Even though we are focusing on NYC’s huge event, I think it is important that people get to see a large variety of images from Santacons around the world. In the weeks following the annual event, I put out requests to a ton of people on youtube, flickr, and vimeo. Everybody who responded was really positive and will receive credit in the film for their contributions. I just wanted to give a quick list of some of the places you’ll see in the finished film.
Videos
- Napa Valley, CA
- Boulder, CO
- Austin, TX
- Seattle, WA
- London, UK
- Chicago, IL
- Lawrance, KS
- San Francisco, CA
- Atlanta, GA
- Tokyo, Japan
- Los Angeles, CA
Photos
- Antarctica
- Washington DC
- Dallas, TX
- Ft. Lauderdale, FL
- Tokyo, Japan
This is eerie. For the first time, here is both Santabots side by side. I had never actually been able to put them next to each other until now, but they look like brothers. Mark II is larger in most ways, while Mark I is like the younger brother.
As it moves further into January, it was time to get him out of our small living room, so into the storage unit they go until next year.*
*Maybe, I’m pretty sure I want to tone it down next year. We missed some really cool things/events this year because of the popularity of the robot. You never know, maybe next year I’ll make an actual working robot.
For anybody who is interested, I wanted to give a quick overview of some of the equipment we used for the shoot.
More or less, everything was filmed on a Canon T2i. It is Canon’s mid-level DSLR and it was FANTASTIC for our type of project. Full HD video at 1080i. Switching between a 8 gig and 16 gig SD Card, we were able to record a little over an hour of video before needing to dump it onto my laptop. My only issue was the sound. The camera has an auto gain feature that messes with levels. It isn’t a big issue, but being a radio guy, sound is super important to me. I even bought a Zoom H1, but without a larger crew and for fear of syncing issues, it wasn’t used that much. As for the lens, it was just the kit lens. Nothing special, but it got the job done.
For shooting during Santacon I rented a Zacuto Double Barrel shoulder rig from CSI Rentals. We were able to plug the T2i straight into the rig and throw it on Lance’s shoulder for the entire day of shooting. (Might I add, he was quite the trooper for lugging that thing all day)
Over the course of the day we dumped the raw video straight onto an external hard drive. It was easy to use, and allowed us not to miss too much of the action. And finally for the sound, we had a really good shotgun mic plugged straight into the camera.
All the shooting equipment came from CSI. I have to plug them because it was a really easy pickup and they even upgraded a few pieces of equipment without extra charge.
If you have any further questions or would like more technical mumbo-le-jumbo, just let me know.
Nick
First off, I have to apologize to everyone. When planning for the release of the film, I never imagined how much it would take to edit the thing down to 20 - 25 minutes. Santacon took place on December 11th, and Christmas was two weeks later. Someone working around the clock might have been able to do it, but I doubt it.
Everyone working on this have volunteered their time, and I cannot thank them enough for it. Kirstin McNary helped us with some of the editing, and now it is up to my friend Tony Ozwald to make this thing into a film. So right now he is in Kentucky with his family, enjoying the holidays, and when he gets back we will hit this thing hard.
I would much rather let this super short deadline pass and spend a bit of extra time working on creating a much better film. We have TONS of footage that needs going through, so I’m not going to give a release date at the moment, but I would like to have it done in January.
Nick
Thanks again for everyone’s support. It means a lot to us and I know you will enjoy the final product.
Shayna testing out her Reindeer makeup just a few days before Santacon.
I’m gearing up for Santacon! This is a video of me practicing my makeup to see how much time I need to dedicate to applying it the day of :D! Not really a tutorial, but feel free to copy my technique…Also, try to do it just as fast!
I have to give a very big shout out to Scott Beale over at Laughing Squid for putting the trailer for our documentary on his site. It was only a few months ago that I was able to get a lot of great background info on the origins of Santacon(archy) from Scott and he even threw the kickstarter drive up on his site.
Now, even without me emailing him, I found that the views of the trailer had skyrocketed from 2 on Monday, to 116 as of this writing on Tuesday evening. I’ve been pretty consistant in checking out his site for a while and the one day I space looking, is the day we end up on the site.
These were taken around our mid-day break on December 11th. We had just finished lunch and were about to head back out into the craziness that is santacon.
Ouch. Ok, I’m flattered and all that a guy copied my design from last year in DC, but not only did 2009’s look better, 2010’s was AWESOME.
From Make’s Blog
With everyone busy preparing for the holidays, we’ve had a few requests to extend the entry deadline for the robotic plant contest a bit. Well — Robot Santa doesn’t want to disappoint, so we’ve decided to push the entry deadline until January 30th, at 11:59PM PST. So enjoy your ‘nog (or spiced motor oil, as the case may be) and relax a bix, but don’t forget to finish your plant! Also, if you’ve already submitted an entry and want to tweak it a bit, feel free to re-submit an updated version.
Awesome robot santa photo by Flickr user luckywhitegirl.
I give up. All hail Coco.
YOU NEED TO FAIL! Jeri Ellsworth (whom I’m a big fan of because she is building her own pinball machine) has put together a fantastic video about the need to fail when trying to learn new things. Like she says in the video, I’ve never succeeded very well at the first time at anything*
So in that spirit, I would like to share some of the things that went wrong with putting together the robot(s) over 2 years.
- The candy dish this year broke about an hour into the day. I had a really tough time getting it to work in the first place, and drunks were far rougher on it than I imagined.
- Moving from switches to buttons. This was the first big change for 2010.
- Adding an ipod to the robot (2010). It wasn’t as loud as I would have liked, and got very little use throughout the day.
- Robot feet. I tried to make them out of cardboard, and came out more or less like flippers. I couldn’t walk more than 100 feet without getting into trouble, not to mention stairs.
- Half of the electronics. Whenever I ran into an issue, I have a tendency with breaking it more than I needed to and then having to fix more than necessary.
- When the candy dish was open, the hat light wouldn’t work and vice versa.
There are many more that could go on this list, but that is everything off the top of my head. I don’t consider these failures, but were learning opportunities. When breaking things, I had to figure out how to fix them (hence learning). Take 5 minutes to watch Jeri’s video and go out and try something. You might not succeed, but if you try enough, you will.
-Nick
*Ok, for some reason, I’ve actually been decent at water skiing and knee boarding on my first try. I have no clue why.
