VIRGINIA, PURPLE MOUNTAIN MAJESTIES, GINGER BEER & TICKS

I'm in Virginia right now filming with Tim and Burke at Southern Virginia University.  It's been a great shoot thus far.  Tim and I ended up on the top of some hills and with a few ticks crawling around on our clothes.  This prompted a quick and very public strip on the side of the highway as Tim filled our minds with horror stories of ticks and lyme disease.  Had we not been in such a hurry to save ourselves I would have taken a picture or two of our stowaways.

Our deadline on this project is this wednesday so we are in quite a scramble mode.  We'll have three days to put final touches on it in the studio next week and then its out the door.

Last week we released the first of many in a new campaign with Rogue Fitness called R You Rogue.  Matt and Cherie Chan, a couple -- quite literally -- of elite CrossFit athletes were the first.  They are some rad people and there are more to come.  Check out the final R You Rogue portrait above.

We're still shooting with the AF100's and we absolutely love them.  Panasonic, if your listening, we have great ideas that would excite us more that anything.  It may raise the price point a bit but they would be well worth the money for us.  Some of them are listed below -- with help from Tim.

• blowing out white needs help. either more user control on how its handled or fix it in general
• bring the scene dial back
• iso on a scroll wheel and not just a three stage button
• 422 color spacing
• beefier codec and use the P2 media
• VR on the sensor -- like Pentax -- and don't rely on the lenses
• there are more, just ask...

If your're not a techie camera person and made it through that, pat yourself on the back and go buy a pint of your favorite ice cream.

Rogue Fitness Commercial Shoot - Columbus, Ohio

I've brought Tim Irwin with me on a commercial shoot for Rogue Fitness this week and while making our way here we stopped off in an airport and while changing planes we encountered this.  Pop quiz… What is this and where is it?

Day 2 here the beautiful capitol city of Ohio -- Columbus -- if you haven't freshened up on your geography lately.  The last time I was here was during The Arnold Classic a few months back and the weather is pretty much the same, cold, windy and wet.  Although it is now 40 degrees and not 19 so there is green on the trees.

We're shooting with two Panasonic AF100s and a mix of Lumix, Nikon, Sigma and Pentax lenses.  We also have a small slider dolly that has been fun to use a bit too.  Mostly, however, we're sticking to our guns -- handheld and sticks.  Today consisted of welding, drilling, cutting, scraping, grinding, pressing...a lot of 'ings.  The commercials are gonna be great and the concepts are pretty solid but quite simple, just the way we like it.  I've been going overboard lately and complicating a lot of things when in the end we need a solid storyline and stellar footage.  Luckily we have five more day of just that!

We have a 4 card SDHC offloading solution for now (this post talks about the problem).  It works well -- we just offloaded 4 16GB shot cards to redundant drives at once (see the picture below) and had no problems.  It just isn't as clean as the cube with four slots.  It consists of a Belkin USB four port hub, two Lexar Professional compactflash/SD card readers, a SanDisk reader and the MacBook Pro SDXC card slot.  To offload the footage we're using the trusty ShotPut Pro application.  Love, love love it!  And checking all offloaded footage in Final Cut Pro (soon to be Final Cut Pro X -- AND we'll be able to edit in the native codec rather than transcode everything)!

GoPro Goes 3D // Looks Like Wall-E's Lost Cousin, GP-3D

Did you hear the news?  Wall-E has a long lost cousin, who for obvious reasons -- he was lost, didn't make it into the film.  His name, GP-3D.  Also goes by the name of GoPro 3D.  Yup, GoPro has launched it's new 3D camera system.  They claim it to be "the world's smallest 1080i 3D camera".  So unless you work for some secret government agency that is working with another secret alien agency building 3D cameras, their claim sticks.

The new tagline for this little videobot: Professional 3D Made Easy.  They say Combine & Capture // Create & Edit // Share & Watch, little too wordy for me.  GoPro has obtained CineForm Studio and offer it as a free download so you can start your 3D rampage.  Works with old school Red/Blue glasses for Anaglyph displays, electronic glasses for active displays and polarized glasses for passive displays.

Now you can capture and share your best falls, faceplants, wipeouts, and general action sport beatings with everyone...in 3D!  Or if you're into needlepoint...  As long as there's blood and carnage.

UPDATE: Paul posted a link of someone that was either inspired by my post or thinks like I do.  Either way, super funny!  Thanks Paul.  http://twitpic.com/4i1ph7

Highlight Reel after the break.