My good friend Patrick Moreau and his colleagues over at stillmotion have begun a new initiative within their company that is focused on giving back.  They have set up the Share project, which tells the story of one cause a year and is produced on a 100% volunteer basis.  Patrick and the others felt that rather than donating a percentage of profits to a cause, they could better help that cause by donating their greatest asset – which is a penchant for fantastic storytelling.  I have to agree that this is an amazing and gracious approach to giving back.  Anyone can donate money, but those that are gifted as storytellers can give so much more by putting their skills to work and spreading the word of a particular cause in a way that connects with audiences.

Thier first endeavor for Share is the "Old Skool Cafe" – the story of a youth run supper club.  A description of the piece is available below via stillmotion’s blog – and you can see the video embedded above!

"Teresa, the first heart behind Old Skool, was a correctional officer who was really affected by how few options there are for youth after they have entered the system. she would get so connected to many of the youth with the time she spent with them inside of prison. sadly, many ended up right back inside shortly after being released. the environment many of these youth come from, and the environment from which they are released into gives them little chance of breaking free. Teresa wanted to created a way out, another options that could offer these youth a positive community support system as well as an income. with that, and 8 long years of hard work, Old Skool Cafe was born. in the coming weeks we will have images and a film telling the story of Old Skool Cafe, our first story for the stillmotion: Share project."

Hi-Hats are useful, short tripods that allow you to get lower to the ground than a standard set of sticks ever could, even with the legs spread all the way out.  Granted, taking the camera off whatever support you have and putting it directly on the ground or a sand bag is another solution, but Hi-Hats support fluid heads, giving you the ability to pan/tilt and level, which is invaluable.  Most grip trucks come with a Hi-Hat on board, but for some reason my gear closet has been lacking one.

I recently got the new Dromos Hi-Hat from Cinevate (pictured left), which has been filling this gap in my gear closet and more.  Above, you can see the Dromos, next to a traditional Hi-Hat (pictured right).  You will notice a difference between the two right away, namely the number of holes covering the Dromos.  This is because Cinevate has cheese-plated out their Hi-Hat with 1/4" and 3/8" holes so that the user can attach accessories and explore different mounting options.  (You can now easily put a Marshall Monitor via an arm screwed into one of the sides of the Dromos for example…)  And while both of the pictured Hi-Hats support 100mm bowl fluid heads – the Dromos bowl can be articulated at 0, 45, and 90 degrees.  This opens up a whole new slew of creative options for low angle shots.  For instance, at 90 degrees, you can now easily get shots where the camera is pointing straight up at a subject from the ground, rather than at an angle – this is actually a pretty big deal.   So while the traditional Hi-Hat is very useful, it is not nearly as versatile.

You may also notice that both are fastened to a piece of plywood (fancy right? Hollywood has been doing it for years).  This lets you easily put the tripod and camera down on most surfaces and then weight the board with sandbags.  However, traditional Hi-Hats are usually bolted to the board, but the Dromos uses screw in bolts that go into threaded holes on Cinevate’s base board.  This lets you easily detach the Dromos from the base and use it as a riser with all sorts of different support gear.  Because the cheese plate extends all the way across the bottom of the Dromos and has various sizings and spacings of holes, you can use it as a riser and attach it to almost any type of slider or jib.  As you may notice from my gear page – I use both Cinevate and Kessler support depending on the application, and it is incredibly useful that the Dromos can act as a riser that mates with both.  The combinations for use are numerous – you can use it to mount a fluid head to the top of a slider, or mount it to the bottom of your jib’s mounting plate to undersling a fluid head and camera (check out the image to the left in which the Riser is mounted to a slider, and then the bowl is configured at 45 degrees to creat a level shot).

And if you aren’t in need of a low angle shot solution, or an incredibly versatile riser – the Dromos in combination with the wooden base plate makes for an excellent place to build your camera.  You can easily put the Hi-Hat down on your camera cart, workbench, or any table really, and have easy access to it for setting up your rig.  When its built you can use the handles on the baseplate to easily carry your entire rig from setup to setup.

