It must be some strange new language…
Posted by Josh on November 28th, 2005 @ 07:00 PM | Comments (0)

This was posted over at artfulwriter.com (a wonderful blog on screenwriting). Just because you’re making independent films, doesn’t mean you can’t use the right lingo. Read it here.

Episode 1-05: Top 10 Christmas Movies
Posted by Josh on November 28th, 2005 @ 08:21 AM | Comments (0)

In this abbreviated holiday episode, we list our top 10 Christmas movies. Also in this episode, a tip from Lanny.

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 Podcast Video [7:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Let the Christmas Season Begin
Posted by Josh on November 27th, 2005 @ 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

In this week’s abbreviated episode, we go over our top 10 Christmas movies. We’d love to know what your top 10 are. Send your list to us at us@dawsbrothers.com. Next week we’ll be back with a full episode.

Episode 1-04: Actors
Posted by Josh on November 21st, 2005 @ 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

Finding the right actor can be the difference between cinematic brilliance and complete and utter garbage. In this episode, we show one of our old films which, with the proper actor, could have been a much better film. We also meet with Lanny Donoho, our executive producer, to get some casting advice for our new short.

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 Podcast Video [16:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Special FX
Posted by Jeremiah on November 15th, 2005 @ 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

This week on Adventures in Filmmaking, we showed a lot of our past special effects tests. As I was cataloging hours upon hours of footage for this podcast as well as future episodes, I was amazed at how much footage we actually have. We must have spent a very long time doing this stuff.

In 1994, I was given an 8mm Hitachi video camera. I first started out doing stop motion animation with my Star Wars figures. I was and still am a huge collector of action figures and was always amazed at the science fiction specials showing how Ray Harryhausen did his stuff. I also was fascinated by how the guys at ILM animated the AT-AT and the Taun taun. (Empire is my favorite Star Wars film. “Luke, I am your father.” Does it get much better than that?) So that is what sparked us to try and recreate those things. One short I did not show was a complete recreation of the cantina scene from A New Hope. Maybe we’ll throw that online in the coming weeks.

Then we moved on to forced perspective stuff. It really wasn’t practical to be used in one of our films but it was fun to play with. The thought of actually having a full size X-wing was very cool. One of my sister’s friends saw this week’s podcast and asked why the scene with the X-wing was so special. Jenny (my sister) had to inform her that the X-wing was a toy… we don’t actually have one that big. Fun.

And finally, the lightsabers. So much fun… to watch. Not fun to rotoscope. Thanks to theforce.net. They have a number of tutorials on there. That’s how I learned to do it way back then and that is how I still do it, though now I know a somewhat easier way using Adobe After Effects. There is nothing like seeing yourself holding a lightsaber and swinging it around. It’s almost worth the hours upon hours in front of the computer.

We’ve been getting some awesome feedback on the podcasts. Remember, you can email us at US@dawsbrothers.com. Ask questions, make comments, or just say hello and that you are watching.

Jeremiah

Episode 1-03: Special FX
Posted by Josh on November 14th, 2005 @ 08:22 AM | Comments (0)

In this episode we show off a number of our early special effects tests including stop motion, forced perspective, and lightsabers. We also pay a visit to a local film producer and pitch our latest short script.

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 Podcast Video [12:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Episode 1-02: The Early Years
Posted by Josh on November 7th, 2005 @ 12:31 PM | Comments (1)

In this episode we take a look at some of our early work just recently rediscovered from deep within the Daws Brothers archives.

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 Podcast Video [16:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download