Backyard Studio Blog

New Video Section Of The Site

// December 26th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized

We added a new part to the site, all most of our videos. You can watch them here.

We are also starting to record our next film next week. The script isn’t done, but we are an amateur studio, we usually don’t have a script or we don’t follow it. Though we are going to try on this one.

We may post little teasers or start a video podcast, who knows. One thing is for sure, we are going to have fun with it.

48 Hour Film Challenge

// December 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

We are excited for the new year. At Backyard Studio we have two scripts in production and ideas being developed. We also are working on a amateur film festival with a twist.

We are calling it the 48 Hour Film Challenge. Here is a basic overview of what we are planning them to be:

There are teams consisting of 2 to 10 people. On Friday night at 5:30PM the teams gather. They have all their equipment, they register. Then at 6PM everyone is given an assignment for a short film, under 10 minutes. Each team then has 48 hours to plan, film, and edit their short. The deadline for the video is Sunday night at 6PM. If they are not in, they are disqualified. There is then a banquet like thing, where there is some food and the videos are watched. A panel of judges judge the videos and prizes are awarded to the best video.

We’re pretty excited about it, but we still have some things to figure out. Right now it’s going to be local, which is the Brainerd, MN area.

What we want this to be is a chance for people to get out and film. We hope they learn and network with other film makers.

If you are in the Brainerd, MN area and are interested in this, we have set up a Twitter account, @48film where news and updates will be shot out. Once we get all the details ironed out, we will be adding a page to our web site and post something here. We are really excited about this.

-Backyard Studio

PS. Merry Christmas

It’s up! It’s up!

// December 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

We weren’t sure if this video was going to get into the Nikon Festival. The first edit was rejected, then we made some changes and resubmitted it. Then we got another email saying it was rejected. Then we decided to forget about the Nikon Festival and make edits to it and make it a short. Then as we were changing the ending credits, we got an email saying our video was accepted. What? But the second edit of the video got accepted, even after it was rejected… Boy, were we excited. So you can watch that here – http://www.nikonfestival.com/blog/2009/12/11/a-dream-i-once-had/

Tomorrow we are going to film a behind the scenes thing about it and post it as our first thing to “Behind the Scenes”.

Speaking about Web site changes, we are talking with @mloberg to make a couple more changes to this web site. One being Behind the Scenes and one being our video page. So watch for that towards the end of December.

Nikon Festival

// December 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

We have had the chance to make two videos for the Nikon Festival. For more information you can go to the official web site at www.nikonfestival.com. Nikon is holding this festival to celebrate the D5000 ability to take 720p HD video. That’s the same camera that we use, and we recommend it.

The theme is a day through your lens, so we took the “normal” day of Matthew Loberg, the “president” of Backyard Studio. You can watch that here. All camera work, music, and editing was also done by Matt.

There is a second one that we are waiting to get approved. It’s a pretty epic 140 second movie. Matt Loberg came up with the general story, then Dane Walter helped develop a little more.

I won’t tell you what happens, your just going to have to wait, but this was probably the most interesting and fun video Backyard has done to date.

In the first scene, Matt beat up Dane. We filmed it right outside of a Church located in a small town. A street that usually isn’t very busy runs right next to it. As we were filming, a car turned on to that road. Then as Matt started to beat up Dane, the car stopped! So we stopped the scene right there and then ran inside the church. It was pretty funny.

The next scene, is a low light scene, and we didn’t have really anything that gave us the amount of light we needed. So in order to get what we wanted, we put a rag over a light bulb. We were getting the camera, when we heard this pop and whoosh. We ran into the room, and the light bulb had exploded and started the rag on fire. Luckily there was a fire extinguisher right there and we got it put out almost right away. Did you know that a burnt light bulb smells really bad? Along with that, it set off the fire alarm… That sucked. So after we got all cleaned up, we had to change our plan, and had to compromise a little bit.

We started filming this Friday night at 3:30. Saturday morning at 1:20AM we finally got done. The majority of the movie was filmed outside. We are located in Central MN, and it was snowing. It was cold. We had to constantly take 10 minute breaks so the camera and crew could warm up. One thing I learned about cameras, is that they do not like to operate in the cold.

We were filming in a church’s parking lot. It had just the right amount of light we wanted. After taking a break, we went out and no lights were one. So we had to relocate to the back of the church where there was one or two flood lights on. It did not provide enough light, so Matthew Loberg being the DIY guy he is, found a par can, a partial piece of white cardboard, and a ton of extension cords, and rigged up some lighting. It worked out perfect. And a ton of thanks to the crew. It was the biggest crew we have ever had. (It’s usually just Matt)

The movie turned out awesome, so awesome in fact, that we are going to take the very basic plot of it and turn it into a feature film.

So watch for it here. We hope to have a “lite” version of it done by January 20th so we can submit it to the EgoFest in Brainerd, MN.