Video Blogger Shares DIY Studio Gear

I was browsing Engadget this morning and came across an article about a home made 16 Terabyte NAS storage box (you know I am a sucker for storage) and I followed the link to the inventor’s site (coffee helps fuel my curiosity) to see what else he was up too and found a link to this behind the scenes look at his video blogging studio garage and DIY support rigs. Will Urbina has some pretty good ideas for re-purposing gear meant for astronomy and cake decorating to shoot video on a budget.
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Smart Phone HD Video Filmmaking Becomes a Reality

Recently I experimented with an iPhone video rig for live or quick video coverage at NAB. Some people mocked putting the lowly iPhone on a stabilization platform but then came around when I explained what I was trying to accomplish. I was vindicated even further on the show floor when I came across Tiffen’s iPhone steadicam the Smoothee. This market is heating up and always having an HD video camera in your pocket is going to be a game changer for video blogging, news and micro budget filmmaking.

The flip HD and other small format cameras are really transitional devices for when smart phones have HD video capabilities and better lenses. There won’t be any need to carry a separate small camcorder in your pocket when your smartphone does it all.

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iPhone Video Blogging, What Worked and What Didn’t

On the Friday before NAB, I decided that I was going to try and live video blog from the show floor. I knew that I wanted to get information out quickly and efficiently and that I didn’t want to have to run back to the media room to ingest, transcode, edit, encode for the web and upload. Shooting video with a DSLR seemed impractical for my goals which was confirmed on site by Jared and his crew from Cinema5D who were doing a great job but working their asses off – I’m too old for that and life is too short.
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