Whaling Ship Studios

vanstuke@gmail.com — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Oh, I can NOT wait to tell you about what I am planning right now.

Happy Birthday!

vanstuke@gmail.com — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:19:00 +0000

I just renewed WhalingShipStudios.com, which means this site has sort of existed for a year, now. Let’s look back on this time, shall we?

Mike starts this blog as an assignment for one of his classes at OSU.
We discovers XLNTAds via OnlineVideoContests.
Mike writes and animates the brilliant A Grand Discovery for a Nestlé assignment via XLNTAds, which is selected as a finalist, earning Whaling Ship its first legitimate commission.
We flirt with various cameras: the HV20, the HVX200, the RED (oh, if only).
We develop a taste for WINGS? YEAH!
Mike buys an HV20, and I make my first appearance in the blog.
Our good friend and colleague Jonathan searches for love (alas, to no avail—at least professionally).
We spend a few months playing with ideas for a Klondike commercial (for their ridiculously-exorbitant video contest) and after writing like five killer scripts, end up with…something. I think this was finished like a month after the deadline, too.
We complete pre-production on a ten-minute short involving real, live, grown-up actors and are ultimately forced to call it off due to scheduling constraints (though I do hope we complete this project soon—I’ll let you know, I promise)
Mike takes some time off from school, I take some time off from school and move to California, exploring some ancillary career paths, I grow tired of writing this list.

I’m here to tell you that this birthday couldn’t come at a better time. We’ve been kinda dormant for a long time, but Whaling Ship is back. Look for more from us (including a spankin’ new website) in the weeks to come. Yeah! Whoo!

Here We Go.

vanstuke@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:52:00 +0000

I spent most of yesterday browsing DVXuser and I've got the bug back. Zak Forsman has convinced me that the D90 is not such a bad thing. All that Jellocam nonsense really turned me off but I can think of one shot in the combined past works of Mike and I that would have suffered such torment. I think the pros definitely outweigh the cons, even if it means soft focus and shouldn't-be-HD compression (that's what Mr. Forsman says, anyway).

Not making any immediate plans (and still holding out for more info on the GH1) but I definitely see some more filmmaking in the near future. I haven't even written since like, December, though. Whoops.

By the way, I'm going to NAB this year.

The Great Pizza

vanstuke@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:30:00 +0000

Mike wrote, shot, and edited this. I did sound, and scored it, too. For a contest (of course!) for Chanticlear Pizza, a pizza chain in the Twin Cities. I like it!

Life update sooner or later (probably later). I re-re-launched my personal website and have been focusing more on live goings-on lately, but I'm also planning a major film project for late August. Maybe Mike will update us on what he's been doing, too. Oh Mii-iiike…

Relax. Don’t do it.

vanstuke@gmail.com — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:53:00 +0000

Things get busier and will keep getting busier. I meant to write about the Nikon D90 a few weeks ago, and how upset I am by its rolling shutter; the amazing new offerings from RED, and how masterfully they have abstracted the idea of a “camera;” and many other highlights from the cinema tech (cinematheque?) world. However, I saw a (not so recent) post on ProLost today that pulled me aside and gave me a stern, but loving, talking-to about going gaga over the ever-shrinking gap between prosumer video and professional celluloid.

Many videographers find their first experience with a 35mm lens adapter to be quite a cold splash of water. The images from these rigs can look amazing—but it just became a whole lot more work to make them even acceptable. Your system got a whole lot less agile, your solution more brittle. The ways to mess up a shot grew in proportion to the potential for greatness.

He goes on a for a good, long while about something I keep forgetting: the DOF, the resolution, the dynamic range are never as important as the overall quality of the experience. Read the whole thing. It’s all this good.

On a personal note, Mike and I are working on his NYU film and it’s coming along really nicely. I’ve noticed a very repeatable trend in our workflow: Mike comes up with a great idea; I write some things to make that idea unwieldy and almost always throw in some wordplay (I’m all about wordplay); Mike takes the stuff I've written and simplifies it, so that it will be watchable; Mike then composes shots that will make that simply powerful content look perfectly natural; I hold a microphone on a stick. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

More soon.

Whoops!

vanstuke@gmail.com — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:32:00 +0000

I half-forgot about this blog.

Things are kinda slow recently. I'm back in Manhattan, Mike is working on his application film for NYU for next year, and we're still collaborating at full force. We're going to have a few spec spots to show you soon for another contest.

Additionally, just to update you, we were planning to shoot a short film with real, live, adult actors in July. We were just about all of the way through pre-production when we simply ran out of time. I left for a short vacation in California, and flew from LAX to JFK a week later, so things have been at an impasse with that project since. We're hoping to pick it back up in December (but our cast doesn't actually know this yet). It's a great script, I think (I wrote it), and we're all pretty pumped. I really want to see it happen.

