"...This book is a must-have for all those budding filmmakers and students who want to produce action movies with visual effects but don't have Hollywood budgets.... This guide details exactly how to do this: from planning and selecting the necessary cameras, software, and equipment, to creating specific special effects... to editing and mixing sound and music. Its mantra is that the best, low-budget action moviemakers must visualize the end product first in order to reverse-engineer the least expensive way to get there."
Stu Maschwitz is co-founder of Orphanage, a visual effects studio started up by three individuals that has gone on to complete the effects for movies like Sin City, The Day After Tomorrow, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Engadget has posted the fifth installment in its DIY HD projector saga. There is one more to go after this. Whew, I was getting tired just reading the posts. In part 5, instructions to mount the components will be covered. If you are interested in building one, you can find the earlier lessons here:
This is as easy as it gets for Do-it-yourself (DIY) projects. If you are in need of a microphone stand and have no cash to spend, a regular metal coat hanger could work as an acceptable solution. Just fold the hanger into a diamond shape, attach the mic on the open end, then bend in half with the bottom triangle acting as the tripod. Perfect for scratch voiceovers.
Good things are worth repeating. Back in April, Mike posted about a DIY stabilizer, similar in style to the Manfrotto Fig Rig. I've had that post bookmarked ever since, and finally a couple weeks ago set out to build it. I picked up all the parts needed at Lowes for around $14 and then I went home, cut all the pvc pipe and built it all by myself drove up to my parents house, showed my dad the picture and he had it built in about an hour. I added a quick-release plate and this thing will fly my VX2100 or PD170 with ease. As you can see we added a little black paint to spiff it up a bit. This puppy is rock-solid and is now my favorite piece of gear. You gotta love DIY, and thanks to the guy who originally posted the info!
Something like a subgenre or a niche seems to have been developed with the recent influx of low budget films like Mutual Appreciation, LOL, The Puffy Chair, et al. Dance Party, USA is yet another of these super-low budget / DIY / self-distributed / DV films that's achieved a fair level of attention as of late. With its modest $3K budget and three week production period, it's not just the film's modest scale that links it to the others, however: there's something about its raw intimacy and stylistic approach that gives it a deeper connection to these other low budget films. Are these movies the beginning of a possible new age of DIY film? Whatever the case, Dance Party, USA is now screening at the Pioneer Theater in New York City and available for purchase on DVD through the official site.
Sujewa at the DIY Filmmaker Blog has whipped up a great list of low budget, independent films that have either been self-distributed, or distributed through innovative new means with the help of smaller companies. Included are Sujewa's own Date Number One, Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation (dang, I loved this one), Joe's Swanberg's LOL (sorry I missed the NY screening!), Lance Weiler's Head Trauma, Caveh Zahedi's I Am A Sex Addict, and others. Great little list worth checking out. So, which of these have popped up in your city? And is 2006 the start of a New Distro Wave?
Such a broad title isn't it? Now this tutorial isn't very thorough, but it is perfect for beginners looking to shrink down the size of their video file before sending them through the tubes of the Internet. Follow step by step as the author explains how to use Virtualdub to encode a video into an Xvid avi, but once you get a handle of doing this, changing formats won't be too tricky.
Visuarious is a site dedicated to video tutorials with the tag line Broadcast Your Skills and I found some other media tutorials that might be useful to some of you. If you are having any problems, please let me know in the comments and I will give you a hand.
Independent filmmaking has experienced a bit of a mini boom thanks to innovations in production, financing, promotion, and distribution, all radically transformed by the internet. Scott Kirsner has written up a great little piece highlighting some of the pioneer DIY filmmakers who have taken nontraditional approaches in getting their films made and seen, including Caveh Zahedi, Robert Greenwald, Leone Marucci, and Brian Terwilliger. There have been many inspiring innovations in the last couple of years, and the variety of approaches in all aspects of filmmaking suggest a definite breakaway from long standing practices. How will these techniques continue to be applied, and what kind of new experimental methods will we see down the line?
Via Lance Weiler, the independent filmmaker behind Head Trauma comes mention of the website Workbook Project, a social and open source experiment for DIY filmmakers. Set to launch later this year, the website is intended to be a wiki-based resource for DIY and low budget filmmakers looking to share information and stories about taking film work out into the world. In a sample story for the future website, Lance discusses his thoughts on self-distributing Head Trauma in different theaters and creating a release scheme that would net him some profit. Anyway, the website sounds like it will be very valuable once it launches, and it will certainly be nice to read similar stories about DIY filmmakers and how to go about producing, releasing, and promoting your own work.
