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I'm a huge fan of social networking sites. I think I've joined most of them, but these four are the only ones I use "regularly." I might start using twitter once I can text but until then, whatever.

This film was made for a film contest or something. Download it for free and watch it. The actors' performances are incredible, especially Tori Lee as Camille.
We stumbled upon this because it was shot with a Panasonic AG-HVX 200, so keep that in mind too.

Here's an old Video we submitted to a Buffalo Wild Wings Contest. Honestly, I'm still really sore about not winning. I mean...I think this is golden.
Anyway, this is just a short video that's completely based on green screen magic (Chroma Keying). This used to be a big deal, but now anybody and his brother can do it with a simple to use freeware application. However, I used Final Cut Pro to make this video.

Here's a beautiful stop motion mixed media animation.

Budget, the car rental company is holding a video contest with a simple prompt: "How do you travel on a budget?" They're looking for funny and creative two minute videos. Here's what they say:

Make a video that's two minutes or less that demonstrates how you live the budget-savvy life style while on a vacation or road trip! How far can you go on a dollar? Show us the great ways you get the most value on a trip and have a fabulous experience. Your video must include some car travel and feature a Budget Rent A Car reference and logo prominently shown at some point in the video.

Wow, roots. Well, this is the first film project I ever did, I guess. I toyed around making lego videos and skate tapes as a kid, but that's it. This is the first planned-out project I ever attempted to create. I had storyboards and everything. This was for when Converse used to run ConverseGallery.com, to which I credit my want to become a filmmaker. The 24-second short films that were up there were so so good. This was one that I tried to make for it. The Audio was never finished, though. Pretty simple concept, and my experience with lego stop animation helped a lot. This was in the 9th grade I believe. Wait, maybe 10th...

The Panasonic AG-HVX-200 is a great, sort-of-entry-level professional camera. Running around $5,500, this is a full 1080p (that's the highest of high def btw) camcorder that records to P2 cards, a fairly new solid state form of memory for storing digital video. The cards are normally half the cost of the camera, but the HVX-200 comes with a free 16 GB one. This camera is beautiful and we want it.
I could technobabble all day about specs, but what it really boils down to is what the final product can look like. Take a look at this short film hosted on vimeo. Hit the link at the bottom to view it in full 720p resolution.


Gone in a Flash - HD from Chris Crutchfield on Vimeo.

WOW DEPTH OF FIELD. If you're not familiar with the concept of depth of field, here's what Wiki has to say about it...
"Depth of field (DOF) is the portion of an image that appears sharp. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on either side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions."
With regard to this film: what was in focus was beautifully crisp, and what wasn't in focus was incredibly blurry. That is an example of a short, or shallow, DOF and it looks incredible, almost painted, as the short film above did.

However, at a 5k price tag we're gonna have to keep on saving or take out a loan.

XLNTAds just announced a new assignment. If anyone's interested, this is to create a five-part web series about love. I guess it is Spring and all...that stuff is in the air.


I know that I myself have always wanted to shoot a web series. I don't know if this love story thing is really my dig, but hey, you never know. They'll be awarding the three best pilots with 5k. Good luck.

A term coined by friend Tom Nguyen to describe a genre of film that depicts the events of a single day in an extreme non-narrative fashion, and not necessarily in chronological order. We honestly have no idea how films such as this would be received by a stranger. Do you feel like you know us? Do you envy our life? Did you sit through the whole thing? Probably not, but anyway this video includes myself, Bryan Freitas, Jon Huffman, Tom Nguyen...Nicole Freeman is in there for a bit, and John Holdun shot and edited it. Enjoy!

Some new blogs on the scene that might interest you, Inspiring, relevant, and interesting. Go figure.

The 200 E. Oakland Boys
Documentary of footage and photographs of the young men living on 200 Oakland and their friends. They live life to the fullest in every sense of the word and hopefully the things you observe and experience will inspire.

The Neighbors
Blog for a local Columbus band worth checking out.

Taking the 7: Tales From the Bus
Photoblog featuring strangers on the bus and their stories.

Currently, Whaling Ship Studios does not own a camcorder. We've been in the market and saving up for a while. The first camera we were looking a was the Canon GL2, a pro-sumer that's been really great in the past. It's big and bulky, which is a good thing because it looks professional. But with a price tag of $2,000+, and seeing as it shoots in standard definition, we decided to go the route of the Canon HV20.

I could type all day about the features of the HV20 but I'll just direct your attention to a spec sheet. I pretty much like everything about the HV20. One of the only things I don't like about it is the fact that it's small and compact, which makes it look like a consumer camera (which it is), but this camera is absurdly powerful for its price tag and target consumer.

What pretty much sold us was this video. Take a look at this test footage shot with the HV20. The embedded video wont play in HD, so hit the link at the bottom to view in 720p.


HV20 - Rainy Day Cinematography in HD on Vimeo.

