Yes, we all know he is a bully. We also know that bullies steal candy but what you dont know is that this bully is runny for president!
VOTE BULLY KID!

To be continued?!
YES! NO! maybe….?

If so what should happen?!

Why is this man being interrogated? What is a Centra-pedtic!? What could this man being doing with mattresses? What should happen next!
Comment below!

Songs used:
I wanna do you – http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/389427
Fear me – http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/428157

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!
Or you may share your opinion on your social networking site of choice!
@catsaredoom | Facebook

Thanks!

Inspired by the movie “30 minutes or less”, Sam and I put this little video together!

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.

I also use a method that I learned from FilmRiot, which is the ”Show who’s talking wiggly line”! This is a great help if you don’t have time for story boards, and still want to know where the camera will roughly be looking!

The second important step in shooting your short is to have everything you need! This can include painters tape (to mark where an actor is standing), props, lighting, etc. You should always make sure you have everything you need on set, before your actually on the set!

My third step, which is optional, is a read through of your scene. Normally me and sam have only read through the script maybe once before the shoot.

So having a read through for us is a MUST. Its really simple too! All you have to do is read your lines (like you would when shooting) and learn the scene! Simple! This method seems to keep the stress down, and keeps me and sam happy, since we don’t really like memorizing lines before a shoot. Most sets expect you to know your lines before you arrive, and I would agree with them, but if your shooting your own videos, that your directing, etc, you can dowhatever you want! (thats the beauty of the internet)

The forth step for my shorts are to shoot the scene! This part is sometimes the hardest, and sometimes the easiest! It really just depends on what your doing. At this point we have read our lines, and are starting to light our actor! Which is VERY important! Make sure you have good lighting! ALWAYS. Now, they don’t have to be anything special, on our set we only use a little light we took out of a lamp, and a chinese ball lantern. We set the ball up as our filler, and the lamp light as light for the actor! We also turn all the lights on in the room that we are shooting in as to add as much light as we can! A lot of the time this works out great for what we are trying to pull off (which isn’t much). So after you get your lighting all squared away, all you have to do is shoot the scene! BAM! Easy.

The fifth step is the last, but certainly not least. Editing. This is the part that scares away a lot of people from film making. Sometimes its confusing, the programs are expensive, and you always hear horror stories of people staying up for 3 days straight editing something that was only 5 minutes long! Now, a lot of the time, this stuff is true, but not always! For my videos, I use iMovie 11, its $15 in the mac app store, and works great!

I edit on a Macbook that is 5 years old, and it still chugs along with Sudo-HD video. When you start out editing shouldn’t have to cost much, and can be doing on a older computer. You also don’t need to spend hours apon hours editing, you can, but you don’t have to. Something I learned early on when editing is that sound is VERY important and though I don’t have the best audio in my little camcorder, I have found some tricks to making things sound a bit better. Like when I have a cut, sometimes you will hear a change in the background noise (the white noise, in the room), and that is really distracting. So what I do is I grab a bit of white noise and place it in-between the clips! This smooths everything out, and tho there will always be white noise, at least your not hearing the weird cut sounds!

So there are the basics to how I make my videos! I hope it helped!

Oh and another thing I forgot to mention, if your having actors on set, you should do something for them once they have done their job! You might not be able to pay them, but a lunch, or some sort of treat at the end of production is always nice! (I buy sam slurpies at the end of our shoots, as an example!)

Anyone else love honey smacks?

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!

Sadly these camera’s aren’t out (they should be out “later this year”) and I doubt there will be any video cameras any time soon, but from what Lytro has claimed, this could be a real game changer for the whole photography world!

Imagine a world where you don’t need to focus your pictures! Its going to make a huge productivity increase across the board!

I can’t wait for one of these to come out in camcorder form, so I can start making videos that are always in focus! (Unlike that “sexy eyes”  part in my last video…) 

SOURCE engadget, AllThingsD, Lytro

P.S. Click the cat picture to play with the focus! (Cool huh?)