Well what else would you expect a bunch of Linux geeks to make a movie about? The Digital Tipping Point is a documentary featuring interviews with over 120 major players in the open source community and it's impact on free culture. With 235 minutes (just shy of 4 hours) online of the 350 hours of footage, there is still a lot of work to be done. On Tuesday, the project began the public post-production phase and like most open source projects it has a wiki. Can people from all over the world collaborate and create a single product that pleases all involved? We shall see. But if you don't like the cut, the source footage is there and you can go out and make your own version. Ah, the beauty of open source.
Videoguys has released info on their DIY5 project where they build a big, bad NLE workstation within a certain budget. It looks like the Intel Core 2 Duo rocked the house, taking the lead back from AMD which came out on top in DIY4. They used Adobe Production Studio, Sony Vegas 7, Avid Liquid, Avid Xpress Pro and Avid Media Composer to give the system a workout. If you enjoy building your own machines from scratch, you'll want to check out all the geeky details of this build. I used to enjoy building my own workstations, but I guess I got old and tired. Now I just want it all done for me and shipped in a pretty box. Not the most cost-effective solution, but my head hurts less when I do it that way.
Want to build your own PC to play Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies? Well NVIDIA wants to help you out with its new ForceWare drivers (beta) featuring PureVideo HD technology for GeForce 7-series graphics cards. Now you know you are going to need a lot more than a new driver to build your own high-def power house. NVIDIA wants to help you out there too by providing a checklist of what you will need to build your HD-DVD and Blu-ray movie playing machine. Anyone game?
Yet another mini RED update worth noting... Mike has posted a sample RED screengrab that has been compressed with the REDCODE codec, at a level of roughly 25:1. The level of detail, range of color--it all still looks fantastic. (And remember, too, we're looking at a JPEG image here, not a raw image off the chip.) Details like hair, eyelashes, and small facial wrinkles all look super crisp. And that super shallow depth of field is likewise impressive. Check out the full size image here.
Earlier Russell posted about how to create a space scene with NO CGI. Devon Delapp, proprietor of the aptly named DevonDelapp.com, and TV writer, wrote in to give us a heads up on his neat lil' article about a pretty neat lil' process. Film nerds know how costly it is to shoot a car sequence (especially single cam.) Fortunately for all of us, Delapp diagrammed a process for shooting a car scene without a green screen. Sure, that takes all the fun out of post, but shooting with a 20 person crew, some lights and mirrors makes for a fun shoot. Granted, it's probably outside the production level for most readers of the beloved Guru, but it's well written, interesting and at the least, gives you an idea of how lucky we are with the advent of cheap and effective chroma/color keying.
The latest filmmaking blog on the block worth a read is $1000 Speilberg, which launched this month and looks to be another valuable resource for indie filmmakers working on the cheap who are also interested in widely distributing their work. Writer CliveDavies-Frayne is an independent filmmaker on a quest to write a screenplay, and then produce and distribute a film for under $1,000 that can compete in the mainstream marketplace. He has laid out the criteria for his undertaking in the first post. Scope it out. This looks like it will shape up to be an important resource in the ever-increasing DIY/low-budget filmmaking movement.
A loong time ago, we mentioned a book in the works named The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap. Well, the book is finally ready for release with a date set for December 21st. Author Stu Maschwitz's website has a nice synopsis for those interested: 
Engadget has posted the 
This is as easy as it gets for Do-it-yourself (DIY) projects. If you are in need of a microphone stand and have no cash to spend, a regular metal coat hanger could work as an acceptable solution. Just fold the hanger into a diamond shape, attach the mic on the open end, then bend in half with the bottom triangle acting as the tripod. Perfect for scratch voiceovers.
Something like a subgenre or a niche seems to have been developed with the recent influx of low budget films like Mutual Appreciation, LOL, The Puffy Chair, et al. 
Sujewa at the DIY Filmmaker Blog has whipped up a great 
Such a broad title isn't it? Now 
Independent filmmaking has experienced a bit of a mini boom thanks to innovations in production, financing, promotion, and distribution, all radically transformed by the internet. Scott Kirsner has written up a great little 
Via Lance Weiler, the independent filmmaker behind 
Well what else would you expect a bunch of Linux geeks to make a movie about? The 
Videoguys has released info on their 
Want to build your own PC to play Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies? Well NVIDIA wants to help you out with its new ForceWare drivers (beta) featuring PureVideo HD technology for GeForce 7-series graphics cards. Now you know you are going to need a lot more than a new driver to build your own high-def power house. NVIDIA wants to help you out there too by providing a 
The latest filmmaking blog on the block worth a read is 
