Videopia the Book for only $9.99! 236 pages, all original content on EVERY topic from light to copyright.
"In my opinion, the content is worth much more than you are charging for it..."
- David B.
"This booklet is a great resource, and worth many times the price. Heck, it's worth four bucks just for the entertaining read alone..."
- Shane G.
"This is the best explanation of
Internet video I have ever read."
- Mark H.
This page is just for fun and includes all sorts of personal videos from Friends of Videopia (which, since you are reading this, probably includes you) that I find inspirational for one reason or another, even if that inspiration is just the sheer joy of shooting and sharing video! If you would like to share a video with the Videopia community, send me an
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and I'll post a link to it (vimeo is my favorite host, but YouTube or anything else embeddable works for me).
I was honored to participate in my first (and maybe last!) 24 hr. film festival as a shooter and editor. We managed to be a finalist in the Orlando 24 Hour Film Festival 2011 with an action/comedy entry called White Collar Crimes, Baby!
Strong comedic dialog and great acting really pulled the bit together. Of course, there were a couple of disasters, most notably the first serious rain we've seen in two months, but every team had that same handicap. Besides a 9AM to 9AM time frame, we also had the following conditions for our entry (other teams got different elements):
We got to chose from Action or Romance for the genre.
We had to include three items from a prop list and ended up using: owl, dice, $100 bill.
We had to use the line "Sorry, I just fell asleep while you were describing the most boring thing ever."
I was very impressed with the competition too: there were some fantastic shorts. I loved going to the screening of all the finalists and seeing them on the big screen in a real theater. Apparently, they are also scheduled to show on PBS in town, although (a) I don't receive television and (b) the local PBS station was recently purchased by a mega-church ministry out of Texas.
Shane Gibbons shot his family vacation video using a $185 Samsung MX20 flash-memory video camera (which, incidentally, he says "...is a real turd"). A little planning to make sure he got the shots he needed, a little context from the campground to set the stage and lots of video of people make this video very watchable and fun, even if you don't know Mr. Gibbons and his family. I think this video really demonstrates how paying even a little bit of attention to the fundamentals (i.e., use a tripod when you can!) makes a big difference. And, not to minimize the effort involved (because, as you can tell, there was a lot of effort put into this), I think this level of quality is well within the grasp of everyone reading this. Now, if you can just figure out the creative storytelling end of things, you are all set!
