Bend Over, and I Will

Watch and listen as a crazed madman goes about his trite and meaningless existence!

Just thought I'd share this - my current Facebook status: "The more I live, the more I'm convinced all I really need in life is a steady supply of fresh corpses."

As I like to say when something is funny in a very dry sense - Lulz.

facebook.com/camdogie

Took me a long time to write this script - not that I think it's ground breaking or anything because I actually don't, but after my last video, I wanted to take a break from that plot and do another conversations with self video. So basically, I would get a script ready, love it, read over it again the next day, and completely hate it and decide to start over. That happened probably seventeen point eight five million times. This pile of shit is the result.

Is anyone interested in me making a life/life update video? I've been thinking about it.

Looooong production notes if anyone wants to read them.

\\Production Notes//

Some gear has been replaced, some gear has been added.
My camera is the Canon HF S200 (before I used the HF 200) and my mic is the Rode NT3 (before [in one video] I used the NTG-2). Additionally, I used the JuicedLink CX211 mainly for its purported low noise preamp (which I now swear by) and its "clean gain". If you have any questions about what I'm talking about, feel free to ask or read some more. Using the same editing software - Edius 6.

For each "character", I had two lights. The main light providing most of the illumination on my face was an umbrella with a reflective liner that reflected the light back through a white diffuser attached directly to the umbrella to achieve a softbox effect - not sure if it's an "effect" or if it actually is just as good as an actual softbox (because I think it's the same concept). A secondary light which was actually a desk lamp with no sort of diffusion (so pretty much just a straight, unadulterated 60 watt bulb) was placed sort of diagonally behind me to illuminate the "dark side" of my face. I've seen this look used in TV and film and wanted to experiment - I'm fairly satisfied with the results. Rather than having the main light positioned more directly in front of me - I had it positioned off to one side more or less, and then had the secondary light sort of creating the outline for where the boundary of my face/head/neck was.

If you're wondering why that light behind the character in the orange shirt isn't overpowering, it's because I used a 40 watt bulb - not the 100 watt that is usually in it or even a 60 watt. I had also noticed how lamps in TV and film were never too bright as I figured they should have been. I then further noticed how in scenes where we are to believe a lamp on screen is providing the lighting, there is pretty much always an off frame light actually lighting up the subject, and the in frame light is still lit, but it couldn't possibly be giving off that much light. That's not what I was trying to do in this video, I just thought if there was going to be a lamp in the background, it would look weird if it wasn't turned on. Also, I manually set the exposure - what I did was sit in front of the camera where I would sit for filming with the background lamp turned OFF and then set manual exposure so that when I turned the lamp on, the camera wouldn't darken the frame - and then I left it on manual throughout so that as I moved my head, the varying degrees of lamp light getting to the camera would not cause the camera to adjust the exposure. Hope that makes sense.

For my last video and the one before that, I used noise reduction in Adobe Audition 3.0 - I don't know if anyone could tell on the last two videos - I tried to prevent the audio from sounding "noise reduced" and nasally I guess is the right word. For this video, I decided I didn't need to use any third party software to reduce noise/hiss. Thanks to the CX211, I was able to get a very hiss reduced signal (unless you turn the volume way up), although I may have still had the mic level on the camera too high (I had it at 18/100, which is really low, but I had the gain on the CX211 to the max - maybe I'll try 15/100 next go around).

Before the CX211, I used the Hosa MIT-156, which is a line matching transformer that takes a balanced XLR signal from an XLR mic (like the NTG-2 or NT3) and successfully converts it to an unbalanced 3.5mm minijack output - which is what most consumer cameras like mine can take. It is a passive device, so there is not battery needed, but it also doesn't have a low noise preamp to produce a "clean" gain or a gain control, which means you are more likely to end up relying on the cameras internal preamps, which will give you more hiss generally.

Sold the old camera and mic very quickly on Amazon for $350 and $200, respectively.

I hope somebody reads this bullshit.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• conversation
• with
• self
• schizophrenia
• shitty
• acting
• dead
• hookers
• hf
• s200
• rode
• nt3
• juicedlink
• cx211

[PHvlogger]

"Well, maybe I don't live in a world of facts . . . and reason"

You should join the GOP.

#Burn

No, but great video.

[camdogie]

@PHvlogger I meant to reply to your comment here, but I was on my phone and shit was fucking up so I think my reply actually got sent to you in a message.

[BadMindfilms]

HAHAHA HELL YES!!! That was fucking awesome!!! Fuck you! FUCK!!.........YOU!! HAHAHAHA Fucking hilarious!! Great work Cam, this was really good!!

[camdogie]

@BadMindfilms Thanks for the compliment - glad you liked it!

[fecklessman]

heya, cam. you lighting is impeccable, as always. the audio is good... one may actually complain that it's... too good. it picks up EVERYTHING! may want to scale it back ever-so-slightly. it did add an uncomfortable vibe, though, so the effect was there.

if i make one criticism: the man in the orange shirt should be looking to his left, not slightly off to the right. even if he is indeed looking at where the other man is standing, looking across the frame is less visually distracting.

[camdogie]

@fecklessman good points. I also may have had the mic too close - i'd say I had it less than or right around a foot from my mouth - literally just out of frame. I wanted to make sure my voice was captured "fully".

anyway, thanks for commenting - per'shate it.

[camdogie]

@fecklessman i just sent you a pm regarding softboxes - i just reread and realized you said you've been considering making your own, but i wrote...well actually it's late and i'm not sure what I TYPED not wrote, but anyway, I think I typed whatever I typed having not recalled "i've been meaning to play around with making my own softboxes..." but hopefully whatever I typed will be of some use to you.

[fecklessman]

also, i read the whole description. glad you were able to sell the microphone, and i'm appreciative that you offered to sell it to me first. ;-D i'm buying a new computer/camera as early as tomorrow, so i may be in the market for an audio solution soon. your rig seems to be pretty impressive so i may consider it.

i've been meaning to play around with making my own softboxes. could you point me to a tutorial or whatever you used to make yours? i'd be very interested.

[camdogie]

@Edwardodude well I hope it helps - I wrote the notes just in case anyone was curious about how things were done in the video. anyway, thanks.

[camdogie]

@bmacfn16 yea - i guess "host" is a good word, not too complicated. thanks for the feedback. one thing I did differently filming this video was that when I was filming one part, during the portions where each character was not speaking, I went through the lines the other character would have been saying - so basically I left a lot of space of me making faces, etc. that I could splice in wherever needed...if that makes any sense.