Thank you to everyone who voted for our video for the “Buyback” Best Buy Video contest.

We did in fact win 2nd place nationwide. A nice $1,000 giftcard!

We shot everything on the 7d. I did all of the visuals in After Effects and Particle Illusion.

Check out the video below!

Bestbuy Buyback Video Contest

I recently entered a 60 sec spot into Best Buy’s latest video contest, “Buy Back Lifestyle.”  They only pick 5 semi-finalists, and I was one of them.  Yeah!

But now it’s up to the public to vote.  The voting dates are from June 3 – 17, 2011.

The video with the most votes will receive a $10,000 gift card to Best Buy.

PLEASE vote for me and help me win!

My video is called “Latest and the Greatest”

VOTE HERE

Check out this video reel we shot for Holy Smoke Studios.

We helped design the wall murals in the hallway of one of the buildings in this reel.  We did the coloring and shading.  Everything was done in photoshop.

Our iphone development branch has been working with MassiveWar Studios on a new iphone game. We’re hoping to finish and release the game sometime in July 2011. The game is called Monkey Escape and you can check out the game details here.

We created a game intro video for MassiveWar Studios.  The animation was created and rendered in Cinema 4d.  Color correction and sound was composed in After Effects.

We’ve recently completed our new piece of professional video equipment.  The “Mikey Jib.”

The latest model is the Mikey EXT-18.  The jib is 18 ft high!  Check out the promo!

Here is more info on jib for anyone who is interested.  Custom Video Engineering

We got to shoot with the RED One and Canon 5D Mark II with a local film in Hendersonville, NC.

Mike was jib op for the 14 hour shoot.

We started shooting around 3:00pm and didn’t finish until about 5:00am.  Long night, but the important thing is we completed our shot list.

The scene consisted of a super hero disposing of a local villain, “his” way.

We finished a 30 second spot the other day with music artist, Joey Gaskin.

Everything was shot in our studio using a green screen.  We then used After Effects for our compositing and visual effects.

Music was mixed and added the finishing touches to the spot.

Here’s a quick tutorial I did showing some of the visual effects in our film Foxhole.

I explain simple shooting technics out in the field to help you prepare your footage for post production.

Check it out!  If you’ve got questions, hit me up!

Well guys, we finally have what we’ve been waiting for.  With an inexpensive plugin, we can not only read from NTFS hard drives with a mac, but we can now write to them as well.

For less then $35 USD, you can purchase the Tuxera plugin for your mac.

After purchasing the plugin, installing is a breeze.  Simply extract the downloaded file, let it install, enter in your license info, reboot and you’re ready to go.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  I have found only one minor draw back with this plugin.  The file structor is actually NTFS 3G+, instead of just NTFS.  The 3G+ is a bit slower during the writing process of your data.  So those of you who do video editing, it would be best not to edit in NTFS 3G+ on a mac.  I’m sure the file structor is stable, it’s just lacking the same performance that you can get with a NTFS drive.

I’ve used this plugin for simple backing up and transferring data from a mac to a pc, and it worked like a charm.

Well there is a lot to explain… but here’s the short version… We tested a Canon 50mm f1.4 ($350) vs. a Canon 50mm f1.2 ($1400) lens… and I could not really see any difference on our 1080p “video” test footage. I did see quite a difference when we shot two test images at 21 mega pixels.

The canon L series lenses are very nice, but they are not going to be as nice to your wallet. However, Sigma makes a high quality lens (EX series) that is compared to the L series and holds up pretty well. The nice thing about the Sigmas are they hold their quality and are a good 1/3 cheaper then the L series lenses.

Now you need to ask yourself… am I going to use my camera for video or for photography. If you’re going for photography… go for the L series. If video, go for the Sigmas.

On a scale of quality.. from 1-10… I’d say if the crappy lenses ($350) was a 3, then the L series is a 9 and the sigmas are a strong 7.

My outcome… unless you have money to burn… go with the sigmas EX… don’t cheap out. If your videos are only for web, and you have very little money to spend, go for the cheaper stuff. If your videos are to end up on blu-rays and 50 inch monitors, go for the sigmas. If you want your videos to end up in a movie theater, go with the L series… oh yeah and a RED.

You may ask what will I use… two sigmas (17-35mm f2.8 and 70-200mm f2.8) and one zeiss prime (50mm f1.4).

With these lenses, you will cover your ranges nicely and maintain great quality.

Also, I know a lot of us with our 5d’s, 7d’s and 60d’s think “Oh wow… check out the film quality…. this camera rocks…. blah blah blah….” Keep in mind, to make something look good… you need light.

With that said, I wouldn’t buy anything slower than a f2.8. If you’ve got tons of light… you can get away with slower (cheaper) lenses. If you want to shoot in the field with less light, don’t buy a f3.5 or slower… you’ll be kicking yourself later. My rule of thumb is to only buy a f2.8 or faster.

Remember there is NO magic lens out there to make anything look like a $100 million hollywood film. You need proper lighting to help achieve your “film look.” I’d say your lighting is 80% of your image… and then 20% is your lens. So be sure to have a nice lens to capture your scene properly.

Again… this is only my opinion from my testing and research.

I hope it helps you guys and gals out.
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