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What We Thought Of The Canon C300 – Four Working Pros Give Their Views
| Dan Chung | DSLR News Shooter
An interesting video with four people chatting about the C300. Their views on lenses is interesting too as they are more interested in short-throw lenses. Also, three of the four have already ordered a C300:

After a long day shooting out on location with a pre-production Canon C300 I invited DOP Andy Jackson, James Velacott of Cherryduck productions and Guardian freelance shooter Felix Clay to discuss their thoughts about the new camera with me. Below is a quickly thrown together video of our discussion.

C300 For 10G I expect a big smile.. | Sam Morgan Moore | DSLR4Real
Partly in response to Dan's article, Sam think's the C300 doesn't wow him enough; for the price:

If you do any interviews the camera will need a rig, and canon seem to have placed the lens height just wrong - that will force you to buy a new rail block at least

8 Bit -We are seeing some clips now - the image is great- ish still its going to fall over on those tonal skies and grey walls or if you get your colour balance off by a few kelvin

CES 2012: Canon C300 Digital Cinema Camera is a Badass Beast | Wired | YouTube





'Pull Back,' My RED SCARLET Test Short | Ryan Koo | NoFilmSchool
Ryan and friends did a short shoot with his new Scarlet. There's an interesting note about problems caused by infrared pollution:

I sketched out a dialogue-free scenario on my phone and emailed DP Timur Civan, who had a SCARLET of his own on order, but had not yet received it. I emailed him, “I have a SCARLET and no lenses, and you have lenses and no SCARLET,” and so it was set. Timur brought his Cooke Panchro primes, I brought the SCARLET and some batteries, Raafi brought in actor Harlan Short, and we grabbed some shots on the Brooklyn roof for a few hours.

Live from the Engadget CES Stage: an interview with Red (update: video embedded) | Engadget
Interview with Ted Schilowitz of RED. Interesting that the two 4K movies that Sony was showing in their booth at CES were shot on the RED.



Lighting Principles # 1 - Why We Light? | Den Lennie | Blog
This article isn't about how to light, but why to light (it's not just to reduce noise in the picture!):

Create contrast
Video is a 2 dimensional medium. Yet we experience life in 3 dimensions. Setting aside the evolution of 3D shooting and 3D video technology, light is used to create the illusion of a 3rd dimension in 2 dimensional video. DoP's use light to give the scene a sense of perspective. By creating contrast between shadow and highlight, you give the viewer a sense of depth.

Update Alert: FxFactory 3.0 | Scott Simmons | ProVideoCoalition
FxFactory, the filter engine for FCP and After Effects gets an update:

This update to the popular plug-in architecture introduces not just a lot of new effects but a new interface to the actual FxFactory program. This release sees an interesting new color correction tool from Yanobox and the first FxFactory tools from Nattress and an FCPX only transition package from idustrial revolution.

Tech Tues: New Portable & Studio Recorders, Featuring the CineDeck RX
| Tuesday, January 17, 2012 | AbelCine
If you're in New York next week, there's a three hour look at digital recorders with Daine Pearson from CineDeck and AbelCine's Andy Shipsides. They'll be looking at:

Atomos Samurai
AJA Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini
Cinedeck EX and RX
Convergent Design NanoFlash and Gemini 4:4:4
Fast Forward SideKick
Sound Devices PIX 240

Making a Norwegian kid’s dream come true | Andre Rettedal | Denton Distribution
Ed Burns made a movie for $9,000. This kid shot his film in 6 days with £2700 and sold it at the Cannes Film Festival (2011). Note that this report is from the distributor:

Denton Distribution have made a Norwegian kid, who struggles to even speak English, a very ecstatic person and are now distributing the film worldwide. Who says you need £1million to make a film? Andre has proved all you need is £3000 and a lot of determination. Recently lauded as the “Norwegian Tarantino” by Norwegian Press, Andre’s future is bright!

How Stanley Kubrick Invented the Modern Box-Office Report (By Accident)
| Mike Kaplan | moviefone
This article explains how Kubrick went about handling the roll-out of his movie A Clockwork Orange.

And so, for the next six weeks, Maureen, a sweet lady from St. Albans, entered the figures from The Music Box in Chicago and The Orson Welles in Boston and the Bijou in St. Louis and a thousand additional American cinemas onto individual pages of accounting paper, which were then compiled into looseleaf notebooks, alphabetically listed by city and subdivided by cinema. This hand-crafted data base would be our bible, guiding our directives to Warner Bros. concerning which cinemas should show A Clockwork Orange.

Book Review: Cinematography | Jason Spencer | digital hippos
Review of the book FilmCraft: Cinematography:

This book isn't really here to be a how to guide but rather a look into the world of the people behind the camera and what all goes into the choices they make on a daily basis. There is plenty to learn from what they say but if you're looking for someone to tell you what to do you are reading the wrong book. The best thing that this book teaches is that each and every film you may work on is going to be different and you will have to adjust to fit the needs of the story being told.

George Lucas says Hollywood won't support black films | BBC
Lucas appeared on The Daily Show earlier this week and said that he couldn't get any major studio to touch Red Tails:

He claimed major film studios would not back the movie because "there's no major white roles in it at all".

"I showed it to all of them and they said, 'No. We don't know how to market a movie like this,'" he said.

"They don't believe there's any foreign market for it, and that's 60% of their profit," he added.