Cool Motion Graphics... and critters...

FITC 2013 Title Sequence from Nando Costa on Vimeo.

Motion Graphics

The Art of Making, The Carpenter from Deep Green Sea on Vimeo.

This is a really awesome video (no doubt with the staff pick badge). I want to try something like this. Dave Dugdale of LearningDSLRVideo.com has a nice post and video on dissecting the graphics.

Here's a similar video I found on Vimeo.

precious lines from alexandre chappel on Vimeo.

DIY White/Color Balance with Warm Cards

I'm a film/television/visual arts student. One of the most important steps to good production as a cameraman/photographer is to make sure you have proper white balance to record accurate colors. You can stylize the color tones in editing. This is also important for photography (but if you shoot in a RAW format, you may not need to worry about this- still a good practice).

Oblivion Movie Interface Graphics

OBLIVION GFX Montage from GMUNK on Vimeo.

Tape Lubricants

Got a tape camera? Who am I kidding, no one does. But there used to be a debate on what brand of tapes to use, and what would happen if you used various brands in a tape deck...


Well, it's not too cool to mix them. You can get what's called a tape clog, and well, it is what it sounds like... gunk all caught up in your junk...

How to avoid this? Pick a brand and stick with it. Is one brand better over the other? Not really, so long as you don't switch. Personally, I always used Sony tapes. The Sony Beta medium was the standard for years. From what I was told, Sony used a more wet lubricant, while Panasonic tapes were a dry formula.

Check out Phil Phang's article on miniDV lubricants if you're interested.

I don't use a tape camera anymore, but I still have a few miniDV blanks floating around. I do have two storage boxes full of used tapes- some recorded with SD and some in HD. I sold my only tape camera awhile back... I had toyed with the idea of getting a cheap camera to capture the footage again just to have it... but at 12GB an hour... I guess the other option would be to get something like an HD-PVR or a Blackmagic Intensity and capture footage in a compressed, modern, format.