UPDATE: NEVERMIND! WE WANT TO BUY A PROFESSIONAL CAMERA AND WE DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE YET! ANY SUGGESTIONS?

As mentioned in that last post, I needed to find a cool local band and get their permission to use their music in my submission. Well, I did, and you can find them at ThisIsMySuitcase.com. I had seen them live at the High Five venue in Short North a couple months back and downloaded some of their songs off their myspace page at that time.

Anyway, I shot them an email the other day asking if I could use their music, and they said, "Sure, use whatever you like!" So that's that. Hopefully I'll have a rough draft of my submission up sometime this week.

The process of getting music for a project can kind of be a bear. Connections come in very handy. I'm hardly a musician myself so when I need to use good music in a film, the best place to go is local musicians. They have working "contact" links on their websites (no links to publicists or any other sellout bullshit) , and they seem to always say yes.

I'm currently taking something of a break from doing web contests. Making a bunch of highly restricted videos is fun and all, but it's nice to be able to do something completely relaxed and recreational...for the most part.


I've decided to enter a local film competition in my "local," which is Ohio State. Contestants are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want, except that music must be original or with permission. I need to find some music to use. The due date is May 1st so I'll have my submission posted here by then. Check it out!

Okay! This post is to inform all of you about to purchase Final Draft, a multiple-hundred-dollar screenwriting application, to stop. Do not spend money on that.

Secondly, this is for those of you who are currently typing up scripts in Microsoft Word, Notepad, OpenOffice, or any other word processor out there. Stop. Do not put yourself through that! You're doing so much formatting work that can be done for you by an application.


I cannot suggest strongly enough that you download Celtx right now! It's hands-down one of the best applications I've ever used. It has all the tools to write screenplay and AV Scripts (documentaries, music vids, etc.). It allows you to organize characters, props, storyboards, settings, locations, and anything else in the filming schedule one can imagine.

It takes care of all of the formatting too. When you start writing, it's an action. Press enter and it moves to a character name. Press enter and it moves to dialog. Cake, not to mention way more professional in appearance than a script typed up in Word.

Celtx also seamlessly allows for collaboration. When you're done writing for the day, click "Update" and your new draft will appear in your friend's dashboard window the next time he opens Celtx.

Did I mention that it's FREE, available in 20 different languages and is available for Mac, PC, and even Linux?

It's technically still in beta, ver. 0.997. My guess is that they'll start charging once they hit 1.0, so grab it now!

This is just a quick video I made for fun and for an exhibition of other videos like it—made with a cell phone. Enjoy!



The song, by Architecture in Helsinki, is titled "Spring 2008" and is from their first album, "Fingers Crossed," which came out in 2004. Needless to say I was excited to listen to and use the song now—in Spring 2008.

Good news! Our 100 Grand entry, shown here, has been given finalist status, so they're giving us $1,000 for it. Now, in a previous post I mentioned that the winnings ranged from five to 20 thousand dollars, but the reason we're only getting what we're getting is because Nestlé hasn't actually used our spot yet. Should Nestlé use our submission, we'll be given the other $4,000 they owe us. You can see what I suppose I'll call the press release here, but to better help you understand how this decision came about, here's a snippet of the email i received from Mark at XLNTAds:

This has been a crazy process for all of us, so I want to give you a little background on what the situation is. Nestle is still working on a media plan that could result in their using your video. If they do decide to use it, they will pay you an additional $4,000, which would bring your payment up to the agreed usage fee of $5,000. However, they haven’t committed to using any videos yet.

We realize their timeline is a lot longer than we had anticipated. Because we wanted to make sure the best videos are rewarded now, Nestle have happily agreed to give you the $1,000 in good faith. Recall that there were no guaranteed payments in this assignment, because the money depended on Nestle’s decision to use the videos for a campaign. We hope Nestle will decide to use one of the videos soon, but unfortunately it’s all on their schedule.

As I said previously, we've been working on XLNTAds.com. One of the contests we entered was a 30 second spot for Nestlé's 100 Grand®. In a later post I'll share the methods used in making this, but for now just sit back and feel like having a 100 Grand!




The original contest stated that three videos will be used for online marketing and receive $5,000, and one will be used for television and will receive $20,000! We could really use that, so root for us!

Here's a link to Lifehacker's Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks. There's some pretty good ones here that I'm going to have to try out today for sure.

Also, check out some of LifeHacker's other stuff. It's a pretty great technews Blog—that and Gizmodo are my two main sources.

There sure are a lot of opportunities out there to make films and get paid. In fact, thanks to the internet, many video contests take place completely online. I just wish there was a place where I could find out about all of them: Googling "video contest" doesn't usually amount to anything more than a bunch of contests that expired in 2005.

Luckily you know me, and I'm nice enough to link you here: onlinevideocontests.com. This is a great blog that organizes what has to be very close to all the currently running video contests, sorted by prize, deadline, or date added to the list. You're welcome!