Thursday 18 September 2014

Collection of Short Videos: A Reel of Progress

Film making has become another one of my hobbies, one that has been practiced enough to make a list. Here are the films that I have been involved in, presented to you in chronological order, with some extra details and explanations.

Number One: Hidden Truth  

It all started at the end of 2012, for the George Baptist Church "Oscars".
The objective- get out, grab any camera, throw your clips together and call it a prodution.
The result- a formal evening, fine dining, and a significant reel of films produced by the Youth of GBC.

Titled "Hidden Truth", this adventure film goes against the belief of biological evolution, and in return it directs towards Creation.This is our all-out attempt, 24 minutes, with limited experience.





Number Two: Mountain Biking in Harkerville Forest

Not so serious- some mountainbiking in Harkerville, Knysna, with some friends. It was rad fun, especially putting our home built mounts for standard point-and-shoot cameras to the test. This was filmed a couple of days after Hidden Truth. Edited by my buddy, Joubert.



 Number Three: Poker Fight!

This was the product of a day's planning and filming with Mr. Hendrifyer(Check out his Youtube channel!) his brothers and my sister. Hendri inspired a significant amount of my filming efforts. This was made for the sake of collaborating, and with Hendri's camera and editing skills, it made quite a decent clip!




Number Four: Oyster Bay, NY

An interesting car show, fiddling with a new camera, and carting* a boat around with my Grandpa on an outing to Oyster Bay. Watch the ending- it will make your day!





Number Five: Longboard Jumping for Dummies

My first video back in Africa with my newly acquired Sony Action Camera! The scene happened to be the perfect setup for some longboarding antics. No, I'm not sure who's trampoline that was...



Number Six: Skilled Video Editors Can Make Random Footage Look Good... 

This was literally an afternoon of fooling around and learning how to do some skateboard slides. However, upon sharing my raw video clips with MrHendrifyer, he surprised me with a shweet little edit the following day.



The Great Number
SEVEN:
Dude, Who has Taken my Pump?!

I cannot believe it has nearly been a year since we made this film. It was the most planning intense and fun creation by far! All my camera mounts and rigs I made myself, and the boards were also a product of the construction process in my previous post. 
This mini movie is basically an action sports compilation with a plot... Yes, a plot, but you are welcome to your own interpretation of the story line, so you might want to watch it twice. A slightly shortened edition was entered into the Wavescape Shortcuts video competition, and the full edition was entered into the 2013 GBC Fountain of Youth Second Annual Oscars(Overall Winner).




Plus: The Top 10 Crashes, Bails, and Fails

The name says it all, but if you are alert you may notice that I experienced some counting problems while I was editing this one... Enjoy! 





All these little films happened over the period of one year. I'm pleasantly surprised how things have changed after taking the first video into comparison. On the other hand, it is rather disturbing that I have not produced any movies this year!

I have 50 Gigabytes of mountain-biking and 40 Gigabytes of kiteboarding footage to be processed so the production will continue!

Action! "Wait, wait, Iz it on?"

Saturday 2 August 2014

Longboards: Carbon 'n Kilobytes



Since the beginning of 2013 I wanted to build a longboard. I like building stuff, so buying one would just not work for me. A plank seems like an easy enough task? Finally, I proceeded to build many boards.


The initial problem though was trucks and wheels.


So, I waited...


New York, June 2013. While tidying my Grandpa's garage I came across an ancient skateboard with a deck as flaky as a Weetbix. However, with some WD40 (A.K.A Q20 back  home) the wheels were rolling and the trucks were turning. Nice.

How now? Add a headboard that is on it's way out, and Bob's your uncle. Actually, Bob's my Grandpa, and Bob has some mean tools that we'll throw into the mix with some noise as well. So, this is how the headboard was divided.







Grip tape? Sandpaper with some random glue worked, until paper met water. It was still ride-able and I was super happy to be able to re-learn skateboarding and cruise around Brooklyn.

Soon after I met a fellow South African at a park. And after some visits and cycling, his family decided to give me a longboard.  Henning Familie, ek is baie dankbaar daarvoor. Julle het my tyd in New York regtig verryk met al die aktiwiteite en uitstappies. Dankie!


Back home. I Had to leave my headboard deck in the US. but the real assets came along! Trucks, wheels, and an awesome looking board. Not too long after, I modeled the following design on some software. From this model I printed pages of contours that I would later transfer to planks. Simply said. 











In reality, this project involved hours of measuring, planing and sanding.

The result, pressed flat by a couple of tons, was sweet!   


                                
                        I need to confess, it did need some further reinforcement to reduce the flex.
  

Fix for a Friend

Mr Hendrifyer, broke his board.

       

    The 'broken board' photo cannot be displayed because it has not been taken...



Though it looked something like this halfway through the fix.




Add some carbon, effort and a clear-coat, then put 'em back together!






YEEAAH!

Not too long after...



This design was something fresh, with a concave at the front, and a convex in the rear - to give it a bit more of a surfboard feel.



The building procedure was a different level for me. Instead of gouging out my shape from a slab of wood, I CNC'd the panels, that I pressed into shape over a mould with around 7 tonnes. That mold was also CNC'd.


I chose this method of construction simply because the board might be produced more accurately, and the process would save me time. In turn, learning how to tell the machine how to cut the right shapes from my 3D models, took me nearly twice as long as shaping the board by hand! Lessons learned, so the next design might save me time..


All that is required now, is some graphics! But it is shred ready, so I'll wait with that...