News: Sensor Sizes
Tyler Ginter, creator of Why We Fight - the beautiful collection of never before seen footage of the Afghanistan Special Forces shot on the Canon 5D, put together this comprehensive and helpful lineup of sensor sizes.
Tyler Ginter, creator of Why We Fight - the beautiful collection of never before seen footage of the Afghanistan Special Forces shot on the Canon 5D, put together this comprehensive and helpful lineup of sensor sizes.
More than 1,200 students and staff from the University of Alberta set a Guinness World Record for the world's largest dodgeball game in early February. The group nearly tripled the former record of a 450-person game. Awesome aerial footage of the event below.
BBC captured jaw-dropping HD super slow motion footage of surfer Dylan Longbottom in a 12 foot monster barrel.
Once you've learned how to import videos into iMovie and edit your footage, Videojug will show you how to begin building your project in iMovie. Edit video in iMovie.
In this tutorial, Ben Scott shows you how to use the match frame and track auto select tools to go back to your original footage. Match frame in Final Cut Pro.
Andrew Kramer demonstrates how to create and use proxies inside of After Effects 7.0. Proxies are low resolution images or videos that you use to speed up work flow. This is very useful when working with HD footage and other large files. Use proxies in After Effects.
Steve Davis and John Parrott show how to hit the screw shot, in which the cue ball rolls back after contact with the target. The video contains slow motion footage of what's happening to the cue ball in response to contact with the cue. Hit a screw shot in snooker.
Amazing footage shot of some highly skilled wakeboarders, entitled "Winch Madness". According to Wikipedia, Wakeskate winching involves "an engine, spool, rope, handle, frame, and some sort of simple transmission. The person being towed walks (or swims) away from the winch and pulls out all of the rope." When the winch lets loose, the boarder can go 15-25 mph.
Whether you're inclined to love it or leave it, you've gotta admit one thing about JC de Castelbajac's LEGO fashion line- it's fun. More 80's pop culture revival: LEGO constructed hats and LEGO inspired prints set to cartoon blue skies. Scroll all the way down for JC de Castelbajac's runway videos (one in LEGOmation, the second live footage of the actual runway show). Previously, Make-It-Yourself LEGO Gummies.
Napalm Dragon has an incredible video of super slo-mo fire breathing. "There is no super imposing. This is 'as is' (Low Res) footage captured at 1,000 fps and 2,000 fps
Insekten!, test shots using Canon macro lenses and the Canon 5D Mark II, by YouTube user Powermaennchen.
Editing with the Canon 7d and Final Cut Pro couldn't be easier, here are some tips to help you get started.
There’s a race on to see who'll be the Instagram of moving pictures. This makes sense, since many of our phones are clogged with video that, so far, no one is going to see. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a simple app that could take our video content, edit it for us, and then publish it to all of our networks?
There's a HowTo behind everything, including the astounding, just released 3-D Avatar. Reviews across the board agree with one thing: the film is visually breathtaking. PopSci explains the technology behind the filmmaking.
How do you show that you love your job? You get "sleeved", like photographer Dabe Alan who has lined his arms with tattoos of all his favorite things in life, with the help of Toledo-based tattoo artist Tony Touch. Every time Dabe visits Toledo, he gets another photography-related graphic etched into his skin showing the "evolution of the camera." Now that's devotion.
In January of this year, I went to Kuwait with director Fawaz Al-Matrouk to complete photography for the film "To Rest In Peace". We shot the majority of the film in Southern California, duping air force bases, homes, and beaches for authentic Kuwaiti locations. Because traveling was a significant theme for the film, we went to the small, nearly deserted island of Failaka (about 20km off the mainland). Captured by the Iraqi army and deserted by its citizens almost 20 years ago, this island wa...
In this two part episode, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to use audio to control time. You'll learn how to make your video automatically move forward in time to the beat of the music - a technique used in tons of music videos and commercials.
This software tutorial shows you how to create a 3D Gobo light in Trapcode Shine. Shine is a 2D plug-in for After Effects, Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro that simulates 3D volumetric light effects within your editor. TV and movie pros use it daily to create light rays that sweep through logotypes or any kind of footage. For this tutorial you will be seeing how to use Shine in After Effects to create a 3D Gobo light effect which is a way of using cutouts with light. Create a 3D Gobo light in T...
Shine is a 2D plug-in that simulates 3D volumetric light effects within your editor. TV and movie pros use it daily to create light rays that sweep through logotypes or any kind of footage. Learn how to get started with Shine in After Effects in this tutorial. Shine will also work in Motion, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro. Get started with Trapcode Shine in After Effects.
In this 3-part series on Displacement Mapping, Creative Cow Leader Aharon Rabinowitz covers the basics of using this effect in both After Effects 6.5 and 7. This highly detailed tutorial will get you started on distorting your footage with displacement maps. Please note, you must have After Effects PRO to do these effects. Use displacement maps in After Effects - Part 1 of 3.
