Notes On Video

John Brawley long interview on the BMDCC | EOSHD Some info on the upcoming BlackMagic Design Cinema Camera : It's finally confirmed, rolling shutter is a feature, which is weird if they're using the rumoured Beyer Dynamics sensor, as that one has a global shutter mode. If that's indeed the sensor, it would make a lot of sense to use that mode, or even better, have the option to go between the global shutter mode at 24/25/30fps and the 60fps rolling shutter mode it's capable of, but it probably isn't even using that sensor. New Sony NEX-EA50EH shoulder mount 35mm camcorder. Power Zoom lens for FS100 and FS700 | Alister Chapman | XDCAM User Getting back to the camera, because the sensor is a 16.1MP APS-C sensor designed originally for still photos, there will be more moire and aliasing than you would see from a dedicated video camera sensor because the optical low pass filter is designed for still photo resolutions as opposed to HD video. Although based on the...

Completely out of left field, Sony announced a new large-sensor camera; the NEX-EA50 . It's a little hard to completely figure this one out and how it will compare to their existing cameras (the NEX-VG20 , NEX-FS100 and NEX-FS700 .) While it looks like a big upgrade from the NEX-VG20 in that it has XLR inputs and a shoulder-mount design, it doesn't have the ND filters of the FS700 , and there's speculation that the image quality will be closer to the VG20 than the FS100/700 . Sony has also come up with a power zoom version of their 18-200 lens. Not the fastest lens around, but for shoulder shooting (and with no ND) maybe you won't be shooting wide-open anyway! Until the reviews hit, we have to guess; this probably won't effect sales of the FS700 much at all, but even if the image quality isn't quite as good as the FS100 , this camera may spell the end of that one. UPDATE : B & H has it listed at $4,000 with expected delivery of October 15th. That...

ALEX BUONO: SHOOTING FOR “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE” | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine This article is based on the talk Alex gave recently in Boston: Alex Buono is perhaps best known for his work with the Saturday Night Live Film Unit. He shot the current opening for SNL, as well as many of the fake commercials seen on the show, but his passion is documentary and making independent films. “I’m always trying to get the next one off the ground,” says Buono, “and SNL, as much as I like it, it’s a lot of fun and I really like who I’m working with, [but] it’s this great day job I do while I’m trying to get a movie [going].” Ellen Kuras: The Biggest Crisis in the Digital Realm is Storage and Preservation | TribecaFilm With the ever-changing formats of digital production, acclaimed cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Summer of Sam; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is worried: how will filmmakers preserve their work? ’4K’ Video: A Hope for Japan’s Electronics Makers? | Daisuke Wakabaya...

I saw Woody Allen's latest, To Rome With Love the night before last. It had some funny moments - some of the scenes of the opera staged with the singer in a shower were hilarious - but it was too fragmented and uneven. Also, it was hard to tell what it was really about; was it a rumination on fame? Or the shallowness of relationships? It certainly wasn't really about Rome, or what the people of Rome were really like. it could have been set in London or Paris just as easily. Adobe is doing a free webinar on Speedgrade today. You could probably still sign up for it:  Upcoming: SpeedGrade webinar for editors It would seem that teenage daughters have no interest in seeing the latest Bourne movie. With summer temperatures in my house remaining high, my MacBook Pro is still getting hot, but I havent really had problems with the trackpad since it was misbehaving the other day. BUT I've been rather nervous about it. That's a problem with gear; when you start dist...

How to shoot interviews on the 5D mark III | Momentum Blog Tips on gear for doing interviews I also had with me 3 more lenses: Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II and Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L. For a second / backup camera i had my trusty Canon 7D with the Canon EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS that only mount on Canon EF-S bodies and it's my favorite 1.6x lens. With the latest Canon 7D Firmware Update (2.0) we also now have Manual Audio Control. Working with multicam in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6  | Scott Simmons | ProVideoCoalition You can think of a PPro multicam sequence kind of like a sync map because that’s really what it is only you’ll see it and use it after a multicam clip is created (though you still might want to create a sync map before creating a mulicam sequence just to get that top down overview of all your angles and how they relate to reach other). If Premiere Pro’s multicam sequence sounds a lot like FCPX’s Angle Editor when we’re done with this discussion then ...

Product Review: Magic Bullet Denoiser II | Jeff Foste | Pro Video Coalition Denoiser II just plain works and is quite robust. Even though it can be a bit time-consuming to render 1080p footage on a moderately-equipped machine, the final results will not only salvage otherwise unusable footage, but you will get the value of the $99 stand-alone price back in the first project you use it on! It also comes included with Magic Bullet Suite 11.4.1 Prores Faceoff | Color Studies How lossy is Prores LT compared to Prores HQ? I was surprised that, under the hood, the images from both codecs would be so different since they looked identical when converted from the original. Is Prores LT a total dealbreaker? Not necessarily. I could probably refine the skintone key in LT and get it looking pretty good, especially when blurring to include more values that the key didn’t get, but why not work with the best quality possible? Hard drives are cheap. lynda.com to host a free webinar on onl...

Black Magic Camera – Podcast EP #3 – John Brawley Interview | Podcast | FStopAcademy John's been playing with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and is interviewed on this podcast: In this exclusive interview I asked John about his career, how he got to where he is now shooting prime time Australian TV drama and feature films around the world and he also reveals how the Black Magic Design Cinema Camera originated as a passing comment. John has also been working closely with the design team at Black Magic and how responsive they have been to his suggestions to make sure the image from the Black Magic Camera is just right before release later this month. Making Team GB “Don’t Stop Me Now” for Adidas UK | Philip Bloom | Blog Philip had to shoot this ad very quickly: We had massive cue cards to help, a few painful attempts at me singing it to them to get the pace and timings, and of course nice loud playback. Essentially a lip sync music video with lots of people, quite the oppos...

Alistar Chapman 's XDCAM-user site is a great resource and something everyone should keep an eye on. Three of his latest blog posts are of particular interest: ' What to do if your highlights look clipped. FS700 in particular, but applies to many cameras | Alister Chapman | XDCAM User The first is that in the majority of setting the FS700 like most pro video cameras (EX, F3 etc included) records up to 109% (data bits 16 to 255). In the video world white is bit 235 (940 in 10 bit) or 100% and this is supposed to be your maximum with 104% typically allowed for broadcast. Anything above white is known as a superwhite. Why isn’t the PMW-200 as sensitive as an F3 or FS100? Pixel size is the primary thing that determines the signal to noise ratio of the camera. Cameras like the FS100,F3, C300 and GH2 etc have big sensors with big pixels, that’s why they have low noise. That’s why 1/3″ cameras don’t do as well as half inch and half inch doesn’t do as well as 2/3″ and so on. Mo...