I went looking for a Hi-Hat tripod and came back with a piece of gear that has many additional functionalities, both for creative and practical applications.  That’s more than you could ask for out of any piece of gear.

iOS devices – specifically the iPad (which just reported that it soared to 68% of the tablet market share in Q1 2012) – are becoming increasingly prevalent.  Many of the users are buying them for one task: media consumption.  Movies, music, documents, magazines, games – you name it.  And increasingly, people are using their smart phones for the same application.  However, there is an inherent conflict at work here: tablets (and smartphones) are great for consuming media on-the-go, with their small form factors, but small form factors give way to little hard drive space, and media these days requires an increasing amount of just that – space.  Granted, wireless capabilities on these devices gives you the ability to stream media, but that is not always available.  I love that I can now download any previous iTunes movie purchase on my phones/tablets/AppleTVs for example, but that only works when I have a relatively fast internet connection – usually only at home.  The other catch, os tat fees for large amounts of streaming data can (increasingly) be prohibitive depending on the type of service provider you have, especially if you’re trying to pull it off of a 4G/3G connection (or if you’re an AT&T customer, a 3G connection that they are "calling" a 4G connection…but don’t get me started!) so you probably want to have media files stored on your device.  But between those files and all the various apps – even 64GB can go quickly.

Enter the G-CONNECT.  A new 500 GB storage drive from G-Technology that has built in WiFi so that you can wirelessly access your movies, music, photos and documents via your iOS device.  This gives the user an additional 500GB of storage space for media that would otherwise be competing for space with iOS applications – and you don’t need an internet connection to access it (this is due to the fact that the drive has its own internal WiFi.   All you have to do is plug it in and it puts out its own signal to which you can wirelessly connect to gain access.  Access to the device is gained through the use of your web browser, or the G-Connect App – both of which allow you to browse through the files on the drive and stream them to your device (Of course to get media on the drive in the first place – the drive includes a traditional USB2.0 connection).  

Up to four (Supports five devices or more, depending on the workload) others can access the files as well by logging on to the G-CONNECT through Wi-Fi connection – which supports the streaming of up to 5 SD movies, or 3 HD movies.  A wireless drive like this would have been incredibly useful on production meetings during my last film, "Mobius" as we were staying out in the desert with basically no internet, but still needed to share references, storyboards, script updates, etc… this would have provided a fast and efficient solution for sharing these things digitally than everyone downloading them off a flash drive one by one.  

Now there is an inherent catch here, because you are connected to the device through WiFi, you are excluding yourself from connecting to your internet service – so what if you want to stream your media (such as music), and surf the web at the same time (and you don’t have a 3G/4G LTE iPad)?  The G-CONNECT has an ethernet connection on the back so that you can plug it directly into your wireless router.  This causes the device to show up as a shared drive on your network, which anyone can access who is tapped into your network – making for a  great shared storage solution.  What’s even better is that since the drive has internal WiFi, it can also act as a wireless hotspot, so that you can tap into the internet connection through the G-CONNECT itself.  You could of course plug the G-CONNECT straight into your modem and use it as your sole wireless router (with 500GB of storage!)  The range of the device is 150 feet, so this solution is best suited for a small apartment.  For this type of home use, it should also be noted that the drive supports DLNA – so you can connect to it and stream with a compatible device, such as an XBox or Television.  

For me though, I can see this as a great solution to having all of your movies, reels, and media with you accessible wirelessly on the road.  For those of you who are constantly on the go like myself, you don’t have to be near a wall outlet to power the G-CONNECT.  You also have the option of powering the device through Apple iPad-compatible USB power cables, car power adapters and external batteries.

 In a few words – this device is hugely convenient, especially for those that travel a lot.  It has applications in numerous lines of work, and can also just be a hub for entertainment (often referred to as "research in the film industry :).  It goes for a retail price of $199.99 – which is incredible given the functionality.  A G-Technology 500GB drive on its own starts at $100.00, and it’s wireless equivalent, the Apple Airport Express, goes for $99.99, but this device combines the functionality of both of those devices at no additional markup.