Welcome to the ChappyShowcase BlogSpot

Please enjoy an eclectic diversity of content and subjects created by Matt Chapman. This blog page gives more in depth detail and cool anecdotes pertaining to each video, film, or perhaps something else completely. On top of that, you will find info about the online video making paradigm, production, post-production and more. ChappyShowcase has content channels all over the web. All links for each channel are located for your convenience at a click of the button. Be sure to check the blog regularly to be updated on what is happening with Growing Up Guide Pup, ChappyShowcase, and GurillaTV. Or, better yet, subscribe to one of the RSS feeds so every new post is automatically emailed to you. Enjoy...and remember, keep that camera rollin!

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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 60 - Toy Squirrel

This squirrel distraction thing is so much work. We have been training Ricki everyday with it. She has made huge progress in the past week, and we hope it makes a difference. We will be getting another evaluation from our community field representative soon. We don't know if Ricki will have made enough progress, but we won't have her fail for lack of trying. It's frustrating because Ricki has so many other things going good for her, and yet her distraction issues could end it all. She has had the best relieving habits of any dog we have ever had. She is incredibly patient and rarely gets uneasy or bored. She strives to please and really enjoys working. These things mentioned are equally hard to get a dog to perform well at. Eli could care less about the birds and squirrels when he was training. He ignored them like a champ, and yet he couldn't handle the simple things like actually doing what he was told. Anyways, I'm just venting off the top of my head. Stay tuned and we will see where this adventure takes us next.


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Mckenna Faith - Lost

This video marks the third of a series of videos that I shot with Mckenna Faith. She is a up and coming country artist, and really talented. I'm happy that our families have become friends, and working together was awesome. This particular song is one of my favorites, and I'm really excited to have it in the line up "guerilla unplugged" style of videos I did with Mckenna. Two other Mckenna videos are already done called "He Doesn't Even Know it Yet", and "Sugar and Spice".

If i told people that I pushed aside my regular gear and opted for low budget alternatives, they may say "you are crazy". But that is exactly what i did. Mckenna and her mom were very gracious with my experiments and they ended up working really good. A majority of this video was shot on the Flip Cam Ultra HD which only costs a few hundred dollars. Of course I used many of them, and also had a myriad of other equipment as well as some other professional cameras in the final cut, but never-the-less, the flip cam image is dominant. I also left my professional lighting equipment in their bags, and performed all the lighting for this video using work lights I got at Home Depot for $60. Last, this particular video has audio only from an iphone. I used an app called Recorder Pro as an experiment. See the results for yourself.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Recorder Pro iphone App

As most people know, I'm constantly looking for ways to save money as a filmmaker. Guerilla filmmaking is a evolving trend I like to explore, and the iphone just so happens to provide cheap solutions for the everyday video creator. Now I am not going to pledge the undoing of conventional audio acquisition by any means. But I am going to add this iphone app to my filmmaking bag of tricks.

It's called Recorder Pro, and it only cost .99 cents. The audio quality that i recorded was 44.1 kilohertz and 16 bit. It can acquire the audio in the .wav or .aiff file format too. The sound quality is fair when working with an iphone. I can't say that I have had the same results using a audio app for my wife's Samsung Moment. The audio recording tests revealed a big difference and i think this says something more about the phone than the app, but I can't be certain without more tests which I could come back to someday.

Next week I'm going to post another Mckenna Faith music video where all the audio was acquired with a iphone and the Recorder Pro app. Stay tuned.


Friday, April 22, 2011

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 59 - Pigeon Progress

Amie and Ricki have been working everyday on her bird distraction issues. Pigeons are the worse of Ricki's bird distractions so this is where most of the focus has been lately. Ricki has been making big improvements because we have taken a few steps back and started rewarding her for the small things. One of the most effective training tips we got is requiring Ricki to Watch Amie, and ignore the pigeons by constantly redirecting Ricki's focus. Amie walks Ricki away from the distraction and rewards her with a treat. It seems to be making a difference, and I look forward to seeing how our community field rep judges Ricki's progress in a few weeks.


Monday, April 18, 2011

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 58 - Ricki Evaluation

We have reached a crucial point in Ricki's training. Her future as a guide dog is in question. Amie met with our community field representative where a myriad of issues were discussed. I wanted to film the meeting, but they decided it would be best if we didn't. We were told we have a few more weeks to get Ricki past her distraction issues. Amie has a few new techniques to incorporate with her food reward protocal, and we are rewarding for smaller things now. We are also taking Ricki out for training everyday at this crucial point in her development. Stay tuned!



EZ Mount Monfrotto Mod

I don't use my EZ mount without this setup. People have been asking how it is made so I made this video. Monfrotto ball heads are awesome and there are a ton of different options out there. If you like this video. Check out all my reviews, builds, tips, and tricks.

Chappy

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Flip Cam Giveaway Winner

My Flip Cam Giveaway contest had ended. There were 450 suggestions sent to me, and it was not easy picking one as the winner. This contest was subjective, and there were other things equally creative and unique. So to all those haters and trolls out there who are mad about my decision, I'm sorry but it's my contest. The winner is a college student from Texas who said. "I'm going to attach it to a helium-filled object and sent it above the Earth's atmosphere, and get a shot of the planet's horizon." I picked this idea because this is still a relatively new concept, and it's really cool. It's possible to get footage in outer space now, and more and more people are doing it everyday using a weather balloon. Two students from MIT were the first to do this, and they started a website describing what they did. Since then, several have replicated and surpassed the original video in quality. But proper respect should be given to the MIT students for being the originators of this idea. I am thinking about doing this idea someday so I can teach people step by step on how it's done.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 57 - Dog Distractions

Amie said a great thing to Seth and I months back that I really love. She said that guide dogs are the "navy seals" of the working dog industry. The more we shoot the show, the more it makes sense to me. I mean everywhere you take these dogs poses a myriad of distractions. Whether it be other dogs, food, cats, small animals, birds, kids, balls, sounds, water, etc. It is amazing that any of them graduate. To turn off a dogs natural instinct which is to be curious about things around him/her is a huge challenge. We strive to do this with Ricki constantly, and it is amazing how the same training can be utilized in so many different locations. Ricki continues to make baby steps as we crawl closer to her recall date. We have high hopes that she will do well, but ultimately this will be up to her. We know she has the work drive as well as the drive to please. Only time will tell if that will be enough.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Dog Playing Piano

My dog just started playing Canon in D Major out of the blue. I captured it on video because it's so awesome.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 56 - Off Duty Ricki

This week we won Outstanding Reality Series at LAWEBFEST. It felt really good to get recognition from the filmmaking community for our endeavors . It was also nice to see that our uninspiring viewership doesn't reflect it's content. LAWEBFEST is the only film festival in the world for web shows currently so we feel like mavericks exploring a new world. Our format is one of a kind, and I'm so proud that we make the show format easy to follow for the visually impaired. It's very descriptive and we don't take for granted anything that is going on. We describe everything. Big thanks to everyone for supporting our series and keep watching because it could get interesting from here.