I finally revamped my personal website. I like it.

I'll leave you with this. I saw it a few weeks ago on 1000dollarfilm. It makes me feel tingly.

Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.

CeltX 1.0!

vanstuke@gmail.com — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:38:00 +0000

CeltX finally released their 1.0!

And it's still free!

And there are page breaks now!

I'm excited. I've been writing furiously the past few days and this just seems like some sort of validation for my work.

The Internet!

vanstuke@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:39:00 +0000

We have a new blog design. Maybe you noticed. We've also officially launched our website, though it's hardly complete. We're working on a handful of projects right now, but we're also polishing our portfolio and putting together a reel. In the meantime, admire my web design prowess and expect lots of tweaks in the following few days/weeks/forever.

Loyal readers will remember that I was planning to write some blog software. I may still do that somewhere long, long down the line, but it turns out that Blogger allows for a lot more customization than I originally thought, so we'll stick with this for now.

Also: happy fifth birthday to my personal website, JohnHoldun.com. I can NOT believe I've had that damn thing for five years.

Inspiration

vanstuke@gmail.com — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:27:00 +0000

Whenever I try to think of a good music video concept my brain always falls short. I feel that that's one of the categories of film I have a lot of trouble tapping into. Because of this I tend to really like music videos that are really good.

If you havent seen Justice's new video for "Stress," check it out. If you haven't seen any other Justice videos, check them all out. They are all brilliant.

What Would You Do For $100,000?

vanstuke@gmail.com — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:20:00 +0000

Would you make a commercial for Klondike®? I sure would. In case you didn't pick up on that, Klondike® is having a commercial contest worth $100,000 to the winner. Who knew they had that kind of change to toss around?

Anyway, there are a lot of rules. Surprising ones too, such as the one that says "no one under the age of 18 can appear in your video." What? How do I ice cream without any kids? Fine, back to the drawing board I guess.

Searching For Love

vanstuke@gmail.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:11:00 +0000

Here it is, folks: our pilot episode for the web series Searching for Love! Hopefully we'll hear back soon, but in the meantime, you can enjoy:

Click to play

He Speaks The Truth

vanstuke@gmail.com — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:32:00 +0000

This video was featured on YouTube. Probably because everybody and their brother are sick of watching videos with terrible audio. If you missed it, take a look:

Right now, Whaling Ship has a decent shotgun mic, much like the one he holds up and says is around 150 bones (Ours was more expensive. --John). We would like to look into some wireless lavs but we also need a recorder—by the way, I have no idea why they're so expensive. All I need is a flash drive with an XLR input. Maybe a little light, or an on switch.

We're looking into buying this recorder but frankly, I don't really understand where the $400 goes...it doesn't even have built-in memory—I'll have to buy an SD card. I just don't know anything about these devices...hopefully John will enlighten me by editing this post in the near future. Wait... Does this recorder not even have XLR inputs? John, edit this post ASAP.

Sure thing, Mike. No, this recorder does not, in fact, have XLR inputs. I'll get to that.

John here. I've spent many sleepless nights researching microphones and recorders. I've poured hours and hours into this decision, reading reviews and accounts of this or that piece of equipment. I was really hoping to not have to write all of this down, but I'll talk until I run out of talking things I guess.

Where was I? I don't know. The PMD620, that gorgeous little recorder pictured above, is my final decision. It's the newer version of the PMD660, which had two XLR inputs but is more expensive and noisy. I've heard that newer models of the 660 got rid of the noisy preamps, but I'm wary to buy it. It's also huge.

Mark Apsolon's boom pole is wired. I like that. I really want a wired boom pole. There's no such thing as a $50 shotgun mic. Sorry, I'm watching this video while I type. I don't like the dude's hat.

I want to buy a pair of Sennheiser Evolution Wireless Kits. They're about $500 each and sound pretty good (I can't find the video where I heard them, sorry). Eventually I want to buy a legit rack-mountable wireless console. That's later.

The PMD620 only has a stereo mini input, but I have a line-matching XLR-to-1/8" transformer. No biggie. We've been running a dual system by recording audio to my Canon ZR500 with the lens cap on. This saves a million steps.

Other choices were the Zoom H2, which is sexy because it also records surround sound out of the box, but I've heard that that guy has noisy pre-amps as well. Then there's the M-Audio MicroTrack II which is cheaper than the PMD620, but it has a built-in rechargeable battery and I really, really don't want to risk having a dead recorder with no means of getting it back up and running in the middle of a shoot. Then there's the Zoom H4 and the Edirol R-09 and a bunch of others. I can't remember specific reasons for not wanting the others, but I promise that the 620 is a very calculated decision.

