Peter has the camera in his right
hand and is running at top speed to try and keep Stephen (playing
Foster) behind him and in camera.

Glidecam action continues

Glidecam in action

Peter is supporting me by grabbing my belt so that I don't trip while
I'm focusing on being 'steady'.

A couple more glidecam shots. In this shot, I'm following two guys as they walk along the block in a two-shot.

Steadicam in the forest

We have a couple of hiking sequences that are to shot with the
Glidecam, which is a competitor of the well known Steadicam. For the
uninitiated, it is a camera stabilization device that allows smooth
tracking shots. In this picture, I'm wearing an arm brace with a post
attached to it on which the glidecam unit mounts.

Actors first arrive at our ruins location

Another shot of the house

The falls

The name of the show is Hope Falls, and the falls that we're using are
right near the mill. They're way in the background. You can see the
side of the mill on the very left of the picture.

All of these locations are amazing, its hard to do them justice with
these puny pictures...

The old mill

Our characters go camping and set up in the middle of the ruins of an
old building. This old mill is also owned by Eleanor.

Victorian house about 2 hours north

The same lady who owns the building we're shooting in also owns this
house.

More shooting in this crazy building

Faking someone at work

Here we have a shot were one of our characters is at work. We used the apartment of a friend of Peter's.

Manhattan penthouse shot

We happened to get use of this penthouse for a scene in which a party
takes place. This is our lighting after an hour or so.

The view from our Manhattan location

A more full view of the ladder shot

A different sort of shot

This shot required a view of a girl lying on her bed from high and
directly above. Enter ladder and me hanging off one side!

Another angle of that same scene, with the camera standing at the
ready. If you look closely, you can see two boom mike poles hovering
over the scene.

Peter does the "director fingers"

Some of the magic revealed

On the left side is the night time dinner scene we're shooting. We've
blacked out the windows and lit to mimic evening lighting. On left
side, you'll see what is not going to be in the shot, which is that it
is daytime outside as evidenced by the bluish light. The big bright
spot is one of our lights which generally lights the scene, but is
also bounced in with silver boards to fill the shadows of faces every
so slightly..

First cast reading

This is the first time we've had all the cast together (and yes, we've
already done one day of shooting without a read through, and we still
haven't cast one part; thats how we roll).

A little direction in between shots

We've only got a couple of shots left, and Peter goes over the feel
we're looking for while we're re-lighting

Our first shoot

More explanation on what the heck is going on

This is the only part that is not yet cast, so we're seeing a few
people today. Everyone else is ready to go. I'm not really involved in
the process so much, I'm just there as like a figure head since I'm
the Director of Photography.

Yes, we're working with a whole new script that Stephen wrote last
week! When the money lady (who was also the writer of our original
story) backed out, Peter was ready to throw in the towel, but Stephen
convinced him that they should just forge ahead and do their own
project since my ticket was already purchased as well as the Glidecam
(camera stabilizer). So, they came up with a new idea, and ran with it.

Peter knows this old lady who owns several buildings, as well a a
victorian mansion a couple hours out of town. She's letting us shoot
at these locations for free. Normally, the one building is rented out
for photo shoots and events (weddings and parties) for $5000 a day.
The only catch is that we can use the space if no one else is. Today
is our first day of shooting, and it turns out that Vogue magazine has
rented the building! So, we're going to have to do it guerilla style.
Its crazy, but an adventure.

I've been toodling around Manhattan on Stephens scooter, which has
been fun as well.

Auditions

This lady is 93, and quite a character. She's auditioning for the part
of an older, wise landlady of the building that our characters live in.