There are a lot of funding requests out there (and I expect that will grow) but it isn’t often you actually get to preview the work before you decide if you want to help fund the project: Walking In Circles: Season 2! — IndieGoGo. Here’s their site as well

These guys sent me an email the other day about their web-series they’re filming on the Canon Rebel T3i/600D called “Walking in Circles” – and they’ve completed their first ‘season’ and are asking for help to fund the improved second season. So here you get to watch 11 episodes to get a good idea of where they’re going.

This team is definitely going for their dream – they’re doing something they know isn’t perfect, but they’re putting it out there. When you watch (and you should watch), you’ll see they’ve got a good team going; there’s humor and pretty good acting (hey, they’re not winning emmys of course, but they’re not horrible either) and the 3-4 episodes I watched before posting this were interesting enough for me to want to watch more – which is the key.

And yes, some will cringe a bit at times when the scene is over exposed or the lead actress is out of focus (and most of us will say, “been there, done that!”), but look, they’re putting it out there and learning. The episodes improved as the season went on. And they’re smart enough to know that hiring some good technical support for the next season will help.

So do watch a bit and if you like, give them a few bucks. I know I’ll be doing that.

Someone get that man a shirt!

The funding pitch

Walking In Circles is an independent comedy fantasy web series that debuted in the summer of 2011 with an 11 episode first season. We filmed the entire project out of pocket and after release we began accepting donations to help market our show and to recoup some of our budget. The campaign was very successful thanks to the love and support of our awesome fans and because of that we were encouraged to write a second season.

In season 1 we were often limited in what we were able to put on screen. Aside from budget constraints, it was our first major film project. We were literally learning our jobs on a day to day basis on set. Fortunately, everyone from cast to crew was not only amazingly talented but passionate about the project. Because of this we were able to produce an awesome show that we’re all extremely proud of. We really want to take all the skills we acquired during the filming of Season 1 and produce something that goes above and beyond for Season 2. When you take a look at what we were able to achieve the first time around, you’ll see that we’re really setting the bar high for ourselves. Filming a medieval fantasy/comedy means every piece of wardrobe needs to be period specific, every prop has to be custom made; every set has to be isolated from modernity. Working in a fantasy setting also means that some of the characters we want to bring to life are going to be set pieces all of their own, the best example being the dragon from Season 1. We know that this show is a massive undertaking but we also know that when we pull it off it’s going to blow people away.

An episode or two

Season 1 episode 1

I love that they’re posting a bunch of behind the scenes as well:

WIC Behind The Scenes (Krag Kam) 1.1

Walking In Circles – Episode 11: Let Sleeping Dragons Lie – tho if you don’t watch some of the other episodes, you won’t get some of the jokes!

Season 1 bloopers

(cover photo credit: snap from the video)

Another interesting video sent in some time ago… Sorry Levi!

My name is Levi Bethune. I recently directed a music video for Over The Ocean, who recently signed with Spartan records and released their debut album a couple weeks ago. I shot the entire video with only a gas budget and three days.

Mostly shot with the Canon EOS 60d, there are a few of the running shots done with the Canon Rebel T2i/550D.

The video was shot over-cranked at 60p and converted to 24p for edit. Seeing as everything had to be synced up, the band played their song at 250% it’s original speed.

Color grading and compositing was completed in Adobe After Effects with the edit completed in Final Cut Pro.

Over The Ocean – Something I Was Not

The video was recently featured as the Video of the Day on AOL’s Spinner magazine with the following write-up:

—–

“We shot this video out in the incredibly dirty barn we usually practice in,” Over the Ocean singer/guitarist Jesse Hill tells Spinner. “I am impressed that [director] Levi Bethune made it look like we did it in a legitimate studio. I have never done a real music video before, so it was a little weird having to pretend to play while everyone watches and tells you if you’re doing it right. All in all though, I am really happy with the end result. We recorded the album live, with all of us playing together in the same room, and I think the video does a good job of reflecting the basic ethos of the whole recording process.

“I feel a little bad for Jared Bethune, the guy who does all the running in the video. We shot the video twice as fast as it looks, and then slowed it down for a more fluid feel. Unfortunately for Jared, this meant that he had to run twice as fast and for twice as long as you see on the video, not counting all the takes that didn’t make it. On top of this, he had to jump in to a 50-degree pool, which can’t be too much fun. All I had to do was stand there and play the guitar for a little bit.”

