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Long time, No see.

Howdy folks,
Long time, No see!

 

 

I will spear you the numerous excuses on why I haven’t been posting lately, and just tell you that THINGS ARE HAPPENING! Don’t worry about the CatsAreDoom universe as we have not disappeared, nor do we plan on leaving anytime soon (if anytime at all)! We have some awesome stuff in-store for everyone in the very near future!

 
As some of you might know I, Nathan Hartwell, am teaching some film classes at a local co-op! My students are amazingly creative and have been making some awesome videos! Like you could imagine this takes up a lot of my time, and keeps me fairly creatively drained. So im at a cross road, do I put most of my creative power towards the classes or do I focus more on my CatsAreDoom work? …. Well, why can’t I have both? Let me explain.

 

Almost all the videos that come out of my classes are much like the shorts I make now, the process is (as of now) the kids come up with ideas, and I script them out. I even act in some of the skits they make. So my idea would be to post some of the best content from my class on CatsAreDoom! Most of my class watches the videos on the site anyways, and wouldn’t it be nice for everyone to see their content and be able to show it to their friends?  I’d think so.

 

 

I have, as of me writing this, 3-4 publishable videos! They are all pretty funny and I’d love to share them with you. I believe that they will bring much more content to CatsAreDoom, and though these kids have some learning to do (don’t we all?) I stand behind the fact that they make good content, and they’ll only get better!
Expect to see some of their latest entries soon!

 

 

Please comment below on what your think!
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Thanks!

Shooting a no-budget short!

Shooting a short is hard by its self, but then doing it with no budget adds a whole other level of stress. We all love making videos, and also we all love to make our videos look professional, so here are some of my tips on helping get your videos out as fast, and as easy as possible!

 

First thing you need to do with any production is write a script! I happen to use Celtx to write all my scripts, because its free, easy to use, and also runs on all platforms! Its an AMAZING program, and its a must have for any low/no-budget film maker. I also use a program called Evernote to quickly write down any film idea’s. Whats great about it, is that it syncs to my computer and smart phone! Which keeps every note organized and easy to access wherever I am!

 

Once I am finished with my script, I do what is called a “script breakdown”, where I have a copy of the script that I write any notes, camera shots, things to remember, etc. These are VERY handy on set, because you can easily see which shots you’ve finished or make sure you didn’t forget anything extra.

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Camera’s you DON’T need to focus?!

What would you say if I told you that you could take a picture, and worry about focusing it later? Well you would probably jump for joy, but be quite skeptical about it. You might even call me crazy! BUT i’m not! The company Lytro has gone and done the seemingly impossible, they have invented a camera that will take pictures that you can focus in post! They call it a “Light Field Camera”, which as you can assume means it captures the light in the area to then give you your pictures! (more…)