Glidecam & 5D Mark II Setup

Just purchased a Glidecam 4000 and Vest/Arm for supporting it. Not bad at $1100, so I'm now setting up, balancing, and ready to test. For that, this video has proven extremely useful:

View on ExposureRoom

Neurosonics Live - Holographic Performance

Neurosonics Live from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

Short Film News

So, after a several-year hiatus from being involved in any indie film productions (I used to act in them, and I used to spend time writing scripts and trying to direct some things, as well), I've decided to give it another go. The first time I tried to make a movie, I was a young 20-something whippersnapper with a lot of gusto but not much wisdom. I was unemployed, but had a $10,000 severance check, and was going out of my mind stir-crazy with boredom and lack of productivity. So I decided to plunge headlong into a feature-length production. I wrote a script, and I did that part right. I purchased the equipment, which I also did right (sort of); but I didn't set anything else up the right way. I didn't have a proper casting call, I tried to use the communal house I lived in as the setting (bad idea, although my whole horror script was inspired by the house and location in foggy Pacifica, California), and I used my friends as the cast/crew... also a bad idea. Another bad idea: dressing up in velvet hooded cloaks and carrying tiki torches and skull staffs up a hillside in the middle of the night right next to a highway... only a few weeks after 9/11. People freaked, I suddenly saw flashlights in my shot, and the next thing I know I had a cop's gun pointed at my face. Good times.

Needless to say, the project was a failure, though I did get a lot of experience and I got a few nice scenes out of it... but nothing worthy of showing anyone.

This time, I intend to do it right. I plan on making a short film (maybe 15 minutes long) with a minimal cast (3-4 parts) in local locations. It will include some CGI effects (3D animation composited into the real-life footage) so that might prove to be a challenge, but my goal for this is to quality, not quantity, so I'm going to take my time and due diligence and plenty of planning. And I'm going to go into this knowing right off the bat that it will be a money pit (though I hope no more than $5000.)

Here is the status so far:

Script: Almost finished

Location scouting: Needs to occur

Filming permit: Not obtained, which will also require purchasing liability insurance

Equipment Ready to Use

• Camera (Canon 5D Mark II, which shoots 1080p HD)
• Sennheiser shotgun microphone (great mic)
• Boom pole (if I can find it)
• High-End HD editing computer (most people would say this would have to be a MacPro, but they are idiots; I purchased a PC with all of the exact same parts as a top-model MacPro, but for 1/3 of the price. My computer is essentially a MacPro without the Apple logo, but it cost $1000 instead of $2800)
• 3D Studio Max (for CG)
• SonicFire Pro for scoring (plus multiple royalty-free libraries from SmartSound)

Equipment Still Needed

• Glidecam (steadicam-type stabilizer)
• Small boom jib/crane for camera
• Already-made 3D models to splice and recombine as necessary for my film

A Christmas Toy: Thingamakit

Despite my previous misadventures in DIY electronics projects, I asked for another electronic-music kit to build myself a toy... and Santa brought it for Christmas!

It is called the "Thingamakit" by Bleep Labs. It's actually discontinued, but the new Thingamagoop 2 is not as cool-looking, only has one LED, and has some good new features, but they are not ones that I would use. Plus it's more expensive. So this was a no-brainer.

I have yet to start working on the beast, due to a plethora of projects, but I have my fingers crossed that it will be a lot of fun. Right now it's just a lot of... pieces.

I'm not too worried about the soldering and such (much less ambitious than the Theremax was), and it's nice that it includes the case, all parts, and even a variety of stickers to decorate it with. But here are the parts that bother me:

1) Every picture and video I have seen of it includes one green and one blue LEDacle (these are the little tentacle-antennae thing that shine the light into its "eyes"); however, my kit came with an orange one and a red one. What's up with that? I'm actually going to write to them and see if I can get blue and green, because red and orange are not nearly as cute and are not my style.

2) The case is just a metallic stomp-box type enclosure. I will have to measure and drill holes straight into this metal box. That is more than a little nerve-wracking.

So... I ordered a Melodica

My melodica (the same model as this guy is playing Amelie-like music with in this video) should be showing up within a few days.

