DIY #2: Camera Shoulder Rest - Part 2

Several people have requested that I give a better explanation of how to construct our Camera Shoulder Rest. It has been several years since I built the device, but I will try to explain the best I can out of memory.

The frame was constructed of flattened steal. I bough a piece with pre-drilled holes. I cut the steal into two pieces, one being the camera arm and the other for the shoulder support. The shoulder support was then bent in a curved shape. Be sure to allow plenty of extra space for the padding to be added later.

The camera arm was then attached to the shoulder support with a nut and bolt. To give added support to the arm, I was able to find a curved bracket and bolted it between the camera arm and shoulder rest. The device is now ready to paint.

The handle was made from a small rubber-handled plastic flashlight. The light head was cut off using a hacksaw. Then with a long bolt and washers it can be fixed to the end of the camera arm.

I purchased some padding from a cloth shop and fashioned it around the shoulder support. Then secured it with needle and thread. Now with some cloth I sewed a sleeve that would fit around the shoulder support. This process proved to be very difficult. In hindsight it may have been easier to fix the padding and sleeve before bending and attaching the shoulder support the camera arm.

To make the design hands free I had to devise a belt system. I used nylon strapping that can be found in most hardware stores or cloth shops. On each end of the shoulder rest I made a loop, similar to a belt loop. After this another strap can be threaded through the loops to act as a belt around the wearers chest. A plastic buckle was used to fastened the belt around the chest. It also allows for easy adjustment. This will hold the camera rest down on the shoulder. To keep it from sliding off and making it a totally hands free design another strap was used. It was attached near the top of the curve of the shoulder support and running diagonally across the back, then attached to the belt strap.

The last step is to fix a method of attaching the camera to the camera arm. I used an extra plate from quick release tripod mount, then with a bolt and wing nut it can be moved and removed easily. I provided a diagram below to hopefully illustrate my design and meanings better.

Mobile version of World Wide Angle Blog

I came accross a Wordpress plugin to offer a mobile interface for iPhone/iPodTouch visitors called WPTouch. If you visit this blog using such a device, here is what you will see:

 

You can always deactivate the Mobile theme option in the page footer to see and browse the full browser version.

Let’s go to the movies

I’ve talked before about my discovering of Cinema and the way I tried to see as many movies as I could and slowly shaped my taste and my understanding of Cinema History. Several people lent me VHS tapes of movies they liked, I also subscribed to a satellite tv offer for a couple of years and watched probably 40% of the TCM France catalog of that period. I would also got to the theaters a lot. For several years, I would go to the theaters between once and three times a week.

Eventually, I had caught up with most of the movies I could afford to buy and went through all of the tapes in my friends collections. I was also a bit more demanding with the movies that came out and would not go to the movies to see yet another action film especially if it was going to be dubbed in French. Still, as soon as a movie by a director on my watch list would come out, I would rush to the theater.

Last year, we bought a projector and a screen that hangs proudly in our living room. We are frequent goers to the local public library where we can rent movies - for free. We subscribe to several VOD services and are rarely out of an old movie to watch (Anthony Mann, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder rank amongs our favorite). We watch between six and eight movies a week! Because I work late and going around in Paris is time consumming, we do not go to the theaters more than twice a month. I would love to go more as I strongly believe cinema should be enjoyed on the big screen, in a dedicated room, with an audience. Yet, the last few times we went, it has been a total disapointment.

About three weeks ago, we went to the theater in Nice. We went to the only theater in town that plays foreign films in their original language. The room was minuscule -and full. The screen was only barely bigger than the one we have at home (and believe me, our living room is not that big). Even worse, the copy was not all so clean. And the whole thing cost some 9.50 euros a person. But that was not so bad…

Last night, we went to the Grand Rex, right in the heart of Paris. The Grand Rex is a big concert Hall where I was lucky enough to see Joan Baez. The concert hall is beautiful with a wonderful accoustic. Sometimes, the concert hall is transformed into a theater. They pull down the biggest screen I’ve ever seen and this is where I saw the Departed with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo Di Caprio personally introducing the film. A ticket at the Grand Rex costs 10 euros even and when you see the size of that screen, you know it’s worth it. Yet, last night, for the Telerama Festival, the screening took place in a small room below the concert hall. The seats were old and unconfortable but that doesnt bother me (I’ve sat in screenings in Cannes on the floor because that’s all they had left). The walls were purple. Purple! Is this a theater? The screening was about 20 minutes late and as we waited they played the most horrible music I’ve heard lately. The worse thing was that they never turned off the emergency exits signs which were places way too close to the screen and would bright up the already not dark enough walls. For the first five minutes of the movie, that bright little green light was all I could see.

