Want to get your name on a movies credits?
Want to help some independent British film makers?
Here’s how.
This is an attempt to entirely fund a film through private donation and the selling of advertising. Private Donations are taken as producer credits. You donate and your name goes up as a being a producer on the final end credits.
At this time there 143 people have made producer donations, including a number of industry names who have associated themselves with the project.
Our view – its an interesting way to raise money. It’s not an original idea, its been tried before, but hopefully the rise of Internet communities will make this project a success.
To learn more visit: http://www.themilliondollarmovieproject.com/
With a fresh website…
Fear of the Dark (FOTD to it’s friends) is a long established (for you guessed it 14 years) live role-play club that specialises in tales of the macabre and horror.
Recently they have re-launched their website at http://fotd.findingviews.com; and with the new web site comes the question - how can more people not previously associated with the LRP / LARP hobby be driven to the site? The aim being of course to encourage participation in FOTD games.
You see FOTD games are run in a manner that gives them appeal to a large audience but due to the nature of LARP it can be difficult to reach new audiences. So the question is how can fresh players find their way in? Just in case you are wondering how do FOTD know that they should appeal to mass audience - well every now and then they get to play to an audience that is completely inexperienced with this type of entertainment and the results are usually very good.
Yet despite these occasional success stories the numbers of brand spanking new players remains very low.
So this is the project FOTD are engaging. How to expand beyond the realms of LARP enthusiasts and introduce other people to a diverting and fascinating group activity?
If you have any ideas on this please post them here or visit the FOTD website and contact them directly.
Elements of a No Cost Steadicam
Ok last time we looked at existing steadicam sites. Now we’re going to take a look at the basic steadicam.
First of all possibly the most famous commercial steadicams is the JR. This is a small, and flexible piece of engineering. Basically it is a gimballed handle, and a system of counterweights to keep the camera floating free and easy. It gets great results. Click Here to find out more.
Our no frills model is going to get rid of the gimbal and free floating features and replaced it with a weighted and steadied handle.
Here’s how it works. Modern video cameras are really light. Far too light to ever hold steady enough for film making when on the move. What our steadicam does is get rid of excess jiggling. We achieve it by adding resistance. Resistance reduces excess motion, and makes the resulting footage smoother.
So to make a steadicam you need
- A Camera Mount (these can be bought as a tripod accessory for under £10)
- Something to put the camera mount into
- A vertical handle to put the camera and mount onto. This is also a guide handle for the operator to use.
- A horizontal handle to help hold the rig steady
- A counterweight that provides resistance for the operator to work against.
Here’s how things worked in the Consumed model.
- A wooden grip was made to hold the camera mount. This was done by carving out the shape of the mounts food into a block of wood and attaching that to the handle.
- The vertical handle was a cut down broom handle.
- The horizontal handle was a drilled out piece of hardwood which was then bolted to the vertical handle. This gave us a chance to sand the horizontal handle into a comfortable shape.
- The counterweight was a wooden box into which we placed a 2 litre bottle filled with water. We used water as a counter weight as it is cheap, but also makes the weight easy to adjust for different operators.
Next time - some photographs and diagrams of the Consumed Steadicam and more notes to help you make yours.
As part of the Consumed project a rough and ready steadicam has been built. Although we do plan to add another feature to it before we shoot the film. I’ll elaborate on this in a future article. Suffice to say for now that it involves a microphone mount.
Originally I planned to publish notes and plans to let you copy our build. Then I decided that it might be better to talk about steadicam designs in general. The idea is to give you enough information to either copy a design that already exists or to come up with something that really suits how you plan to shoot.
There are already a few websites dedicate to home brew steadicams, so lets start off by linking to three of these. It’s always good to take on more than one point of view. So I’ll let these sit online for a little bit and then talk more about the Consumed Steadicam.
The latest Consumed blog entry has been posted on MySpace. You can read it at: http://www.myspace.com/consumed_movie
Danish film student Stefan Stender is currently looking to make a low / no-budget feature film. One of the key items he needs is a script. If you have or can write a script that satisfies his rules then please get in touch with Stefan via his MySpace profile at:
Stefans script writing rules for this project are
- Only one location.
- Maximum four lead actors. Maximum four supporting actors.
- The film will be produced and shoot on location in Denmark, no mountains etc.
- The final script must be completed before December 2006.
- The film must NOT have monsters, creatures, animations or unnatural/supernatural things.