——

I love the posts and am constantly inspired and challenged by the articles posted. Thanks for helping to sustain the creative filmmaker.

-Levi Bethune

Description

Something I Was Not
Over The Ocean
Paper House
Directed by Levi Bethune
Produced by Organic Visual for Over The Ocean
Paper House is available on iTunes: bit.ly/paperhouse and AmazonMP3: amzn.com/B005EVTIL2
As seen on
AOL Spinner Video of the Day: spinner.com/2011/08/01/over-the-ocean-something-i-was-not-video/
Blurt: blurt-online.com/news/view/5245/
AltPress: altpress.com/news/entry/over_the_ocean_music_video_debut_album/
AltDaily: altdaily.com/features/my-favorite-local-band-over-the-ocean.html
Relevant.tv Video of the Day: relevantmagazine.com/media/rtv/watch/1011/something-i-was-not

Over The Ocean is
Jesse Hill
Josh Whittle
Ben Crumrine
Joshua Bogart

Starring: Jared Bethune
Special Thanks: The Wratten Family and The Essmann Family
Production Crew: Craig Kuhns, Alec Bethune, Katie Crane, Joshua Tombley, Jared Bethune

(cover photo credit: snap from the video)

For those of you looking to learn something about timelapse there are more and more resources going up on the web, but you’ll want to visit Daniel Freytag’s blog where he has this guest post from Phil Arntz about how he made an awesome ‘nighttime’ timelapse. Phil shot this timelapse on a Canon Rebel T2i/550D!

Snip from Phil’s article

“Nightscapes” is a piece i dedicated to my friends and family. The reason for this is, that our family really started to love London, but we are not sure, how long we will stay! Very uncertain times at the moment, so this is a great memory for what we have/had in London. I also dedicated this to my friends, because i go to a german school in london, thus meaning that many people only stay here for a year or two and I want them to treasure the London memories too!

Shooting Nightscapes was an experience, which changed my views on city-life. I have never experienced London, like I did when shooting the movie over the last months. The city comes alive at night, but it’s not all sparkly at night. There are many parts which should be avoided and you really see some strange things too!

more snips

Shooting the movie required an awful lot of dedication, sleepless nights and warm clothes. The main problem I had was, the cold. Even though it might not seem to cold in the UK, at around 0 degrees, it really starts to get to you when you are waiting an hour for your timelapse to finish on Millenium Bridge in high winds! I have met new people, made new connections and friends and overall, it was an experience, I am happy to have had!

I urge you to get all the details on Phil’s post: “Nightscapes” – A Look into creating a timelapse film on a minimal budget @ Freytag Film.

(cover photo credit: snap from the video)

Here’s an interesting analysis you might be intrigued by – rolling shutter comparisons across a group of 6 Canon and Nikon HDSLR cameras. I don’t think there’s any major surprise here, but it is an interesting read.

Brief Snip

via Rolling shutter comparison test | Too Much Imagination.

I finally come around to piecing together part of some old tests I did last year. Part of my big DSLRs test, comparing Canon EOS 550D, Canon EOS 7D, Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, Nikon D3s and Nikon D300s all with 50mm lens on the body, was rolling shutter. I had the rig with which I could simultaneously record with six cameras so it was perfect for that kind of testing.

Rig for simultaneously recording with six DSLR cameras.

This is the rig I had made from various Manfrotto parts. You can read more about the rig here. 

The sample video

But don’t just look at the video – go read the blog – there are comparison photos and measurements and stuff!

[source: tweet]

(cover photo credit: snap from the blog post)

Patrick Kizny sent us his latest test this morning – and it is visually impressive – a method for taking a static timelapse and moving the camera virtually thru space… I think you have to see it and think about the fact that the camera couldn’t really be moving there to then wonder how it was done. Most people will probably not even realize that the shot was ‘manufactured’ in some way.

This technique allows to create timelapse shots where the camera is moving in such way that is impossible to achieve in the real world. In this technique, the static timelapse shot is projected onto a recreated 3D geometry and the virtual camera is created to film the scene. The geometry may be either recreated manually, generated basing on DEM models, LIDAR data or photogrammetrically.

Many thanks to Greg Downing @ XREZ studio for inspirations.

lookycreative.com

The final shot

The How To

Now isn’t that intriguing?

