Archive for the 'video' Category

Outer Space Box: Day 2

Reached critical mass on September 4, 2010 in craft, documentation and video. 0 Comments Tags: lighting, metal fabrication, woodcraft.

Day 2 consisted purely of lighting and metal fabrication to produce stand lights and a DIY style ringlight. The ringlight puts out about 55 watts, and I’ll be testing it tomorrow.

Here are two shots of the light stand, which is basically a 48″ fluorescent shop light mounted on a Adirondack-style frame I built. Lap joints are where it’s at.

The Adirondack adjustment allows for the light to be positioned at angles from 45 degrees to 90 degrees. The weight of the light keeps everything pretty steady.

The ringlight, built from a bathroom fixture from Lowes. With some minor metalworking, I was able to fit all the lighting actually inside the original case, and move the ballast to the outside. This allowed me to cut a 4 inch hole in the center with some tin snips which will allow any one of my video or still lenses to fit through. The whole thing will have a mount built for it tomorrow, possibly a tripod mount so that it can be affixed directly to the camera. That would be ideal.

nick bontrager: a retrospective

Reached critical mass on August 20, 2010 in craft, documentation and video. 0 Comments

My new profile video for Ohio State University’s new website.

Sketch for an upcoming video work

Reached critical mass on August 2, 2010 in documentation and video. 0 Comments

diy dolly // first tests

Reached critical mass on July 15, 2010 in craft, documentation and video. 0 Comments

Photo updates on the build coming soon!

[just like new] studio // new class // upcoming film

Reached critical mass on June 18, 2010 in documentation, inflatables and video. 0 Comments

I’ve spent the last two days giving my studio a much needed cleaning and rearrangement. What used to be me stepping carefully over broken electronics and glass (really) all over the floor has been rectified. Additionally, I decided to open up the space by scraping all the paint off the windows and removing some old drywall. I’ll probably ask Jessica to help me make some curtains just in case I am working on some secret stuff.

I’ll be teaching round 2 of the Multimedia Authoring course at Ohio State University starting Tuesday, really looking forward to it. Not only did the students last quarter crank out some great projects, I was forced to re-learn so many of the skills I’ve forgotten to help them with the projects. I can only imagine what I’ll be re-learning this time.

Last weekend, Jessica and I took a day trip to Conkle’s Hollow in Hocking Hills State Park to do some location scouting, and I put in a request for an after hours permit earlier this week. I just heard back from them earlier today and it looks like the permit will be approved! No fee either! I really didn’t think it would go through, as I specifically proposed filming around midnight in a State Preserve area, where it’s pretty much illegal to go off the path, much less hang around after dark. I’ll be filming a segment for the “Works” section of website 3.0, so keep an eye out for storyboards in the next few days. I just need to scan them. Check the “categories” this post is in for a hint about what is going to be filmed. Both the videos below were shot on the location.