Helios - Mission 2: Survival

Well I had some extra footage that didn't make it or fit in with the "Mission: Patrol" video.  I went through the video apps I have, and decided to try Silent Film Director and come up with the follow:

Putting this one together was almost as fun as running the crawler.  Now I'm going to have to make sure to get extra shots during my crawls to come up with more Silent Film videos.  Maybe even use the Silent Film format as my "extras".

So it looks like I need to get moving on the Venom Creeper.

My first 2-for.

At uploading crawling videos that is.  While monitoring the smoking grill, I decided to catch up on some video processing.

First up is the full length short film for Helios - Mission: Patrol:

This is the first time of using FiLMiC Pro.  I found that I need to lock the focus.  Having auto focus doesn't turn out too well.  I also need to verify that recording is on or off.  When hitting the first big rock, there was actually supposed to be more footage just before.  Unfortunately I ended up NOT recording the driving, and recorded the repositioning of the camera.  And I totally goofed up on paying attention to the shots.  I ended up with full size vehicles again.  Oh well.  Lessons learned for the next adventure.  This was done in iMovie, so sorry about the music.  iMovie doesn't have much of a selection for music, and I am not brave enough to use my music from iTunes.

I also ran into an issue trying to upload from the iPhone.  for some reason it kept failing.  iMovie never gave a clear reason why, but looking at the length I'm guess the phone couldn't handle the upload.  And yes it was connected to Wi-Fi.

Up next is a trailer for the Utah night crawling:

This time I locked the auto focus.  but with the setting Sun, I had a challenge with the lighting.  I didn't use the iPhone's flash at all as I didn't want to much extra light or light from a weird angle.  And I wanted the truck lights to show up good.  Also, the full size vehicles were on my watch list.  There shouldn't be any this time, but I'll know once I start diving into the full film.  This was a blast filming.  As I do more shooting and crawling, hopefully the videos will get better.

Off to crawl more!

Utah Crawling 2012

This past weekend we went up to Utah, around the St George area.  We just spent a relaxing weekend.  I got in some late day crawling.  Pretty much just as the Sun was going down.  I ran the SCX10 Trail Honcho with all lights on, and got some video too.  The start had good lighting, but later as it got dark not so much.  This would be a down side to the iPhone being used as a video camera: not much low light recording without using the flash.  The flash/light was not used, as I wanted to try to make use of the surrounding light and get the truck lights to show up good.  The movie trailer is in the works currently.  I also did some crawling not captured on video.  Shooting video while solo crawling can be a little challenging.  Setting up the camera in the right spot at the right angle to get the shot I want can reduce the time of just crawling all over.

While not crawling, I did take some time to work on the Helios crawl movie.  I have found that having a bigger screen for iMovie editing would help greatly (maybe I can help sway Santa with a six-pack).  It's almost ready for upload.

The Creeper is in the "garage".  Finally started the remote diff lock mods.  For those not familiar, the Venom Creeper has lockable diffs and Venom (err...now known as Atomik RC for their RC vehicles) has an add-on kit to setup the diffs with remote lock/unlock abilities using a 3+ channel transmitter.  The mod that I am working on is relocating the servers from the stock mounting position on the chassis to a position on the axles.  Hopefully I can get this completed soon and try it out.  I am also going to re-setup the shocks back to stock setup.  Ooh! I hates messin' with shocks!  Without the anti-roll springs the body tends to tilt, a lot.  So much that a pinball machine would just fall apart from looking at it.  The last run with it at the in-laws, father-in-law asked why it was tilted.  Well, this is the technical reason why.

That's all for now.

Helios Patrol - the trailer

Here is a quick trailer of my last yard run.

More Crawling

Been a little lazy on blogging about crawling.  The past few weekend visits to the in-laws, I have taken over both the Creeper and the SCX10 to do some crawling in the back yard.  The nephews love watching them go, but I think these are a little slow for their tastes.  They prefer the fast RC's and trying to out run them.  But they did still have fun.  They would be tunnels for the trucks to drive under them.  Have me chase them with the trucks.  With these trucks running 55T brushed motors, the boys have more than enough speed to run away.

Of the trucks I do have, I seem to have more fun with the SCX10.  It was able to get over a large rock while the Creeper could not.  The Creeper is a competition crawler, and when setup correctly it will out crawler a scaler any day.  So I must have the setup wrong with the Creeper.  Oh well, someday I will get it right.

I have put on a new body for the SCX10.  This is a discontinued Pro-Line Racing Helios body which very closely resembles the Halo Warthog.  To bad this is discontinued as it makes a great body for the SCX10.

As such, I am going to make some mods that I can to this body.  Mainly I will be trying to add some lights, and maybe a few scale details such as tools.  I may even try to work on some sort of interior too.

I just did some crawling with it this morning.  It ran good with the new(ish) body.  And this run I did get some video and a few pictures.  I will actually try to do a trailer first, then the full movie short.

For the video capture, I used a new app FiLMiC Pro. Using the app was pretty easy.  It has separate reticules for focus and white balance.  The white balance reticule came in handy with the outdoor shooting.  If there was back light, I could move the white balance around until I got the lighting I liked.  We'll see how all the video looks when I get working on the new short.  So far, though, I am impressed with this app.  If you like shooting video with your iPhone, I would recommend this app over the default built in video camera app just for the white balance adjust-ability.

McRC - the trailer

Well I finally made a trailer for my Micro Rock Crawler video.  Yes I know the trailer is supposed to come out before the actual film.  I wasn't planning on really doing trailers, but iMovie for iOS updated a little while ago to include a trailer maker (not sure what they actually call it).  So with the update, I had to try it out.  There are actually templates to use.  You choose the style or theme, change the text, and insert the clips to use.  It's actually pretty easy.  Now, for the trailer.

Micro Crawler Crawl...

Well I finally got my first Losi Micro Rock Crawler video done and uploaded.  This was done mostly on the iPhone again.  I say mostly as I had to transfer the video file to the computer to actually upload it to YouTube.  But all shots and editing were done on iPhone.  This time I tried a different video editing app: Splice.  Go to my other blog where I will give my opinions on using this one.

I have been having fun with this little monster.  Trying to come up with new obstacles and track layouts is half the fun.  The other half, or coarse, actually driving and navigating them.  The only sad thing is that Losi has discontinued this particular model of their Micro Rock Crawler.  I would love to get another one to have fun with my nephews creating new tracks and then driving them.  The crawler did have several tumbles.  I will work on and upload an "outtakes" video, and get a count of them.

Well, on to the show...

I know, another long R/C video.  I'll have to work on trying to get more "action" in if I'm going to keep making them like this.