Some of my film school comrades, The Dandy Dwarves, produced this spot directed by Mike Goubeaux for the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” commercial competition. They made it to the top 5 and the voting begins. Tomorrow, during the Super Bowl the winning spot will be revealed at the game for millions to admire. They did a stand up job and I think they have a solid chance at winning, what do you think? Best of luck fellows.

Director:Lucas Krost
Director of Photography: Clayton Haskell
Producer: Stephen Harris
Editor: Matt West
Writer: Clay McLeod Chapman

Lucas Krost of “The Branching” down in Richmond VA decided to submit a short for film for the Project Direct Sundance competition in association with YouTube. The catch was we only had 72 hours to crank this film out with no budget so it was quite a run and gun affair, true guerrilla film making. I only had a couple tungsten 500s and 2x 1200 watt HMIs for lighting but was fortunate to have support from the local Richmond crew over at Studio 108. It was one hell of a showdown. I used a RED in a lightweight configuration with Zeiss ZFs. The project was cut in 48 hours and delivered. Last I heard we would were almost finalist but were unfortunately disqualified for profanity. I guess someone overlooked the guidelines? It was still worth it in the end and most everyone was pleased considering our time limitations.

On a quest for a smaller hand held rig that was capable of producing the kind of phenomenal images that I have been accustom to seeing from RED, I stumbled on these guys. A couple of swedish filmmakers founded a company called ikonoskop and recently announced their latest creation at IBC. The A-cam dii carries a 16mm sized 2/3 CCD sensor (from Kodak) that is can crank out 1920 x 1080 uncompressed RAW DNG files up to 60 frames per second with an interchangeable mount all packed into this uniquely designed hand held unit…this could be exactly what I am looking for.

The Si-2k from silicon imaging looks appealing as well but after following Anthony Dod Mantle and Danny Boyle’s workflow on Slumdog Millionaire it seams to be too complex for my resources available. They used the tools they had available at the time to the best of there ability and it certainly paid off but I need a rig that operates out of the box with a workflow I can manage without being tethered to a laptop packed in 45 pounds of dry ice a day! Lots more to follow.

• http://www.ikonoskop.com/dii/
• (Ikonoskop website and info)
  
• http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/features/index.cfm?articleid=104645
• (video Interview with Ikonoskop a-cam debut at IBC)
  
• http://freshdv.dreamhosters.com/audio/interview/freshdv_ikonoskop_acamdii_interview.mp3
• (podcast spot light with Daniel Jonsäter, co founder of Ikonoskop)
• http://www.retrothing.com/2008/09/ikonoskop-a-cam.html
• (Retor Thing tech article)

Greetings Gotham Guerrilla and congratulations to president Barack Obama for ringing in the new year. My respect and gratitude goes out to all those who are responsible for this change. Although these are incredibly exciting times, I can not help but feel the clouds are only parting briefly just before the storm rolls in. What’s that great Harvey Dent quote from Batman? “The night is darkest before the dawn of the day”. Read more