So, why do we go to the movies? I think theater managers should remember that a DVD costs about 15 euros (and sometimes we buy packs like 7 films for 42 euros), a low end projector costs 400 and a small screen is worth 110. If  am going to go to a movie, I expect a theatrical experience. I want film posters in the hall of the theater, I want complete darkness in the room, film soundtracks playing while we wait, a crystal clear copy, perfect sound and an audience that switches off their cell phones. If you can’t deliver, I will watch movies at home.

Little tips for Parisians

The greatest cinema in Paris is the French Cinemathque at rue de Bercy. The big room has a wonderful huge screen and of course they have an amazing program. It’s also extremly cheap. If you want to see a new release and that it plays at  Max Linder Panorama, that’s the place to go see it. It’s 10 euros a seat there too but when the film starts, you will know why. Of course, an event in the big room of the Grand Rex is a wonderful experience. Other than that, our theater is the MK2 Bibliotheque. The two big rooms (A and B) are fantastic. If I’m not going to the Max Linder, I will be going to a MK2. I refuse to enter a UGC theater since 2005. Another tip, if you want to reserve the whole cinema room and invite all your friends over, it’s possible at the Entrepot in Paris 14 district. And of course, Paris real treasure are the art and essais theaters like Grand Action, Action Ecole, Action Christine. If you have time to go see some classics over and over and wish to debate all night with hard core cinephiles, Paris is just the greatest place to be.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Last night, we went to the “catch-up on the good movies you missed” screening of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Every year, the Telerama Festival schedules the screening of the top 10 movies of the previous year in theaters throughout France. Tickets for these screenings cost 3 euros. It’s a great opportunity to catch up on a movie you might have missed when it first came out.

I have seen Match Point and loved it. I have seen Scoop and thought of it was the comedy remake of Match Point. I thought remaking one own’s film on a different mode was a wonderful idea but I felt Scoop never came close to Match Point as a movie. Anyway, I agreed with most critics I read that the change of location (from NYC to London) had been extremly beneficial to Woody Allen. He seems to have found there new characters that he could play with, new sets to inspire his shots and a totally new, younger cast to renew his work.

As the titles implies, his latest (to date) takes Vicky and Cristina to Barcelona and it looks like Spain was another great new playground for Woody.  He found two beautiful locations for the house of Vicky’s relatives and the house of artist Juan Antonio. Another sequence takes us to Oviedo with another series of beautiful shots. Since the movie took place in Spain, the cast now includes spanish speaking actors : Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. It is very hard not to think of Almodovar who also used Bardem and Cruz and shares with Allen his taste for Spanish Guitar. I didn’t expect Woody Allen to succeed so well at portraying Spanish characters like he did with British characters but after seeing the movie I think it worked out even better.  It seems like filming in Spain allowed him to be more dramatic while remaining believable (what’s possible around the mediteranean see is not under the English gray sky). The constant switch of languages was source of comedy but also of more subtelty in the screenplay. ANd then of course, you get the colors of Spain…  Congratulations, Mr Allen. The movie was released on October 8, 2008 and on August 15, 2008 in America. I wonder how that one was left out of the nominees of this year Academy Awards?

A Wordpress Index Page Template

After a few weeks of writing content for our blog, quite a bit of information has accumulated. Sometimes, we find it necessary to look at our pasts posts in order to get a piece of information. Browsing back in time has become more and more tedious as we have more content archived. On the very same day, Derrick and I both had the idea that we needed to create an Index page allowing instant access to any posts.

I worked on a template page for Wordpress over the weekend in order to display such an index. Our main goal was to simply display a list of posts by date, but as I started to work on this I realized it could be a nice feature to also offer a list grouped by categories and tags. Since the list of posts was bound to grow, I decided to make each section title collapsable while still offering a view all link to display every posts title if so desired.

