Backyard FX shows how to build a real lightsaber. Erik Beck unearths the original lightsaber blueprints from the special effects creator for Star Wars, and show you how to buy parts to a real lightsaber so you can have your own custom Star Wars weapon. In the test film you'll ...more
This look may take a little longer, but is well worth it. Try combining these colors to create a timeless look. Christmas time or a night out on the town, this look works for any time of the year. Products used (**all MAC unless noted otherwise): FACE **Clinique Perfectly Rea ...more
I woke up at 4:00 am this morning in order to take some video of the last total lunar eclipse visible from North America till 2014. The eclipse was beautiful. It was amazing to watch the shadow of our planet creep slowly across our nearest neighbor. Once the shadow was blockin ...more
Focusing has always been a problem with photographers, and even with today's digital cameras it's not easy. The most obvious problem is trying to accurately focus on the subject before exposure. Next, you have to choose the correct aperture size in relation to the depth of fie ...more
Type: Digital, Theme Theme: Nature Categories: Nature Theme Deadline: March 31, 2011 Eligibility: U.S. citizen, 18+ years old, amateur and professional Entry eligibility: Digital color, no film or black and white, up to five original photos that have not previously won in ...more
Writing secret notes with lemon juice was one of my favorite pastimes as a child. All it took was a small flame to lightly scorch the paper and reveal the hidden message. Now that I'm tall and pay bills, lemon ink just isn't exciting enough anymore. Luckily, we can use another ...more
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more
Since its release three years ago, Canon's EOS 5D Mark II has been the most sought out digital SLR for photographers everywhere. But it's also becoming a favorite amongst cinematographers, thanks to its compact size and high-def video recording mode, seeing action in everythin ...more
Sitting around thinking about my average sexual performance, I wondered if there were other things in life that were also 30 seconds long. I was extremely relieved that such things were possible! These 30 second movies are the mobile text equivalent to major films or projects. ...more
Kudos to student Tim Wheatley, who came up with this incredibly nifty DIY animation using a bicycle wheel, cardboard cut-outs, and wire to create a magical reinvention of the classic zoetrope, Earth's earliest form of animation (it first surfaced in China around 180 AD!). Simp ...more
We Care About This: Oscar Noms Are Out!! Best picture: Black Swan The Fighter Inception The Kids Are All Right The King’s Speech 127 Hours The Social Network Toy Story 3 True Grit Winter’s Bone Actress Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole Jennife ...more
If you're not familiar with the animations of Jan Švankmajer, you're in for quite a trip. The Czech artist and filmmaker is known for his metaphorical, captivatingly surreal stop-motion and claymation films, and is God to many (including talents such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilli ...more
the ultimate: prank all audiences and theater employees: the lights dim, "please put on your 3d glasses now" flashes across the screen. jackass 3d begins with a ridiculously expensive and inspired opening setpiece. the audience is immediately confused, because despite wearing ...more
We've all played with LEGOs at some point in our childhood, but when video games took over the world, we all converted to PlayStations and Xboxes in lieu of building blocks. But soon enough, the satisfaction of childhood construction was integrated into video game format, so w ...more
Watch as world freediving champion Guillaume Nery takes an incredible dive into Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas (on ONE SINGLE BREATH!) Nery combines his sport of freediving with BASE jumping, as Julie Gautier captures fantastic footage with the amazing Canon5d Mark II. Via G ...more
Skoda has created an amazing car constructed with CAKE! for their latest advertisement. Via Car Pages, "Once filming was finished we had planned to cut the cake car up and distribute it to local charities, schools and hospitals. Unfortunately, however, as the car had been un ...more
Do you have old super 8, or 8mm film lying around? In this video, learn how to transfer that film to your computer without spending loads of cash. You Will Need: • A smooth, white wall or piece of white paper • A flat, raised surface or table • A super 8mm projector • A r ...more
Mike from the SubStream's "Film Lab" has some tips regarding video camera lenses. In part one, Mike talks about the basics of lenses, starting with focal length and angle of view. It's a lesson on the analog collections of lenses cinematographers use with their cameras. For p ...more
With a little muscle and a powerful cleaner, even the filthiest oven can look new. Since it's best to let the cleaner sit overnight, try to start cleaning before bed. Make sure that the room is well ventilated. Open doors and windows and turn on any fans to prevent fumes from ...more
