Morris Lessmore animated short filmed with camBLOCK

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Redefining modern childrens books, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is both an animated short film, and an ipad app, designed to become an interactive story to entertain and teach children. Moonbot studios directors Brandon Oldenburg and Bill Joyce, who has worked on numerous films including Robots and Toy Story, brought in camblock developer Stewart Mayer and fellow camblock operator Jason Hess to film the backgrounds for the film.

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The majority of the film takes place on artfully crafted minature sets, with animated characters composited into the shots. The entire storyboard was scripted and camblock pan/tilt/dolly/jib/lens control systems were brought in to move through the miniature sets with motion control fluidity and accuracy. The shots were previewed in real time on Canon 7D cameras, and then recorded frame by frame in raw format. Then, a secondary pass was recorded with tracking markers placed in the scenes to help recreate accurate motion paths in post for the animated characters. Because of the mobile and modular nature of the system, the filmmakers were able to configure the system several different ways to place the camera inside the many miniature sets.
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The film is delightful to watch, and already won several awards including San Jose’s CINEQUEST Festival’s “Best Animated Short Film Award” and Cleveland International Film Festival’s “Best Animated Short Film Award.”
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See it here: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
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Polar Bears in 3D, November 2010 (repost)

Filming Polar Bears and their surroundings in 3D moco timelapse….  Awesome.

Deegan vs. Deegan, October 2010 (repost)

This past fall director Mike Flores directed a motorcross promotional film, “Deegan vs Deegan”.  In the film Brian Deegan, the professional X-games driver, races against himself.  Shot on Red, Mike used camBLOCK to shoot multiple real time pan/tilt/dolly moves to create a “face off” effect.  The best takes of two passes were composited to create the convincing effect.  Check it out (moco shot is 35 seconds in).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIWXQ7ytaPg

camBLOCK in NYC, July 2010 (repost)

Ah, New York, how we miss you.  With your bridges, rivers, and useful public transportation system.  What a wonderful place.

And what a wonderful view from Brooklyn Bridge Park.  Here we see the CamBlock 3D rig with two Hasselblad H-Series medium format cameras capturing the Manhattan skyline at sundown.  CamBlock systems can come optionally with side-by-side or beamsplitter rigs for stereoscopic 3D timelapse .

Look for The Last Reef in IMAX 3D.