Before going ahead with the code, I did a quick Google search to see if anyone had worked on this before. What I found was an impressive graphical view of a blog past developped by Vladimir Prevolac based on the default archive page of Tumblr called Snazzy Archives. I really liked Vladimir’s work and decided to integrate that option as well  in my Index page.

As I started working on this, I decided that I would make my work more valuable by making it generic enough to be used by other people. To do so, I knew that I had to make sure of the following:

1. Use Wordpress core functions
2. Not rely on the pre existence of the Snazzy Archives plugin as not everyone would want to use i
3. Test my index page with at least three different Wordpress installations

It was the first time I tried to extend Wordpress, and after a quick Google search I found this function reference page on the Wordpress Codex. The documentation, though still being worked on by the community, is easy to read and understand and makes it quite enjoyable to work with the Wordpress code. In the end, the only function I had to write was the one returning me the list of months during which at least one blog post had been written. Still, I found the code I needed within Wordpress, I just had to adapt it to what I was doing.

Like I said, I really liked Snazzy and wanted to add it to our blog but my Index Template Page couldn’t rely on it to be installed as it might be temporarely disabled or some other user might not want to show it. I simply tested the existance of the plugin before placing the link to the Snazzy Archives in the page.

In order to test, I tried my template on three installations of Wordpress. Two running Wordpress 2.6 and one running 2.7. I also ran some tests enabling or not the permalinks options as it changes the url handling quite a bit. Regarding this question of URL, I decided not to use Ajax as Wordpress front-end doesn’t use it, I decied to make my Index page match the rest of the blog engine on that aspect as well.

All in all, after a few hours of coding and experimenting with Wordpress, I had completed my own template page. So far it has worked fine for us, but feel free to report any bug or share your comments with us on this page.

Live demo:

You can see the result in action by visiting our archive page. You can also see it running on my other blog World Gone Web.

Download:

You can download the template here.

Installation process:

1. Download the template
2. Upload the template archives.php to your theme directory (i.e. <wordpress>/wp-content/themes/<theme_name>
3. Make sure your script file can be read
4. Adapt the page structure of the template to match your blog theme structure (i.e. copy the beginning and th end of your blog theme index.php page like the content div and sidebar declaration)
5. Enter your wordpress administration and write a new page
6. Enter the title you wish to see in your menu (be carefull, “index” might generate problems, choose another name)
7. Do not enter any content
8. Find the page template menu and select “Index Page”
9. Publish this new page
10. You’re  done, go to your blog and test it

If you wish to use Snazzy Archives as well, you also need to:

1. Download SnazzyArchives and upload it to your plugin directory
2. Go to your administration page and enable the plugin
3. Refresh your blog archive page, the link to snazzy archives should appear

We hope you like it!

Spotlight: Gary Cooper

This month TCM France (Turner Classic Movies) spotlights famed actor Frank James (Gary) Cooper. Each day will air a film from Cooper’s long and fruitful career. In nearly 40 years he played over 100 roles in some of Hollywood’s most memorable films. Though known for his dashing appearance, quite demeanor and restrained emotion, he was capable of powerful portrayals and a very unique sense of humor. He was born in 1901 in Helena, Montana, where he had a tough time making a living as a young man. After several failed attempts he would move to LA with his family in 1924, where he thought it was better to starve and be warm than to starve and freeze also. Eventually he would try his hand in the film industry and appeared as an extra in several films. Cooper, or Coop as his acquaintances called him, eventually broke through a major Hollywood star with The Virginian by Victor Fleming in 1929. Which coincidentally was his first talkie. Throughout the remainder of his career he would work with many of the great directors, such as: Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Henry Hathaway, Cecil B. DeMille, William Wyler, Robert Aldrich, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Delmer Daves, Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann, Michael Curtiz, William Wellman, and John Ford to name a few. He would portray such real life characters as Lou Gehrig, Marco Polo, Wild Bill Hickok. Famed World War I hero Alvin York would only allow a film of his life’s story provided that he would be portrayed by Cooper in Howard Hawk’s Sergeant York. I look forward to seeing some Cooper films absent from our collection. As a general rule, when we get one of his films it is always pushed to the front of list on the shelf of movies to watch. Thanks TCM.

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