Eventually I plan to buy a compressor (I guess?), a field mixer, a pro field recorder, an arsenal of microphones, and a wireless system, but for now we'll get by with a shotgun and a li'l snookums.

That's the second time I've referred to the PMD620 as "snookums." I truly don't know why.

I'm Here Today to Talk About The RED

vanstuke@gmail.com — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:27:00 +0000

RED is...in my opinion, the best thing to happen to the "film" (and I use that term lightly) industry since the advent of the first film camera. Up until now, film cameras have been the price of small houses, and film grade digital (aka digital cameras that take a picture (almost) as good as film) have been the price of comfortable houses.

Well, not anymore. Anyone and his brother can afford a RED ONE and make a movie.

The RED ONE is the first camera to be released on the RED line. It is 4k resolution, which is as good as film. The design is genius, and will probably let this camera last forever. The main body, pictured above, is just the 4k sensor in a box. Lenses and monitors are attached and boom, you have a great camera. In a few years, buy a new sensor and use the old lenses, or vice versa. RED promises to make their units upgradable forever.

The RED ONE is the only camera in their line out right now. Like I've said before, rather than spitting the technobabble at you, just LOOK AT THE FOOTAGE!!! Right click here and "save link/target as."

Yo Yo J-Hol

vanstuke@gmail.com — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:49:00 +0000

Mike's been pressuring me to introduce myself on this blog and I've been meaning to start posting, pestering or otherwise. Hi! I'm John!

I am the other half of Whaling Ship Studios. (The name comes from me.) I'm a student at NYU, studying Dramatic Writing. It's pretty great. I was born in New York, but I spent a majority of my formative years in sunny Fairfield, Ohio. It wasn't all bad. I'm here right now, until July, and then I'm back in New York indefinitely.

While I guess you could call me a writer by trade, I do a lot of other stuff. I'm fascinated by sound, and I pay a lot of attention to sound design. I end up being the "sound guy" when we're shooting, but I love it. Even manning the boom. I recently purchased a Røde NTG-2 and it's the nicest thing I've bought in a long time. Just looking at XLR cables gets me excited. Is that weird?

While the tools of sound are great, the art of sound are even more interesting to me. They say that sound is 75% of a film, and I think that's so true. I have a hard time watching movies with my family, because they talk, or whisper, or rustle papers, or breathe a little too loudly. I can't imagine how many times I've rolled my eyes at the idea that if there's silence in the movie, it's okay to say something in real life. Recently I've discovered that I can actually watch things by myself, with headphones. It's been nice.

I was hired as the sound designer for Post Secret: A New Play, written and directed by Matt Gehring, being produced at NYU in the Fall. I'm also manning and designing scenes for the projector, which is a pivotal part of the show. It's being staged in a black box theater and has little to no set pieces, so I'm concentrating on creating some lush sound beds for the scenes and subtle imagery for the background (and postcards). As far as I'm concerned, I'm set designer as well. But more about that later, maybe.

While Mike is sort of our designated editor (he's our director, too), I've also taken a liking to special effects/post-production. I have pored over After Effects for countless hours. Very recently I've discovered the joys of 3D modelling, too. If you happened to see our Bud Light spec ad, you saw my first completed work. Yes! Hard as it is to believe, that robot is not real. I'm also way into color grading and I'm trying to break into motion graphics.

I write all the time. Well, that's not true at all. I think about writing all the time. I should write way more often. I recently finished a short play. It's two acts, but only twenty-some pages. I just decided it needed to be broken up that way. We're actually filming it soon, on a stage, but not as a play. Hopefully we'll have a trailer or something for you by July, but you'll have to hold your breath for the full production: we're planning to send it around the festival circuit. It's going to be good. I've also been outlining a short dramatic series (I have a hard time writing comedy) and we were going to produce it this summer, but some of my real-life plans changed and that might not happen this year. I'm also working on some other projects and a super-secret feature, but I don't want to say anything about the former because they're too far away, and, well, the latter is super-secret.

I'm planning to blog about the history of Whaling Ship, writing, the stage, anti-humor, maybe Blender, maybe my sweet boom pole, maybe New York, maybe some other stuff. I'm also planning to migrate this blog to a custom blog engine on whalingshipstudios.com proper after I launch the site, and after I create the site, and after I create a custom blog engine (I do all that stuff too). But don't tell Mike that.

Shopping Bag

vanstuke@gmail.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:06:00 +0000

Just dropped $700 at B&H and I expect the following to show up by Wednesday:
First of all, a brand new Canon HV20. Well, not brand new—I bought a used one so I'd save a couple bucks (good idea when buying from a reputable vendor such as B&H). With that I purchased 2 HD Tapes, an extra battery (crucial), and a 4 GB MiniSD card...I'm not sure what I need it for, but $20 for 4 GBs was just too tempting.

