Notes On Video

5 Things They Don’t Tell You About Being a First-Time Director | Vulture You're standing in the way of your own movie. Something I didn’t know going in is that first-time directors are considered by financiers to be "deadly attachments," meaning that even if financiers are interested in your script and your vision, you are still considered to be a strike against their desire to invest in the film.  SONY RX10: A VIDEO JOURNALISTS DELIGHT? | News Shooter Dan Chung likes the look of the Sony RX10's video capabilities too: ...the RX10 has a number of features not seen together before now in a small camera. It has a built-in 3 f-stop ND filter, clean HDMI feed for outputting to a monitor or external recorder (via micro-HDMI socket), zebras (settable from 70% to 100%) and peaking for focus and exposure assist, a mic input and optional XLR audio jackpack, a headphone jack and an OLED electronic viewfinder. Review of the iPhone 5S 120fps super slow motion | Phi...

Sony RX10 Review -- First Impressions | Imaging Resource I'll admit that I didn't really look that closely at the new Sony still camera announcements yesterday, but now reading more of the press these cameras look to have some interesting video functionality. Reading this write-up on the RX10 it appears that it reads out the whole chip and has improved video processing, and it has built-in neutral density filters (at least that's what the articles say.) Is this going to be a killer video camera in disguise? At over $1,200   with a fixed lens you might be better to save your money for a real video camera, but it's intriguing. Will have to wait for more reviews: It didn't completely eliminate moiré patterns, but they were greatly reduced relative to just about every other camera we've seen, and there were no false-color artifacts to be seen anywhere. Not only that, but the video itself was very clean and crisp-looking, so the reduction in false color and ...

Way too busy yesterday... Cinematographer Zach Zamboni on Creativity and Shooting with Just Two Primes My interview with Zach Zamboni, a cinematographer on Anthony Bourdain’s series Parts Unknown has been  published over at Filmmaker Magazine . Zach spoke at Rule Boston last month and it was a very interesting talk about creativity and filming (there's a link to a video of the talk there too.) Phantom Anti-Jello Device This arrived in the mail. I haven't been able to do anything other than take it out of the package. There's no instructions; but I think i can put it together! Cooke Lenses Went to an interesting presentation by  Les Zellan , chairman of Cooke Optics and Jon Fauer, ASC (Publisher and Editor of Film and Digital Times) at Talamas last night. Les gave a fascinating talk about how Cooke lenses are made, what the Cooke "look" is, and also some details on new technology they recently announced. I was fascinated by his descriptions of t...

Reader Paul Antico reports: It looks like we will get Mavericks on the 22nd. (The Apple event has yet to be announced by Apple, but it has been confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, the loop.com, And the usual reliable sources.) I think we will see MacPros available for preorder, with sale anywhere from the 22nd to November (more likely). I think we will definitely see the long overdue Retina Macbook Pros with Haswell. (Mavericks definitely increases battery life on the current model however). And of course the new iPads. All of that said, Adobe is on track for a big CC update today; as early as a week and a half ago in their forums they still maintain that is the date by telling people there are various bug fixes in it to be addressed "in our next release on Oct 15th". UPDATE 12:00pm: Adobe Customer Care has tweeted: Adobe Customer Care  ‏ @ AdobeCare 3h   astralape Hi,we originally intended to release CC updates today Oct 15th however we need more time for ad...

A price has been finalized for the Panasonic AG-AC8, a budget shoulder-mount camcorder. It looks like it will retail for $1,200 in the US . It replaces the AG-AC7 , and Panasonic's latest press release says it will ship in October. Make no mistake, it's a stripped down camera, but it does include dual recording slots with either simultaneous or relay recording. I have the much earlier AG-HMC70P. For some situations, it's great to have a shoulderable camera, and for the price, the AG-HMC70P was great. Especially because it had two XLR audio inputs (which I wish the AG-AC7/8 had.) The thing I'd complain about with the AG-HMC70P is that you really had very little image control; it is really a full auto camera. I haven't used the AG-AC7, so I don't know what these models are like. Other News The ultimate Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera lens – Sigma 18-35mm F1.8 with Speed Booster | EOSHD I would really love to see how this lens does against a $...

Gravity: vfx that’s anything but down to earth | Mike Seymour | FXGuide The Gravity team tested a number of systems (see below), with the final solution to have a small number of sets and then a LED ‘light box’ set used for the complex zero gravity work. Here, the actors, primarily Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, were filmed acting inside the box that had projected from it the correct environment the actor was meant to be in. Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón reveals studio pressure to change story | The Guardian But the director said: "With making a film it's like trying to create a tune in the shower while you have a hundred people singing around you. You have to focus yourself in on the tune that you're trying to create. Because you have hundreds of people singing different songs at the same time around you." Sony F5 / F55 Optical Low-Pass Filters | Adam Wilt | DVInfo What if you could swap out the camera’s OLPF as needed for different situations? W...