Thursday, January 19, 2012

You Like Random Information

Verizon's high-speed DSL is $40/month. Their low-speed DSL is $25/month. They charge you $20 to install the thing. (We're having so much trouble with our Internet at the new office that I'm considering just bailing out and getting our own DSL line.)
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Chance Shirley is a world of information about spacesuit helmets. The sphere's he used for his spacesuits came from Complex Plastics. I've written to get a price from them (I actually called but they said to email them -- go figure.)
Here is Chance on the helmet itself:

I believe we used 14" diameter spheres, and we had them cut a 10" holeat the base.

And I think that's a good size for space helmets. The trick, which Inever quite figured out, is how to make a collar to keep the helmetcomfortably/consistently attached to the actor's shoulders. Ourhelmets tended to lean forward, resting against the back of the actorshead. So we put a little strip of foam in the back to at least make it more comfy.
Because Things Chance Says should be on permanent record on the Internet, I include some of his advice (without his permission) right here. This is what he has to say about how the gasket was attached to the helmet:
We glued a wooden hoop (painted metallic) to the gasket, then gluedthe helmet to the wooden hoop. I'm surprised they stayed together aswell as they did. Probably would have been better to build some kindof working mount and attach to the helmet with screws.

I considered a back piece, a la "Alien," but couldn't figure out agood way to do it. If you let gravity keep the helmet in place, watchout for light leaks (which the back piece would help with, too) thatwould give away the fact the helmet isn't really airtight.

And definitely get some lights in there. I figured you could get somekind of cheap LEDs these days...
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All this time I've been whining about how expensive Cedar noise reduction systems are. But rather than buying one for five grand you can just rent one for eighty bucks a day. Considering the fact that we'd only need it about six or maybe eight days a year, that's just $640.
If you don't believe me here is a duck.
Dreamhire also rents Cedar but their ratecard is substantially higher than Audio Rents in CA.

2 comments:

Joe Falcon said...

Seems the suits I talked about had the same problem with smacking the actors in the back of the head on Enterprise. Check out the helmet.

http://www.startrekpropauthority.com/2010/10/star-trek-enterprise-ev-suit.html

Your would happen to know of good books on budgeting for indies and microcinema?

Andrew Bellware said...

Those are great details on that suit.

I don't know any books for microcinema budgeting. Basically it's so little money that we don't even bother making up a budget anymore. All the money goes to food and transportation.