Quick Links

RED Scarlet X – Review | Greg Blakey | Melbourne Geek
An in-depth look at the RED Scarlet X:

Quite frankly this image resolution is ridiculous in most instances, but so damn good. It is a ‘get out of jail free’ card when it comes to cropping or re framing a shot. I would not necessarily go to 1-to-1 pixel’s as you lose some of the clarity, but you do have a lot of room to move. Then once you go down to HD everything pulls together, it feels crisp and solid.

Final Cut Pro X Advanced Tutorial - Multi-Cam in 10.0.3 | Dan Allen | YouTube
One of the first tutorials I've seen on using the new multi-cam feature:

In this HD Voice Tutorial for Apple Final Cut Pro 10 we learn how to use the built in Multi cam feature as of the recent update version 10.0.3 which automatically aligns your video footage, clips, material and audio streams, clips media etc based on either Timecode, audio waveforms and sounds as well as date of creation. A very flexible advanced tool.

Adobe Production Premium v5.5 | Michael Hanish | TV Technology
An in-depth review of the Production Premium Suite:

Since many of the real-time playback and effects features, as well as rendering and encoding, are based on graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated features built on NVIDIA CUDA, one of the biggest productivity boosts you can give to the performance of Creative Suite is through the installation and configuration of an approved NVIDIA GPU card to boost the Mercury Playback Engine.

Do More With Your DSLR: Working with Available Light | Vimeo Video School
A look at setting up camera exposure and dealing with lighting:

Certain cameras will allow you to manually adjust the white balance. On a DSLR, this is usually done by adjusting the Kelvin color temperature. As the Bui brothers explain, every type of light has a different temperature. Warmer temperatures are orange, cooler temperatures are blue, and each temperature corresponds to a number value. Daylight is usually somewhere around 5500K. Number values above that correspond to cooler light, and numbers below that correspond to warmer light. If you know the temperature of the light you're in, adjust according to that.

Canon XF Plugin for Final Cut Pro X 2.0 | Canon USA
Canon has released a plug-in for Final Cut Pro X which will allow Canon C300 owners to import and edit footage. Choose Mac OS X v10.7 from the "Choose Operating System" menu.



New Web Show: “In Production” launches! | Carey Dissmore Blog
A webcast in which Carey Dissmore and Steve Oakley discuss film production tools and topics, in the first two they talk about color grading:

This show will be produced periodically as series around specific topics. Our first series is on the topic of Color Grading and DaVinci Resolve. This series is comprised of 6 episodes, to be released weekly. The first two episodes are embedded below.

Why 4K TVs are stupid | Geoffrey Morrison | C|Net
Why you don't need 4K on your TV:

Let's put this in the real world. I sit 9 feet away from a 102-inch screen. At that distance, I can't see the pixel structure of a 1080p projector. If I lean forward a bit, so my eyes are 7 to 8 feet from the screen, I can see pixels on bright images. If I zoom the projector out to fill all 127.75 inches of my 2.35:1 screen, I can sometimes see pixels depending on the projector.

Getting Started with Film Kit in GenArts Monsters GT v7 | GenArts
Demo of using the Film Kit effects:

Join Todd Prives as he demonstrates how to use the Film Kit collection of plugins in new Monsters GT v7. Film Kit, which includes film spoil effect Burn and light leak effects EdgeLeak and LightLeak, is also available for purchase individually for $99 on select host platforms.

Young Filmmaker's Talents Are Anything But Shipwrecked | 25 Hour Day
An interview with 16 year-old filmmaker Ben Kadie:

Two film books greatly influence me: Rebel without a Crew and DV Rebel. Both say that you don’t need a lot of people and resources to make a film; you just need to use what you have. For example, between seventh and eighth grade I wanted to tell a story set in the Egypt of 1897. I filmed Murder at the Pharaoh’s Grave in my backyard, with a green screen, a tent made from cheap fabric, and 100 pounds of sand. By replacing the green with my digital matte paintings, I was able to tell a big story with little resources.

The Rewrite ~Jill Remensnyder | Zacuto
Another in this series on script writing:

To my knowledge, one of the only screenplays to ever shoot from the first draft was Chinatown and you’re not Robert Towne. The biggest problem I see new writers face is that they fall in love with every word they write. When you become emotionally involved with scenes that don’t move the story forward, or you develop unhealthy relationships with characters your audience can’t connect with, it’s going to be a rough break up with much heartache.

11 Tips For Planning A Green Screen Video Production | Chad Vossen | ReelSEO
Surprising article about shooting green screen (surprising because the site is devoted to Search Engine Optimization, not video production):

4. Consider perspectives when designing a background – If you’re using more than one camera, make sure that the background perspective changes to match the camera angle change. If the camera angle and/or framing on the person changes, but the background doesn’t, your video’s going to look like a cheap local cable spot. Think about each camera’s focal length. Make sure the close-up shot is more out of focus than the wide and that the angle of the background matches the camera’s angle change.

We’re Living in a Golden Age of Documentary Filmmaking - But you’d never know it from watching the Oscars | Eric Hynes | Slate
It seems that documentaries get the short end of the stick at the Oscars, but I wonder if comparing total grosses - rather than total number of movies - things would still seem so out of balance:

Of the more than 800 feature films released theatrically in America last year, more than 300 were documentaries. (At premiere marketplace festivals like Sundance and Toronto, the ratio is similar.) Yet at the Academy Awards, where the film industry lavishly celebrates itself, all of those films compete for one measly award: best documentary. By comparison, dramatic features get 20 chances for an Oscar.