In the age of digital cameras and instant gratification, make the simplest camera ever invented using just a light proof box, a hole, and paper. Check out this Howcast video tutorial on how to make a pinhole camera. You Will Need * 1 clean, 7 inch tall oatmeal box * Heavy fo ...more
Who doesn't love Star Wars? No one, that's who. And if you love Stars Wars, logic would follow that you like lightsabers, so central are they to the tale's mythology. It's part sword, part laser, and makes a sound like a humming motor have multigasms. If I saw one in real life ...more
This article is going to talk about video and only about video. Why? Because video is very important for any size of business. Even small businesses can use video to promote themselves on the internet. And in the next few years, you’re going to see more and more businesses usi ...more
I have owned quite the plethora of electronics in my life. A commonality between most of these devices' screens is frozen or dead pixels. This is probably the most annoying thing about buying new hardware—your LCD, or worse, LED display has one or more pixels that continues to ...more
It's already Halloween and the night is fast approaching. You swore to yourself last year that you wouldn't wait until the last minute again for a Halloween costume, yet here you are on Samhain without a costume… again. All of the costume shops are sure to be crammed with last ...more
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. UPDATE: Minecraft 1.9.6 has been leaked! It's time for another pre-release folks! This time it's 1.9 Version 5, and it's better than ever. Confirmed changes include: Melons drop ...more
So, you just bought Photoshop. It's time to familiarize yourself with the rudimentary tools. Let's start at the very beginning! File: That’s your picture! It’s called a file because that’s how it exists in the digital world, as a file on your CF card, your flash drive, your h ...more
Animation Training: In terms of training, few actually get the "right" training. They go to a crash course program like Mesmer f/x (which teaches you about brand X software in 3 short weeks), put together a rather weak demo reel in the same timeframe, and then hit the streets ...more
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more
Mildew can be the bane of a beautiful exterior paint job, marring its appearance even when the paint is otherwise in good shape. And while there’s no way to guarantee that mildew won’t eventually rear its ugly head on any home exterior, there are ways to fight it. Here are six ...more
The right combination of an appropriately awkward protagonist, a clever script with , and truly remarkable animation (including 3-d flying scenes that trump anything in ), made this flick a blast from start to finish. When he finds the fallen dragon, injured and helpless in t ...more
FEATURED DOCUMENTARY: Exit Through the Gift Shop, the first film directed by reclusive street-art legend Banksy, is a little puzzle-box of a documentary. It's perfectly designed and pitched to be enjoyable on multiple levels: on one as an entertaining, illuminating mini-histo ...more
This video shows how to make light, flaky croissants from scratch. The ingredients needed are flour, active dry yeast, sugar, salt, warm milk and butter. You will also need an egg beaten with some water for the egg wash. Place the flour, salt, sugar, milk and yeast into the m ...more
There's a time in everyone's life when they need to become immortalized and reprographed in a full-blown comic spread, complete with halftone dots and speech bubbles—or squares, if you're a square. With our favorite program Photoshop, you can quickly turn any hyperbolic celebr ...more
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more
This colorful image may look like a miniature set of model cars, foam buildings and painted grass, but it's nothing of the sort. It's a still photo from a time-lapse video that Stu Kennedy shot in his hometown of Lincoln, England. But it's not your ordinary time-lapse. Kennedy ...more
One of the coolest things about Twitter is the fact that you can get direct access to some of your favorite celebrities, and have one-on-one conversations with them in less than 140 characters. With Google+, you can have the same advantage, but you don't need to feel constrict ...more
The aging and maturity of video games as a medium has lead to some unfortunate consequences. One of these, perhaps drawn from the film industry, is the spate of remakes that has overtaken the game market over the last few years. It hasn't been as bad as the remakeorama trend i ...more
Like the press covering film and many other specialized fields, video game journalists use all sorts of jargon to convey to their knowledgable readers as much information about a game as quickly as possible. For non or newbie gamers, this can be extremely confusing. Those of ...more
Synopsis: Tell one guy that a girl that one of the other guys knows just had some sketchy demonic encounter/satanic experience at some Wicca gathering she went to last night while she was trying to get answers from the past. Then say she’s incredibly creeped out right now and ...more
Just a couple Saturday's ago, we were blessed with the Supermoon, where the moon was at perigee with our planet, creating a larger than usual Moon for us here on Earth. Now, we've got another spectacular show in the skies coming up, only this one isn't at night. There will be ...more