In this three part tutorial Creative Cow leader Aharon Rabinowitz explains the process of converting video to cartoon by using only After Effects and Adobe Illustrator CS2. Even if you don't want to create this exact effect, this tutorial covers a TON of basics and is a worthwile learning experience. Topics discussed: Dealing with interlaced footage, Basic Color and Image Correction, Creative Outlines, rendering an image sequence, using layer blending/transfer modes, Motion Tracking, Hold Key...
In this After Effects tutorial Creative Cow leader Aharon rabinowitz shows you how to add a motion blur to effects that don't support this feature. Motion blur is key for any fast moving objects or effects and it can often cover up imperfections, so it's an important skill to learn. Also covered is adding blur to video footage that has been sped up, and an introduction to CyCore's updated Effects: CyCore FX HD. Force motion blur on objects in After Effects.
Seeing an aurora in person is one of the most amazing spectacles you could witness in the skies above. But what about the skies below?
Flying orbs. At first, you might think of the Tall Man and his army of flying sentinel spheres, equipped with zombie brains and a mini-arsenal of saw blades, drill bits and shooting lasers. But these flying orbs weren't conceived from the evil mind of a superhuman mortician—they were designed by Fumiyuki Sato, a researcher at the Japanese Defense Ministry's Technical Research and Development Institute—for something other than deadly deeds.
Turn your bright daytime footage into a look that seems as though it was shot at night. This common technique known as day for night was done on many low budget films in the 60's and 70's. Turn day footage into night in After Effects.
Monserrat Morilles sure shook up Chile. She brought a whole new brand of street performance to the city's commuter trains. Her act: strip to a bikini and poledance in the middle of rush hour. Morilles, 26, was protesting the 'prudishness' of Chilean society.
Dan Osman was a real life Spiderman. This wild man did not die recklessly, but due to unfortunate equipment failure in Yosemite in 1998. This week is the tenth anniversary of his death.
You decide who wins the 2008 WonderHowTo Oddball Award!! Tank Guy or Cat Lady?
This short film was shot entirely on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR. It's called The Last 3 Minutes and was directed by Po Chan, and shot by cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC. The main character is a janitor, whose life is kind of mundane. At least, that's what it seems like, but as the story develops, many layers of interesting happenings are revealed. Scenes were shot in both 24 and 30fps, and they used Canon L Series prime lenses, using great depth of field. Lenses used in the making were:
Slow motion isn't just for blockbusters and indie films. Sometimes it's for pure wonderment, like the bullet that seems to melt away at impact, the chemical burning of phosphorus and gelatin on the head of a match, and the distorted skin and disgusting sweat being thrown from a punched face.
FEATURED DOCUMENTARY: Exit Through the Gift Shop, the first film directed by reclusive street-art legend Banksy, is a little puzzle-box of a documentary. It's perfectly designed and pitched to be enjoyable on multiple levels: on one as an entertaining, illuminating mini-history of "street art" and on another - one entirely more convoluted and entertaining - as a light-hearted "up yours" to both street artists and their patrons.
Update: New Trailer (7/9/10) In July of 2008, Fawaz Al-Matrouk, director of "To Rest In Peace", brought me on to shoot his USC graduate thesis film. Two years, 3 cameras, and over 15,000 miles later, the film is in its last week of post, having completed our final color correction at Light Iron Digital in Culver City yesterday.
This morning, NASA launched the five suborbital sounding rockets from Virginia as part of ATREX (Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment). Each rocket was launched 80 seconds apart and released chemical tracers that created "milky, white clouds at the edge of space." Now, I've seen plenty of bullet tracers in my life, but these are far more poetic. Take a look at the time-lapse video and see for yourself. Why shoot these tracer rockets? To help scientists "better understand the process responsi...
Just as they promised, SightEra Technologies, creator of automatic video editor Magisto, has released an app for the iPhone.
This is a really quick video I took of a moonrise last year. It has been sped up by a factor of 8 and was taken using a 2600 mm equivalent lens (75 times zoom for a 35 mm lens). The mountain it is rising over is about 40 miles away.
In the age of automatic video editors and all around software-assisted creativity, how can a humble blogger help people master a program if said program does all the work for you?
According to Ryan Lawler over at GigaOM, automatic editing of that ridiculous amount of video and photos you've collected on your phone is the next big frontier for apps.
Ok, so perhaps V.I.K.T.O.R. won’t replace Walter Murch or Thelma Schoonmaker anytime soon, but this app that automatically assembles clips and photos from your iPhone and transforms them into mini-movies is another viable example of software-assisted creativity.
They're not the fastest in the world, but Vision Research's line of Phantom high-speed cameras produce some of the best slow motion effects on the web. They can turn violent punches into a chaotic scene of distorted skin and repulsive sweat, or make a night's stay in a hotel room more exciting. Now breakfast gets the Phantom treatment in Breakfast Interrupted, where America's favorite meal gets captured in midair at 1,000 frames per second.
We've seen a few snapshots and a handful of blurry videos, but the latest leaked footage of the hyped Sony Ericsson Xperia PlayStation phone demonstrates the playing of Resident Evil 2 and Rage Racer.