News From Here & There

Those Canon 5D Mark III rumors
It seems likely that Canon will update the 5D Mark II some time this year; but when? In the past two days, two different predictions have appeared: CanonRumors heard August, while a DPReview poster claims he was told be a store rep that the camera would be announced within a month.

If I had to put money on it, I would say August is more likely....either way, I don't think you'll be seeing it at NAB.
CanonRumors: Upcoming DSLR [CR1]
DPReview: Launch of 5d3 coming up...
1001 Noisy Cameras: Dealer rumors: Canon 5D Mk3 and 7D Mk2 within a month



Color Grading Newsletter
Every Sunday Patrick Inhofer puts together a collection of links of interest to the color grading community. Check out too, part II of his interview podcast with Warren Eagles: "What Makes a Great Colorist?"
The Tao Colorist: Sunday Reading, April 10
[Podcast] Part 2: Warren Eagles, Colorist - "What Makes a Great Colorist?"



First Feature Film Shot on the Alexa
Good News: It appears that "Anonymous" is the first feature film to be shot on the ARRI Alexa.
Bad News: It appears that "Anonymous" is the first feature film to be shot on the ARRI Alexa.

Nothing against the Alexa, but "Anonymous" is a fictional drama about who wrote Shakespeare's plays (hint; they don't think it was Shakespeare.) Let me repeat, it's fiction.
Of course, I was a sucker for Shakespeare in Love, so maybe I'll end up being okay with this movie too...

An interview with cinematographer Anna Foerster goes into the details of using the camera in low light situations:
More than two-thirds of the movie was shot at 800 ASA – interiors and exteriors. I did not believe at all in changing the ASA below 800; I don’t think that’s the right approach with this camera, so we were using ND filters for daytime exteriors. Then there were specific night situations where we shot at 1280 ASA. Don’t ask me why we ended up with this number, but that was our level for situations where we had a lot of candles. We had a dance scene that involved over 300 candles burning in a room and that was at 1280 ASA.
And there's an interesting article from Marc Weigert in Animation World Network back in March talking about three days of camera testing they did with the RED MysteriumX and the ARRI Alexa before starting the shoot.

Animation World Network: World's first side-by-side ARRI ALEXA and RED MysteriumX camera test
ARRI Group News: Anonymous: ALEXA's first feature film



Shooting for One Week Without Swapping Batteries
The Bui Brothers review the Switronix Powerbase-70, a $350 battery that'll run your Canon DSLR (there's also a model for the Panasonic AG-AF100) for many hours.
BuiBrothers: How to shoot a short documentary and only charge your camera battery twice.



More Final Cut Pro Predictions
Jonny Evans takes a look at the tea leaves and comes up with another startling prognostication on Final Cut Pro. What's interesting about his analysis is that he thinks it all goes back to Apple and Adobe parting ways in 1998. [Geesh, I knew Steve Jobs can hold a grudge, but still. - Ed]

He's a bit light on the details, and maybe I didn't grab onto the thesis that strongly because I don't really think of Flash as a video tool. Sure it's used by a lot of people to play back video, but I still see it primarily as an interactive authoring tool. Maybe I'm suffering from a lack of imagination too.
ComputerWorld: Apple's Final Cut will end the Flash wars



Remembering Sidney Lumet: Making Movies: Book Review
Even though he was unfamiliar with Sidney Lumet's work at the time, Michael Dorkman still found Lumet's book "Making Movies" great reading, and posted a review of it last September:
I still find his meditation on each aspect of the craft greatly inspiring. He explains his thought process in a way that opened my mind to thinking about how this, that, or the other might be leveraged to communicate the underlying theme of the film more clearly. He speaks candidly about experiences, films, and people he’s loved, and those he’s hated.
DorkmanScott: Book Review: Making Movies



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