The next thing on my list, which I might just go ahead and pick up is a 43mm wide angle lens for the HV20. In my less-than-professional opinion, a wide angle lens is just superior. I've never used one but I can imagine achieving a much more professional look and feel with one.

vanstuke@gmail.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:06:00 +0000

Yo hey, just got set up with twitter accounts. I can tell this is going to be addicting...

twitter.com/vanstuke

twitter.com/johnholdun

Network Socially

vanstuke@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:54:00 +0000

Add me on up!

I'm a huge fan of social networking sites. I think I've joined most of them, but these four are the only ones I use "regularly." I might start using twitter once I can text but until then, whatever.

Short Film. Download it and Watch it.

vanstuke@gmail.com — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:16:00 +0000

This film was made for a film contest or something. Download it for free and watch it. The actors' performances are incredible, especially Tori Lee as Camille.
We stumbled upon this because it was shot with a Panasonic AG-HVX 200, so keep that in mind too.

Chroma Key Project

vanstuke@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:52:00 +0000

Here's an old Video we submitted to a Buffalo Wild Wings Contest. Honestly, I'm still really sore about not winning. I mean...I think this is golden.
Anyway, this is just a short video that's completely based on green screen magic (Chroma Keying). This used to be a big deal, but now anybody and his brother can do it with a simple to use freeware application. However, I used Final Cut Pro to make this video.

Creative Inspiration

vanstuke@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:27:00 +0000

Here's a beautiful stop motion mixed media animation.

Watch and feel great.
Off The Beaten Track from Leob on Vimeo.

How Do You Travel on a Budget?

vanstuke@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:17:00 +0000

Budget, the car rental company is holding a video contest with a simple prompt: "How do you travel on a budget?" They're looking for funny and creative two minute videos. Here's what they say:

Make a video that's two minutes or less that demonstrates how you live the budget-savvy life style while on a vacation or road trip! How far can you go on a dollar? Show us the great ways you get the most value on a trip and have a fabulous experience. Your video must include some car travel and feature a Budget Rent A Car reference and logo prominently shown at some point in the video.

The grand prize is 25k! Go for it!

Filmmaking Roots

vanstuke@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:08:00 +0000

Wow, roots. Well, this is the first film project I ever did, I guess. I toyed around making lego videos and skate tapes as a kid, but that's it. This is the first planned-out project I ever attempted to create. I had storyboards and everything. This was for when Converse used to run ConverseGallery.com, to which I credit my want to become a filmmaker. The 24-second short films that were up there were so so good. This was one that I tried to make for it. The Audio was never finished, though. Pretty simple concept, and my experience with lego stop animation helped a lot. This was in the 9th grade I believe. Wait, maybe 10th...

Shopping List: Panasonic AG-HVX-200

vanstuke@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:59:00 +0000

The Panasonic AG-HVX-200 is a great, sort-of-entry-level professional camera. Running around $5,500, this is a full 1080p (~~that's the highest of high def btw~~) camcorder that records to P2 cards, a fairly new solid state form of memory for storing digital video. The cards are normally half the cost of the camera, but the HVX-200 comes with a free 16 GB one. This camera is beautiful and we want it.
I could technobabble all day about specs, but what it really boils down to is what the final product can look like. Take a look at this short film hosted on vimeo. Hit the link at the bottom to view it in full 720p resolution.

Gone in a Flash - HD from Chris Crutchfield on Vimeo.

WOW DEPTH OF FIELD. If you're not familiar with the concept of depth of field, here's what Wiki has to say about it...
"Depth of field (DOF) is the portion of an image that appears sharp. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on either side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions."
With regard to this film: what was in focus was beautifully crisp, and what wasn't in focus was incredibly blurry. That is an example of a short, or shallow, DOF and it looks incredible, almost painted, as the short film above did.

However, at a 5k price tag we're gonna have to keep on saving or take out a loan.

New Assignment From XLNT Ads

vanstuke@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:36:00 +0000

XLNTAds just announced a new assignment. If anyone's interested, this is to create a five-part web series about love. I guess it is Spring and all...that stuff is in the air.

I know that I myself have always wanted to shoot a web series. I don't know if this love story thing is really my dig, but hey, you never know. They'll be awarding the three best pilots with 5k. Good luck.

Sewardly

vanstuke@gmail.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:22:00 +0000

A term coined by friend Tom Nguyen to describe a genre of film that depicts the events of a single day in an extreme non-narrative fashion, and not necessarily in chronological order. We honestly have no idea how films such as this would be received by a stranger. Do you feel like you know us? Do you envy our life? Did you sit through the whole thing? Probably not, but anyway this video includes myself, Bryan Freitas, Jon Huffman, Tom Nguyen...Nicole Freeman is in there for a bit, and John Holdun shot and edited it. Enjoy!