Got it brand new off of eBay for less than $50! Pretty sweet. I'm excited about that. I have a concertina and a set of harmonicas, and I love that accordion/harmonica reed sound, but each instrument sounds a little different even when they use the same reeds. The melodica will allow me to play notes like a piano (instead of the C/G button format of the concertina) and will be much simpler to play (and more compact to store or carry) than an accordion would be. Plus, concertina and most accordions are diatonic, so they play a different note when squeezing in than they do when pulling out. I would also love to have a harmonium, but I figure this melodica will suffice (harmonium is much more expensive and bigger -- if you don't know what that is, it's the instrument from Punch Drunk Love; sort of like a cross between a small piano/organ and an accordion)

5 Neck Guitar?

I don't ever remember this. Shows how much attention I pay to Cheap Trick.

But this is a little overkill, no?

PAiA Theremax ftw

Well, let me tell you this: building a PAiA Theremax theremin from scratch, mounting it into an Atari 2600 case, and getting it work right is no small feat!

After many, many long hours soldering and snipping and hotgluing and wrestling a bird's nest of wires, it seemed I finally had completed the (basic) Theremax setup... sans the extra modifications I plan to add, but I figured I'd better test out the basic system first.

So... I crossed my fingers and plugged it in and switched it on and... nothing. The power LED didn't even light. No smoke or fireworks just... nothing. Dead? No power? Who knows. So... I reached out to switch it off and unplug and POP! A loud snapping explosion like a firecracker went off under my arm.

I switched it off and looked and... sure enough, an electrolytic capacitor has exploded open.


Well, turns out that the wiring of the power supply they gave me was OPPOSITE the normal markings (this one had white stripe for +, black wire for -)... so I was sending negative polarity through the board when it should have been positive!

So much for the name "Kid Electric"

Anyway, I rewired the power supply and reconnected some of the ground-wire connections and... voila! LED is go! Not only that, but I bypassed the volume antenna circuit with a jumper cable and was able to get sound out of the pitch antenna and null it out so that I can control the pitch! Pretty exciting stuff...

Unfortunately, when I removed the volume-bypass gimmick and try to get it working NORMALLY (with volume circuit), I can't get it to make a peep. :(


Will update more if I ever conquer this beast...

News

Not too exciting, but...

after recording my first song ("Seek and Hide", to avoid confusion with the quite-different Imogen Heap song), I am ready to re-record the vocals (which were sort of scratchy, gravelly, and experimental when I first recorded them)

Also, I modified the Dr. Who Cyberman-stencilled toolbox which houses the PAiA Vocoder 6710 I got off of eBay. It had extra room to magically fit my Antares AVP-1 Vocal Producer rackmount unit, so I installed that in there and drilled holes in the back/bottom of the toolbox for the audio/power jacks. Now it is a truly badass vocal unit, which works as follows:

I run my retro-looking Nady large-diaphragm condenser mic (phantom-powered XLR) through my E-mu 1820 audio interface; this works well, because I can directly record clean audio and also because the phantom-power and XLR interface means I can't just plug it into the Antares or vocoder. So what I do is add an Insert to the appropriate recording strip (associated with the Nady) in my ASIO PatchMix DSP to have an ASIO send to the physical output (stereo 1L/1R) on the back of the E-Mu 1820. I send this to the Mic Input of the AVP-1, THEN patch-cable it to the Mic In (Instrument 2) jack of the vocoder, which I will most often use with my Novation X-Station, but the beauty of it is that I can use any instrument to vocode my voice... Atari, concertina, whatever (I can't wait to see what it sounds like when the Pole Position engine rumble starts singing!)... also, it's no problem if I don't want to vocode it, because there is an instrument bypass switch on the vocoder to let the clean signal through (either for Instrument 1, or Instrument 2 - the microphone/vocals)


So, in short, I can easily choose to have a clean signal or to vocally-process my voice, auto-tune it, compress, de-ess, vocode, or any combination of the above... all without pulling out or switching any microphones or jacks!

Needless to say, my little home studio is turning into a bit of a spider's-web of wires...


PS. Also learning to play This Charming Man and Annie's Song. I'll post another update once something exciting happens (ie. more song recordings, public song postings, OR completion of the Theremax theremin I am building...)