It seems like this site is rapidly turning into a Retro Camera photo gallery. I just find that cameras and photography in all of their forms (film, video, digital, motion, HD, lo-res, etc.) is so exhilarating and stimulating. Anything that stimulates the creative urge is good. And if it turns out good then why leave...

While covering March winter storms along I-80 in the Sierra Nevadas, snapped these Android Retro Camera app photos. I love the winter light at the end of day showing through the storm clouds and on the snow.          ...

KCRA Crescent City David Bienick 11PM 3-11-2011 from Mike Carroll on Vimeo. Friday, March 11, 2011 — Normally on the work schedule I am a 9-6 guy. On this particular Friday I was slated as a 8-5 guy. “All right,” I thought to myself. “If I’m scheduled to be on the clock an hour earlier...

A hawk in flight over Curtis Park the other day. This was shot with the Android smart phone using Retro Camera, as the other retro/antique-looking “snaps” in the previous posts have been. The Android has a half-second lag from the time you tap the “shutter” icon on the phone to when the picture is captured....

This is a continuation of my Retro Camera series. A small, creative* sidebar that I’m trying to exercise more when I’m out and about. (*”Creative” — Hate this word. Sounds like I’m back in second grade during art class. If anyone has a better word please send it to me!!!) This little phone has the...

A year and a half ago my wife Bonnie’s daughter Jenna got and iPhone and has been raving about it. As a result, Bonnie has wanted one every day since. With her old flip phone she has aimlessly wandered the west like a displaced babooska. The one snag to all this has been that we...

This is a little more of the Retro Camera photos I’ve been taking with my Android smart phone when out walking the dogs around the neighborhood. I love the graphic visual of lines and symmetry. Horizontals. Verticals. The vertical lines of skyscrapers. The complimentary horizontals of a the flat asphalt of a highway against a...

KCRA Common Ground – Goodwill Stores Get A Facelift from Mike Carroll on Vimeo. Canon 7D in 1080 60p Tokina 11-16mm F2.8 lens JVC GY-HD100U camcorder in 720 HDV Adobe Premier CS5 FINDING THE STORY: A few months ago I was in a fairly upwardly-mobile community of Sacramento covering a blood drive that KCRA, the...

As much as this site is about filmmaking, the core element to filmmaking is visual storytelling. Almost every aspiring screenwriter’s script that comes my way is not so much a movie as it is a screen play. Note that I did not use the word “screenplay” but the term “screen play.” That is be cause...

Buoyed by the reader response from my first book Naked Filmmaking about how I make films as a one-man filmmaker without a crew, I have been thinking about writing another about how I do TV news as a cameraman-reporter-writer-editor. It would tell the inside story behind the story — how I am assigned stories or...

I love cameras. Every time I see an interesting new camera out there I want to play with it. There must be at least a dozen out there now that I’d like to have within my grasp. All digital. Ranging from a few hundred to many thousands of dollars. All DSLRs. I say that specifically...

My paying gig as a TV news cameraman at KCRA in Sacramento has become much more demanding over the past year, and even more so in the past month. Frequently I return home late and exhausted, yet exhilarated at the same time. I have been a TV new cameraman since 1983 and I have had...

Since touting the super-small independent film Monsters some months back I wanted to give you  an update that I’m not the only person who thinks this film is a landmark. The British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) nominated Monsters for Best British Independent Film alongside The King’s Speech, which won. But — amazingly — Gareth Edwards...

I haven’t posted anything in a several weeks. My apologies for that. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to add new posts every few days. Firstly, I want to welcome all the new and aspiring naked filmmakers out there! Ever since my book Naked Filmmaking: How To Make A Feature Film – Without A...

Some weeks back I posted about the new no-budget film Monsters. Now reports are coming out that the film cost from $500,000-$750,000. I think these are all greatly exaggerated. This probably represents what the film would have cost if the handful of actors and filmmakers would have been paid their going rates. Or that now...

Weeks ago I was perusing through the trailers on iTunes and checked out Monsters. It immediately grabbed me with an interesting premise of two young people thrown together, wandering Central America six years after an alien invasion. I also saw that writer-director Gareth Edwards was also the credited cinematographer. Director-cameramen always grab my interest. My...

My book Naked Filmmaking is now being used in a way that I never expected — in the classroom. The Radio-Television-Film-Multimedia Department at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, California, is suggesting it as worth reading to their film students. Several blog posts back at the beginning of summer, I told about participating at MediaFest...

This is the second night I spent on the set of Anthony D’Juan’s one-man film Untitled. Footage shot on the Canon 7D using the Sigma 28mm f/1.8 for the interiors. Anthony wrote a detailed blog on his Facebook page that sums up his experience at Naked Filmmaking better than I can,  so here is a...