Guys in the Kitchen – Episode 3, Alberta Surprise
The name of the dish in this week's episode of Guys in the Kitchen has nothing to do with Canada. It's Italian.
Want to see how this one-dish delight is made? Watch the video to learn from the meal's inventor!
Alberta Surprise
Ingredients
- 10 oz. can diced tomatoes with green chiles
- 6 oz. can tomato paste
- 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
- 16 oz. box of pasta (any kind)
- 1 small or medium onion, halved and slivered
- 15 oz. can black olives, sliced
- 3 garlic cloves
- 5 or 6 slices of deli sliced turkey
- 3 to 4 cups mozzarella cheese
- 1 cup parmesan cheese
- Spices, to taste: thyme, oregano, basil, garlic powder, salt, italian seasoning, chili powder, marjoram, sage, tarragon, onion powder, fresh ground pepper
Directions
- Prepare pasta according to box directions.
- While pasta is cooking, mix all tomato ingredients into a medium saucepan, heating the pan on moderately low. Slice the black olives and add them to the sauce.
- Slice and sliver the onion, chop the garlic, and add to the sauce. Then add all the spices, to taste.
- Stir in a cup or so of mozzarella cheese into the sauce, and cook it until cheese is starting to melt, and onions are just beginning to get done. They'll continue cooking while it bakes.
- After the pasta has finished cooking, pour it into a 9x13 dish, and pour the sauce over it. Stir it until the pasta has been thoroughly coated in the sauce, adding another cup of mozzarella cheese.
- Bake covered for 25 minutes at 350º F.
- Cut and dice the deli-sliced turkey. Mix the parmesan cheese together with italian seasoning and fresh ground pepper.
- After the dish is finished baking, lay the deli meat in a layer over top of it, then sprinkle one cup mozzarella cheese and the parmesan cheese mixture over top.
- Bake uncovered for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted.
Guys in the Kitchen – Episode 1, Popcorn
It's geniuses at play. Well, almost.
It's actually just guys in the kitchen — which can be dangerous at times.
Dominic recently got a Canon EOS 7D, a dSLR which also happens to shoot full HD video. We've been wanting to do some tests with it to see whether or not we'll be able to use it on some paying projects we're working on. One of those projects is along the lines of a cooking show, so we had the brilliant idea of making our own cooking show for testing purposes.
Since Geno doesn't know how to cook anything other than popcorn, we thought we'd get him out of the way first. So, here's episode one, in which Geno explains how to make real popcorn. Not the dumb bagged microwave stuff.
Awakening the Lord’s Generation Conference
Last weekend was the Awakening the Lord's Generation Conference. Last weekend was awesome. It was an incredible experience to shoot a video project and benefit spiritually from the uplifting, God-honoring messages that the speakers brought forth.
Before I go into all the details, though, let me back up and give a special thanks to our Block One sister Sage for recommending us to Mercy Hope, one of the people responsible for putting this conference together.
So, last Friday we packed up Chad's famous red Dodge Caravan filmmaking van with all of our equipment and made the trip up to Hickory, NC. We had a pretty much painless trip up there, and got checked into our hotel. After a little rest, we headed over to Resurrection International Church to set up our gear. The church was literally about two miles away from the hotel. Once all our equipment was in place, and we had met Kim Fletcher and Mercy Hope (the women responsible for setting up the conference, and two very great, godly people), we decided it was probably a good time to eat.
After eating some burgers, and experiencing some amazing milk shakes at Jack in the Box, we headed back over to Resurrection International to begin the shoot! It was a great night! The Lord answered our prayers - we didn't have one single technical problem!
On day 2, we got up, got ready, and got going! The second day's shooting went just as smoothly, and the Jack in the Box meal and milk shakes were just as good (I would recommend the Pumpkin Pie shake over the Egg Nog shake ;D). The speakers were great, and I really feel like the Lord touched some hearts that day.
After the conference ended that night, we had a wonderful meal and visiting time with Kim Fletcher and most of the other speakers at Frankie's Pizza. We met some really incredible people!
All in all, it was an awesome trip. The Lord answered all our prayers, He moved at the Conference, and allowed us to have an amazing experience.
Special Thanks: Sage Dahlby for getting us hooked up with Mercy Hope. Kim Fletcher, Mercy Hope, Stephanie Carillo, and the rest of the speakers who made us feel so welcome. Steve Erby, Mary Smith, and the rest of the staff at Resurrection International Church, for recording the audio from the conference. Anthony DiMaria for helping us out, and doing the photography. Gene DiMaria for coming along, and assisting us.
First Shoot with a dSLR
Originally posted on Stembridge Mill
With the addition of video capabilities dSLRs, still photography cameras are becoming more and more popular for "guerilla" style filmmaking.
A couple nights ago, I had my first opportunity to use a dSLR to shoot video. I personally didn't do any shooting (because I was... acting... yes, I know, I know...), but I did get to edit the video we shot. We used Anthony DiMaria's Nikon D5000. It barely has any advanced settings for video — unlike Canon's 5D MKII, 7D, and the soon-to-come 1D MKIV, it's definitely not being catered to serious videographers.
We shot 720p HD, 24fps. The results from the camera were fairly decent. I was pleased with the general image we captured, and the camera's performance in low light levels. There were some issues, however.
While we didn't experience any of the "jello" effects that comes from the dSLR using a rolling shutter, there were other problems. The D5000 gives no control over auto-exposure. This means that whenever the camera moves or action happens in-frame, the camera automatically detects the light levels and adjusts the exposure to keep the image at a good level. To translate that to video camera terminology, it would be like leaving the auto iris on.
Auto iris (or exposure) is okay if you're shooting home movies. But it's a big no-no if you're trying to shoot anything that's supposed to have some quality. It just doesn't look good to have the light levels in the frame changing during shots. The especially bad thing with the D5000 and this is that the exposure changes aren't smooth; they're chunky incrementals.
The D5000's on-camera mic is pretty terrible, and there's no way to plug in external audio sources. So we're going to be completely re-recording the audio from our shoot. The only other problem we had, though minor, was that the camera records video to the AVI codec, which isn't a very good format. I had to render every clip in my Final Cut timeline before I could play it.
Learning from this shoot, here are a few things I would look for in a dSLR camera before buying/using it for video:
» Manual control over video settings
» Options to utilize external audio mics/devices
» Quality recording format
Here's a few screenshots from the video.
HD is Overrated
*GASP* What did I just say???
Okay, quick disclaimer: I like HD. There's nothing like being able to watch a video in high quality filling the whole 24 inches of my iMac screen. And the color definition... Yep, I'm looking forward to the day when I can afford to switch from Standard Definition to High Def (Red, anyone?).
However, I don't hate SD. HD can be so overrated, in my opinion — there's nothing magical about it at all. An HD camera + bad camera operator + bad editor + bad color grading = bad 1920x1080 video. The only difference between that and SD is 1,728,000 effective square pixels. And that's only from a technical standpoint.
HD doesn't automatically make weak acting or story stronger. My desire is to learn how to tell a great story (which includes knowing how to operate a camera well, edit well, grade color well) with whatever equipment I have. Not that technical aspects aren't important, of course.
But this is why I think HD can be way overrated: storytelling should be more of a priority than the technical equipment with which it's being told.
