[vimeo video_id=”14434107″ width=”700″ height=”398″ title=”Yes” byline=”Yes” portrait=”Yes” autoplay=”No” loop=”No” color=”00adef”]

Congrats to Tony Leech for winning the final chapter of the Beyond The Still Contest – and I wholeheartedly congratulate every single one of entrants for entering the contest as well!

I appreciate how much time those of you who entered put into these projects – we all know how many days/weeks it can take to pull a 4 minute short together and the dozens of favors we have to call in to make it work!

At this point I’m working with Canon/Vimeo/Grey on the next and final chapter where all 7 finalists and I will join together to shoot the final film – the location is yet to be determined but the target date is mid-October.   As soon as details are announced I’ll be contacting all of the winners individually.

You can view all of the winners from each of the other 6 chapters here – or click on the links below:

Watch the other chapters here or below:

More thoughts below – and the upcoming FINAL chapter shoot with all 7 winners:

Read the rest of this entry »

Vimeo just announced their schedule of their workshops/panels and speakers at the Vimeo Film Festival + Awards in New York City October 8-9.   I’m excited to be invited to be there and look forward to what should be a pretty interesting panel with Philip Bloom moderated by someone who is not necessarily a big fan of HDDSLRs – David Leitner – which should make the talk quite a bit of fun!

This is an event I’ve been looking forward to for a few months and I can’t wait to meet people there and see the winning films – some lucky person (who somehow won amidst 6,500 entries!!!!) will win a cool $25,000 that weekend…  now I just have to find the time to judge the winning entries in the narrative category…

I started the gear section on this blog in 2008, and I haven’t done that much updating to it since.

Needless to say:  the gear that has become available since the 5D MKII was launched has virtually exploded and created and entirely new market.   I’ve used most of it – and today I’m publishing a list of what I have come to rely on for all of my HDDSLR productions:  This is a list of gear that I USE on a regular basis – along with some more “specialized” items that I use once or twice a year but always yield incredibly unique results.

You can go to see this new section on the My Gear Section on the top left menu of this blog.

It’s a pretty extensive list and will continue to grow with time.  Right now we’re already put up over 100 items so far – it’s taken 3 of us more than a month to put this together for you.  My goal is to make this one of the the most comprehensive gear lists on any personal blog out there.  I also want to make sure that I do more than just publish a list gear.   I’m going to do my best to explain how and why I use each piece of gear, and to give visual examples whenever possible.

So here’s what I’ve done:

1. I’ve listed each piece of kit along with a photograph of it, and I’ve organized the gear within nine categories.

2.  I’ve listed the manufacturer’s specs from their sites – and linked directly to those sites so that you can find more out from them.

3. I’ve added a list of comments as to WHY I have come to choose each product – and I’ve done my best to speak to each piece of gear’s strengths and weaknesses (every piece of gear has BOTH!)

4. I’ve added links for you to purchase this gear from two popular retailers (Adorama and B&H.)

5. As I find more time – I will include more photographs and/or videos that demonstrate how each of these pieces of gear is used.  Expect the list to continue to grow as new products are released and I get a chance to work with them on future productions.

Here is a video that I put together recently that shows how I’ve come to include many of these pieces of gear in an actual production – this is something that I will be looking to as often as I can.  I think it’s the best way for me to discuss the uses of each piece of kit:

[vimeo video_id=”14250282″ width=”700″ height=”394″ title=”Yes” byline=”Yes” portrait=”No” autoplay=”No” loop=”No” color=”00adef”]

Read the rest of this entry »