Notes On Video

How often do companies try to suppress information using copyright takedown claims? That's what I was wondering yesterday. Here's another example reported by Ars Technica ; KTVU, who had that unfortunate incident with the pilot names on the Asiana Airlines crash attempted to suppress the video by posting take down claims on YouTube. It seems they gave up after a day or so...(you can't suppress the really big stuff.) Kickstarter Project Canceled After Dude Spends All the Money | Gawker This is interesting; guy makes $120,000 and blows it all on...well we're not too sure exactly on what, but he's given up on the project. I thought this response way interesting. I wonder what the results are for Kickstarter projects: Michael Scott ‏@DorkmanScott I've backed 23, 22 of which succeeded; to date received rewards from 2. RT @E_MARSTON of the 4 i've donated to i've gotten one postcard. Meanwhile, Backstreet Boy Nick Carter is raising money on IndieG...

Den Lennie has posted a story on Facebook about a short video review he posted on Vimeo getting taken down due to a Copyright Infringement claim from one of the manufacturers in the test. What's disturbing is that in the thread of the post, a representative from the company actually seems to admit that they made the claim because they didn't like the results, not because of any copyright claim. In a first message they state " We just feel that the test was not fair or representative of our product ," but in their second post they state: You are completely right, we should have just contacted you directly to arrange the re-test rather than acted via Vimeo, please accept our sincere apologies for that. We of course have no issue at all with you posting the results of the re-test all we wanted was just to ensure the test was representative , there was nothing more to it than that. This is, frankly, shocking. While the internet is a sea of copyright infringement,...

Completely un-video related, I just ordered a Yamaha StagePas 400i . [ We're getting the band back together-Ed]  I was looking for something simple and light weight for vocals and guitar amplification. I nearly went with a mixer and powered speakers. Getting a dedicated mixer might have been the better choice if we had larger - or any - aspirations, but simplicity and lightness seemed the way to go. The 400i is a new model; the previous models (the 300 ) were considered good for what they were, but the effects were criticized a lot. Yamaha re-engineered the effects in the 400i , so I'm hopeful they are useable. You don't get a lot of choice in effects, but again, we're looking for simplicity. Back to the video stuff Canon has a 50mm f/1.8 IS coming? CanonRumors reports that maybe Canon has a 50mm f/1.8 IS coming. Canon currently has three 50mm lenses; the $125 f/1.8 II , the  $399 f/1.4 , and the $1,439 f/1.2L monster. CanonRumors wonder if it will replace...

VFX Color Grading in After Effects - a quick tutorial for After Effects users showing how to create more dynamic images by adjusting multiple copies of the same video. You can do similar things in grading programs like Resolve , but if you have After Effects and just started playing with it, this could be a useful tutorial. Animated Font - Franchise This is sort of cool; an animated font. The Type Face was designed by one person, then animated by 110 animators in After Effects . " The file contains all the keyframes, expressions and artwork from the artists. This makes it a great learning source for motion students and professionals. " Works for After Effects CS5 and up. It's listed as "Free" but you must "pay" with a Tweet or a Post (to Facebook.) Prolost Burns Preset for Adobe After Effects CS6 Stu Maschwitz has posted an After Effects preset that creates zooming/dissolving photo montages. It's $2.99. Or if you have a Mac...

The most interesting thing to come across the wires yesterday was this low-light comparison between the ARRI Alexa, Canon C300 and Sony F55 by Thomas Weber . The Alexa was rated the best picture below 800, while the F55 was the best at very high ISO's. The C300 did well in low light, and was no slouch considering it's considerably cheaper that the Alexa or F55. Want to get into movie production? MovieScope offers two articles which paint a somewhat contradictory and confused picture of what's going on. In " The Film Release Slot Machine " distribution experts explain "how a decline in studio production bring opportunities for the independent sector," while in " Digital Distribution and the Invisibility Dilemma ," "Industry analyst Michael Gubbins examines why the growth of digital cinema and on-demand platforms may see independent content disappearing…" It's sort of like when matter and anti-matter come together... But w...

The weather has cooled down a bit here in Boston after several days of 90+ temps, so that's good news. Unfortunately, the big studios didn't get a lot of good news this weekend, with R.I.P.D . and Turbo performing worse than expected (that's not exactly true, the word on R.I.P.D . has been bad for the last couple of weeks at least, so it probably lived up to low expectations.) According to the New York Times , Hollywood has now sustained six big-budget duds since May 1. Ouch . Meanwhile, over at Slate , Peter Suderman has written about the book ' Save The Cat! " and blames it's adoption as a bible of screenwriting for many of the problems in modern movies. I was intrigued, as I was interviewing a scriptwriter a couple of weeks and he referenced this book (which I hadn't really come across before.) ...this book broke down the three-act structure into a detailed “beat sheet”: 15 key story “beats”—pivotal events that have to happen—and then gave eac...