What do you think? Something you have time and energy to do?

disclaimer: Patrick runs DitoGear and is a planet5D sponsor, but we think this would be cool enough to run without that sponsorship! But we wanted you to know that we’re disclosing our relationships.

(cover photo credit: snap from the video)

I’ve been reading several interesting blog posts/tweets lately about the death of the DSLR via the surge in smart phones with high quality cameras so I thought I’d ask you what you thought…

I’ve included a couple of quotes below the poll to give you an idea of what some others are saying.

Poll Question!

“Are Phones About To Wipe Out The Digital Camera Industry?”

There is a revolution going on in the quality of photos coming from smart phones, and the improvement in quality is such that it could signal the end for the digital camera. A professional photographer might not agree but for a layman like myself, you can now take pictures on your phone that are every bit as good – if not better – than an expensive camera.

Phones have had the capability to take photos for many years now, but it’s only in the last year that they have caught up with digital cameras in terms of quality of images produced. For somebody who takes the odd picture, there’s no longer a need to have a digital camera and that has to be a big worry for the entire digital camera industry, especially when you consider the fact that phone cameras can only improve even further from here on in.

Stats Show Phones Are Taking Over

Flickr might not be the most cutting edge of social networks any more, but they do share the information on which cameras are used to upload photos onto the site. As you can see from the graphs below, the iPhone is by far the most popular camera and other smart phones are starting to follow suit.

“Mark my words, the iPhone will be as widely used in the editorial world as the 5d Mk ii in a matter of years.”

27% of Photos and Videos Now Captured on Smartphones [STUDY] [source: tweet from @photoJack]

(cover photo credit: snap from the simplyzesty.com article – I don’t know where they got the image)

Jordy Vandeput sent us some exclusive additional information on the new Unified Magic Lantern version we were one of the first to announce last week. Jordy also put together a quick demo video especially for planet5D readers demonstrating several of the features (see below) as well as showing the new HDR video function does indeed work on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

One thing Jordy pointed out that is pretty cool…

“Forgot to mention that formatting the card was also a success. It backs up all the ML files and restores them”

With all these additional features and apparent stability, many of us should be considering testing out this Unified Magic Lantern version – tho the addition of the 5D2 isn’t finished yet – Jordy was testing the closed beta version for Alex.

For all the info on the 5D2 version (and maybe to donate to Alex to help with development – planet5D did!), please see this thread

Jordy’s comments to planet5D readers

Alex, the head developer for the Unified Magic Lantern software, mailed me a pre release to test some things for him.

When I installed it for the first time I was blown away with its stability and functionality, knowing it was just a closed beta version.

So I decided to do a full test on the Magic Lantern software. Started this morning I’ve been running tests for 9 hours straight.

The results are amazing. Of course I found many bugs, but again for just being a closed beta version I only had a camera lockup for two times.

Things like a fixed resolution between Live View and recording is one of the things that really is a breakthrough. I was also trying to create problems with connecting/disconnecting devices such as an HDMI monitor, headphone (trough the A/V jack) and an external monitor. But I just never had to reboot the camera, everything went perfectly smooth as if the software was something official.

Jordy’s demo video

And this is a list of things I showed in the video:
- PictureStyle REC: Record in a different Picture Style then you view in
- FPS Control: Choose a FPS value between 2-32 FPS. Currently the camera freezes when you go higher then 32.
- HDR Movie: Already known with some other DSLR’s. This function is also working for the 5D.
- Follow Focus: Control your focus with the arrow keys. Your lens must stand in AF to do this.
- Force HDMI: This forces your HDMI output into 1 resolution. Your HDMI monitor will not have to change resolution anymore. You can directly record!
- DISP Profiles: You can save up to 4 profiles for your Magic Lantern Settings and easily change them with one button.

All credits go to the developer Alex.

(cover photo credit: snap from the ML Site)

Canon released a working version for Lion – read more on our post

Many who upgraded to the latest operating system for Apple’s OS X Lion were a bit disappointed to find out the Canon utilities wouldn’t function – and a new version was released last Thursday, but unfortunately, Lion support wasn’t included.

On a good note, I’ve found several reports that version 2.8.1 (download) — oops that link doesn’t work anymore — works on Lion (and I can confirm – but it doesn’t support the Canon EOS 60D).

