If you're a budding George
Lucas, you will soon be able to film your own SF epic with the "Virtual
Movie Studio", which will be released this fall by Curious Toys.
The playset features a working
color video camera with built-in microphone and a soundstage that holds
a series of pop-up stages. The stage included with the playset features
an outer space theme, complete with starship bridge, hangar bay, an alien
planet and four action figures.
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Surveillance tech goes
Hollywood
Company president Mark McFarland
says the secret is using a small surveillance camera as the movie camera.
"Prices have dropped as the
technology has advanced," he said at the recent Toy Fair in New York City,
"so we were able to get high-quality equipment at a price that was affordable
for a toy."
The Curious Toys camera is
housed in a rolling diecast dolly that allows a young cinematographer to
duplicate the trucks, crabs, pans and tilts of professional filmmaking.
The camera also features an adjustable focus and can feed images into any
TV or VCR.
McFarland says the camera
is also compatible with increasingly common digital editing software and
hardware. Kids can edit, add effects or use stop-motion techniques with
the same equipment their parents may be using for their home videos.
Science fiction is a natural
fit for this robot camera operator.
The power of matte paintings
McFarland is especially proud
of the soundstage kits. Curious Toys has hired professional layout artists
and matte painters to detail the backgrounds, and they have taken care
to use shapes and colors that produce a sense of depth in a camera image.
The sets are limited in scope,
but the space kit, which comes with the basic set, creates a look comparable
to the better science fiction movies of the 1950s and early 1960s.
Curious Toys will be producing
three soundstage kits per year. The space kit comes with the basic set,
and there will be medieval and detective sets available separately this
year.
Why is space the default
soundstage setting? McFarland says the choice of which stage to include
in the basic kit was "tough".
"The first three kits were
chosen because their genres have a broad appeal," he said.
However, after the company
talked with kids and retailers, Curious Toys decided that the space theme
would be the most popular of the three.
Virtual Movie Studio will
be available later this year at museum stores, high-end toy retailers like
FAO Schwartz, and online retailers. The basic set will retail for about
$200, and the soundstage kits will retail for about $30 each.
What do you think? Send your
comments to the author or editor.
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