The News

What Screens Want | Frank Chimero
Interesting discussion about software and how it's changing the way we interact with things...and it has a bit about the history of motion pictures too:
Muybridge had discovered how to bottle movement, and like any good inventor, he did experiments to see if he could reanimate his frozen horses. Muybridge’s first attempts to set time in motion were to print the high-speed photographs radially on a glass disc and spin it while it was lit from behind. He called it a zoopraxiscope.


VFX Protest Planned for Obama’s DreamWorks Trip | Animation Magazine
Hoping to raise awareness about the plight of U.S.-based visual effects artist, activists are planning a protest during President Obama’s visit to the DreamWorks’ campus in Glendale this Tuesday (Nov.26). The Hollywood Reporter says about 500 green T-shirts have been purchased by organizers in the hopes that artists will wear them to express their support for this cause.
‘Go Green’ Demonstration Details | VFX Soldier



Screenwriting Down to the Atoms: The Absolute Essentials | Smashwords
The first four chapters of this book are free!
This simplified 4-chapter edition of "Screenwriting Down to the Atoms" hand-picks the most essential sections of Michael Welles Schock's innovative new approach to screencraft - and offers them absolutely free. The selected chapters represent the core of the book's unique method, most of it unavailable in any other source. These are the real essentials every screenwriter must know.


The Weinstein Company, Seeking Hits, Shift to TV | The New York Times
The heavy investment in the production and sale of series signals a strategic shift that is meant to anchor Weinstein, a midsize independent studio, almost equally in television and film. It mirrors changes occurring elsewhere in Hollywood: Last week, for instance, the much larger Sony Pictures Entertainment said it would trim its film slate, while building up TV.


The Perils of Home Theater | prolost
When I finally got the rear surrounds mounted and wired (speaker wire is another perilous rathole to dodge for now), I popped in Pixar’s Brave, which features an optional 7.1 Dolby TrueHD soundtrack. I waded through the punishing pre-menu crap that defines the Blu-ray experience, selected the 7.1 option, and played the movie.
And no sound came out of my rear surrounds.


Getting SpectraCal’s ‘Color Checker’ and ‘Virtual Forge’ Working on One Mac | The Tao of Color
In September and October the Tao Colorist Newsletter ran a special with SpectraCal (it’s still available if you click through here). It was a 4-piece bundle allowing you to check the accuracy of your reference display – to let you affirmatively know if your display is (or is not) out of alignment and in need of professional calibration.
This blog post will walk you through how to set up this system on a single Mac – which is a bit of a chore since one element of the bundle (CalMan Studio) is PC software and the other element (Virtual Forge) of the bundle is Mac software.


4 Camera live shoot…Edited on FCPX Multicam | HD Warrior
The JVCs worked well together giving us a good clean shot in low light at 0dB, Scott was using the Manfrotto 504HD, the C300 was on the stage on a Millar Solo ENG tripod with a Compact 25 head, Sean was using his JVC 600 on a Manfrotto 501 HDV and I had the Lumix GH3 and a light weight DSLR Manfrotto 500AH head.






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