UPDATE Dec 8, 2011 – I found this page on Canon’s USA site indicating:

We are planning to release an update to Canon’s EOS Utility, which is compatible with 10.6.8/10.7, on the web for download in the first quarter of 2012.

UPDATE Dec 24, 2011 – thanks to a couple of comments – the 2.8.1 utility is found again as well as a post saying 2.7.2 also works:

I think I found 2.8.1 http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/6/0200001026/01/eu281x.dmg.zip

I use a 5D mark ii and experienced the same problems as everyone with EOS Utility since upgrading to Lion. Tried finding version 2.8.1. on the Canon website but it seems to have been removed. Anyway, for whatever it’s worth and based on a recommendation on another site I tried version 2.7.2. and it works perfectly! The link is here. Happy holidays!

Canon DPP 3.10.2 and EOS Utility 2.10.2

Here’s what Canon has to say is included in the EOS Utility update:

The change made to Canon EOS Utility 2.10.2: Supports new lens (EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II)

Ok, not much – and no mention of our friendly Lion.

Stories

The first story I found on the update was: “Canon DPP 3.10.2 and EOS Utility 2.10.2 Now Available” which describes the update (see above).

But upon loading it and realizing that ‘this software will not run on this version of the operating system’ I went looking and found a couple of mentions of a much older version (2.8.1) running under Lion.

You can find the 2.8.1 download on Canon’s site – however, if you have a newer version, you’ll need to throw that in the trash and then run the updater – if you don’t, it will just keep the latest version on your box.

(cover photo credit: snap from the installer)

We told you earlier about the new Okii MC1 USB mini controller and you can see our demo again down at the bottom of this post – but if you’re interested in buying one, right now, there’s a $30 off coupon!

From the HDCamTeam site:

We have been notified by Okii Systems that there is currently a coupon code to get $30 off when purchasing the recently released Okii MC1.

As mentioned earlier this device is very strong and versatile. It was designed for professional use, either mounted on your rig, next to your handle, or to control your camera when it’s mounted on a jib, crane or any kind of support.

It’s currently the most compact, versatile and reliable option to remotely control video and photography functions of Canon DSLR cameras.

You can check full specifications, features and the User Guide of Okii MC1 at the manufacturer website

It’s worth mentioning that Okii Systems also offers additional professional products and accessories like the Function Micro Clamp and Function Extendable Handle which are fully compatible with any industry standard 15mm rod system.

Get the coupon code!

The coupon code to get $30 off is: okiixmas

What is the Okii MC1?

(cover photo credit: snap from the video)

Is it really true? A tweet this evening said that Magic Lantern has added HDR video for some Canon HDSLRs to their arsenal!

We watched the video and it looks pretty impressive – but there are indeed some limitations – please read on for more info and thanks to gizmag.com for their story with all the info

UPDATE: Watch our video demo as well

Sample HDR video

Magic Lantern announces HDR video

Those cheeky gear hackers at the Magic Lantern team have announced a very interesting upgrade to their custom Canon firmware mod. As of tomorrow, owners of 550D, 600D and 60D DSLR cameras will be able to use a very cool new tool to shoot video in HDR, meaning that you can capture scenes where the lights would normally be too bright and the shadows too dark to get a workable exposure level. Check out the demo video after the jump.

Magic Lantern is a non-destructive firmware add-on for certain Canon DSLR cameras. It opens up software options like extended exposure bracketing, focus stacking, extended long exposure shooting, and a wide range of video and audio assist tools that Canon chose not to include in the cameras’ stock software.

It’s a well-established piece of software with a pretty active community of users and developers continually improving the product – but it’s been quite a while since we saw a marquee feature like this get added.

To record HDR video, Magic Lantern causes the camera to record each alternate video frame with a different ISO setting. Presumably you can set your “dark” and “light” exposure settings manually.

And the limitations (posted at the end of the article)

The HDR video feature will only be released with the unified Magic Lantern distribution (for 550D, 600D and 60D cameras) – there’s no indication that it will be rolled back to the 5D mark II, which doesn’t support high frame rate video recording, or the 7D, which has proven difficult to hack due to its twin Digic processors. That’s a pity, we use Canon 5Ds and 7Ds for all our video work here at Gizmag. Maybe it’s time to downgrade?

via Magic Lantern announces free HDR video firmware for Canon DSLRs.

[source: tweet from Dustin_Farrell]

(cover photo credit: snap from the video)