Equipment list for the low budget crowd Let's assume you have a script (not just an idea) and have gotten your pre production out of the way. These are both incredibly important and should not be taken lightly, especially when you have no budget. So you have an awesome film a ...more
Amazingly, a lot of people I know haven't even heard of SOPA or PIPA. Now, every English-reading person with an internet connection will finally have those two four-letter acronyms emblazoned in their minds. For the entire day today, Wikipedia's English-language site will be i ...more
There are seemingly endless photography apps for the iPhone—it is perhaps one of the most popular arenas for application developers. We've covered a few in Giveaway Tuesdays, but nothing comprehensive. We would be remiss to omit the two most popular frontrunners—Hipstamatic ( ...more
Night People: A Bad Vibes Label Profile Shawn Reed is one of our favorite people, not content with making music with Wet Hair, he also runs 'Night People' - an almost complete DIY record and tape label operation in Iowa - a label which has consistently put out and introduced ...more
The game has undergone many transitions over the years, since its days as LEXIKO (1931) to its briefness as CRISS CROSS WORDS to its current and amalgamated, renowned brand of SCRABBLE. There has been many editions of the word board game along that historic metamorphosis, and ...more
Do you live in a dangerous neighborhood? Even if your area isn't known to be dangerous, it could still be a target of home burglaries. Don't let the thieves have the upper hand. Make sure the only thing they're stealing is grass. To properly secure your home from external thre ...more
Mike and Rajo from the SubStream's "Film Lab" have some tips regarding production. Set Safety: 'Striking!' Don't burn a dude or dudette's eyes out of their head, man. Say 'striking!' or 'sparking!' when you turn on a lamp! Workplace safety is important because you could get k ...more
Sean Astin hosts AFI's filmmaking tutorial series, LIGHTS, CAMERA, EDUCATION! In this segment, we explore the importance and how-to of storyboarding your film or video.
Having trouble with your green screen? You may not have it lit right, or it may not be secured properly, or you might not be using your editing software right when using chroma key. If you want to learn a few tips on how to fix a bad green screen, this is the place. Watch this ...more
Choose the Right Path Making a choice What do you do, when you do not know what to do? Perhaps, you do nothing. But such inaction may be unhealthy and even suicidal. Someone said, “The only thing for the evil to triumph is the good should do nothing”. Many people have been i ...more
Get a white van, maybe block out the windows except for the front, have two Jackass members driving the van, stop at a stop light or a stop sign in a busy residential area where there are lots of pedestrians and cars. then have a single person in the back of the van break out ...more
When someone is taking a shower set up a huge party in a room. Cut the power off in the entire building Film the person's reaction as they try to find their way around. Then after some time passes, and they enter the room, turn on all the lights with loud music, a bunch of p ...more
More science-geek-art: amazing photographs by Alan Jaras. Apparently the images have not been altered in any way (computer generated or color treated) and are true reproductions of light refraction patterns captured on film. From Neu Black: "A majority of the works are anal ...more
Smartphone videos get better and better each year. Seven or eight years ago, who would have thought iPhone and Android phones could support 4K video recording. Some phones can even shoot slow-motion at 960 fps. But no matter the resolution or frame rate, a phone's rolling shut ...more
If you have a modern iPhone, you have an excellent video recorder at your disposal. Every iPhone since the 6S has the ability to shoot in 4K resolution, and each new iteration has brought new capabilities to the table. But even the best mobile shooter can use a little extra he ...more
Have you ever tried to film at night with your DLSR in place with no good lightning at all or at places were the lights are flickering? Here its the Solution in 4 simple steps. Always shoot between 1/50 and 1/60 ALWAYS or else the lights will flicker. Never go above 1600 iso ...more
In the late nineteenth century, the advent of the motion picture wowed audiences with a new storytelling medium. Nearly a century and a half later, augmented reality is establishing a new frontier in film. At the 2020 edition of South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, kickin ...more
While photography usually gets all the love, our phones have gotten really good at capturing video. Think about it — when was the last time you needed a camcorder for a vacation? With mobile cameras getting better each year, we're now at a point where smartphones can be used f ...more
Surveillance is always a useful tool in a hacker's arsenal, whether deployed offensively or defensively. Watching targets yourself isn't always practical, and traditional surveillance camera systems can be costly, lacking in capabilities, or both. Today, we will use motionEyeO ...more