Joker Boxes

Joker Boxes are one of those ideas that you see and it is so simple and cool that you wonder why nobody did it before. Imagine a Apple Box and a camera front box got together and made babies. Okay maybe you can’t. It is an apple box with a removable lid that lets you store goodies inside.

There are several types of lids. The one I thought was cool had a 3/8” threaded plate in the center so you can screw in a baby pin and make a pigeon plate out of it. 

They have a lid with a slate on the back side too. You have to go to their site to get the full idea. But it is a handy piece of kit to hold some essential supplies and give you some of the functionality of an apple box at the same time. Really handy for the shooters working out of a van. Ben Mesker is the creator, and he has a craftsman’s attention to detail. The quality of the boxes is very impressive.

http://jokerboxes.com/

VectorMount

Vectormount is an interesting GoPro mount for vehicles that “uses the natural motion of your vehicle to track the action for you”. It sort of looks like a weathervane but it also has a sliding weight to control the centrifugal force.

I visited their booth at NAB 2013 today and saw something really unique. The machine work is really well done and they have an aluminum version of the GoPro mount that is really stable. Also the car mounts and hardware are really well thought out, even if you don’t want to use the auto panning weathervane. The machined parts are as good as any GoPro custom work I have seen. But look at the demos on their website, the silicon dampened, auto-panning - weathervane deal works pretty well. Never seen this before!

  

Oakley Safehouse London 2012

DIY $99 Thunderbolt eSATA Adaptor

This is a really cool idea! A DIY eSATA adapter posted on Camerarentalz.com

For those of us who are looking to download those huge RED Epic files this is a REALLY handy project!

He used a Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter for eSATA drives and just hooked up a cable to the adapter and then plugged it into the back of the RED SSD Reader. Very cool!

I will post a link on the sidebar to take you to the Amazon store for this!

RED "Meizler Module"

You might have heard about the new RED Epic "Meizler Module"

I thought I would say a little about Steven Meizler, to give you an idea of why he is the ideal person to come up with this development. Steven Meizler was the first Assistant Cameraman to ever do a feature with the RED One camera. It was the Che Guevara bio-pic directed by Steven Soderbergh, this was with prototype cameras. It was the Summer of 2007. Besides working on Soderbergh films he has done many Steven Spielberg movies as well as the last few David Fincher films. Take a look at Steven Meizler's IMDB page - impressive isn't it?

He is the most professional camera asssitant I have ever met. Prepping that first camera was a challenge to say the least, RED has come a long way!