Miscellaneous

Below is a small collection of the other things we do.
 
 

GravyTrain 5 Studios
This is where GravyTrain 5 Productions does its magic. The portion shown is the main section and, as of right now, it consists of a Apple iMac G5, along with all of the equipment needed for it to function at its best. The programs that we use include Apple Final Cut Studio 2 , Adobe After Effects 7, and Magic Bullet Looks for filmmaking, as well as Adobe Creative Suite 4 for web design. We are very proud to be running Apple's Mac OS Leopard. Along with the actual studio, we use a Panasonic AG-DVX100 as our primary standard-definition camera, a Canon HF10 for our HD camera, a Panasonic PV-GS500 as our secondary camera, a Bogen Manfrotto tripod, an Azden SGM-1X shotgun microphone, and a Samson C03U condenser microphone. As for web design, we have collectively 2 terabyes of space to store the web site files and information, and use state-of-the-art programs, such as Adobe's Dreamweaver and Flash, to design and construct websites.
Marketing and Advertising

GravyTrain 5 Productions has just recently launched a new marketing/advertising department. It began when Performance Training, Inc., one of our website clients, asked us to create a flyer and poster for a sports clinic. Of course, we obliged. As of right now, we are only requested to make color flyers and posters, but we hope to expand our realm into more types. We have yet to see how effective our advertisements are. It is safe to say, however, that they will definitely attract customers for our clients.
iPhone Applications

Finally, I have caught up with the rest of the coding world! I have learned the how to code apps for the iPhone! The first one was a simple navigation-based app for my father's business, but I have expanded since then. I hope to continue in this field at some point, as it is very high in the market right now. But in the meantime, I'll stick to websites (they are much, much easier to code).
Pyrotechnics
One of GravyTrain 5 Productions (mostly Zach Bielak’s) interests nowadays is pyrotechnics. Basically, that means blowing things up. For the last couple of years Zach has been putting on a neighborhood fireworks show, including setting off some electronically and being timed (if you could call it that) to music. This interest is still just an amateur hobby and hasn’t been perfected yet.
Music
If you have watched the films on our filmmaking page, you probably have noticed that GravyTrain 5 Productions didn’t make any of the music. The more movies we make, the harder we strive to insert our own music as the soundtrack, but most of the time we find that our music makes the movies worse. We are trying to start a new “music program” with the goal of making an entire movie with nothing but our soundtrack in it so we can legally copyright it and call it our own. Our physical equipment is simply a Roland FP-3 electric piano and a pair of Roland speakers. For exterior performances, we use a pair of JBL EON powered speakers to broadcast our music. We use various programs to edit the music, including Soundtrack Pro and GarageBand.
Halloween Haunted House
During the recent years, GravyTrain 5 Productions has created a "haunted house" for Halloween. In 2006, GravyTrain 5 made a simple pneumatic coffin that popped open when somebody walked by. The Bielak's were the first people in their whole subdivision to have an animated prop for Halloween, not to mention that it was homemade. For future years, GravyTrain 5 hopes to expand their work to make one of the scariest haunted houses imaginable. As for right now, though, we are still beginners.