3D seems to be making a huge comeback lately. Last year I saw the Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D and was amazed at how well the quality was and the 3D effects. Instead of using the typical red and blue glasses you use glasses with a tinted lens. Last Month Sarah and I saw My Bloody Valentine 3D and again it was just as good. The movie itself was better than I thought it would be and the 3D effects were a lot of fun. One part you have this old man looking for the killer on his front porch with a shotgun pointed right at you.

The other day we were at Target and because of the release of the new Friday the 13th movie Paramount re-released some of the original movies. One of these releases was the 3rd movie which was released in 3D in the theaters. This new DVD release also included the 3D version of the film and came with 2 sets of 3D glasses. Because of home 3D technology right now you still have to use the red and blue glasses. It does kind of mess around with the colors of the movie, but the 3D effects were still pretty good. One part which particularly stood out was when Jason shoots a harpoon at someone and the harpoon goes straight toward the camera.

It would be great to get the same quality at home as the theatre. I have done a little research on the subject and it looks like soon we’ll start seeing 3D compatible HD TVs. Some of these TVs were shown off at this years CES. The question about it though is will people want to invest in it? I think if the trend continues it will probably be a yes. A few years ago George Lucas also said he wanted to release Star Wars in 3D. I honestly hope he still plans to do this now that I have seen how the technology works.

Here is an article about the new HD TVs on CNET.com I hope the trend continues, so we see releases of some of these classic 3D movies. I remember one of the Jaws movies being in 3D and one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies also having some 3D scenes.

Over the past week I have been working on building a DIY green screen. This is going to be used for my senior project, but it can also be used for fun. Today I did my first test and I am really happy with how it turned out. The only problem I had was a burned out bulb on one of my lights, so that is why I have the black shadow in the middle of my face. I was impressed with how well Final Cut Pro keyed out the green. I didn’t even tweak it at all to get the results in the clip below. There isn’t any audio and I was just rambling on anyway, so you wouldn’t want to hear what I had to say.

Here is a picture of my setup in our small living space. Luckily the whole thing is made of pvc pipe and can be taken a part for storage.

Finally, I did not come up with the whole idea by myself. There is a great website called Indy Mogul that has all sorts of videos for DIY stuff like this. I used their tutorial and the whole thing came out to about $40. A Professional green screen costs a lot more than that. Here is their video showing how to build one for yourself.

Canon has announced the HV40 camcorder. By looking at the specs they seem very similar to the hv30. The main difference is native 24p which means you can capture now directly at 24 frames per second. WIth the HV20/30 you had to capture in hdv 60i with 30 frames per second and then remove the pulldown with a separate program that removed the extra frames inserted into the capture. Other than that a lot of the specs still look similar to my HV20. The HV30 added 30p mode that mine doesn’t have and then now the HV40 with the new native 24p.

I would like to upgrade at some point, but as of right now I still would rather invest some money into accessories instead. This semester for example I need to put together a portable green screen for my senior projects class. I was planning on working on that over the break, but haven’t taken the time. I hope to get started on it sometime in the next couple weeks though and will post some tests.

All the specs on the HV40 can be read on canon’s site It will be released in March this year.

We were just at Hollywood video and found this parked outside. You don’t see one of these every day. It even had a custom outtatime license plate.

2009 is the Year for Dracula: The Un-Dead-
ShockTillYouDrop.com.

Looks like an official sequel is on the way to the original Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Hopefully it will be done correctly. It also has backing from the Stoker family. Here are some excerpts from the article on shocktillyoudrop.com

“Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew and blood descendant, Dacre Stoker, and award-winning Dracula documentarian and historian Ian Holt have sold North American-English publishing rights of the Stoker-family-authorized sequel to Bram’s classic novel “Dracula” to an alliance of Dutton U.S. (Brian Tart), Harper U.K. (Jane Johnson) and Penguin-Canada (Laura Shin).

The novel will appear in October 2009.

“The Un-Dead” is the first Dracula story to enjoy the full support of the Stoker clan since the original 1931 movie starring Bela Lugosi. Lugosi’s appearance in Hamilton Deane’s and John Balderston’s stage production of the story on Broadway in New York, fifteen years after Bram Stoker’s death in 1927, sparked the original novel’s bestselling popularity. It has never been out of print since.”