Notes On Video

This weekend is Independent Film Festival Boston 2014 . In addition to a whole bunch of screenings, there are four panels: MAKE IT (INDIE) IN MASS Who says only Hollywood blockbusters get made here? Filming in Massachusetts is a great deal at any budget. Find out all you need to know about appying for the tax incentive, working with unions, and the differences between shooting docs vs. narratives. ART OF DOCUMENTARY EDITING: CASE STUDIES Moderator: Garret Savage, President of the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship DO'S AND DON'TS OF DIY FILM DISTRIBUTION Moderator: Erin Trahan, Editor of The Independent and co-editor of The Independent's Guide to Film Distribution DOCUMENTARIES AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF DECEPTION Moderator: Chico Colvard, UMass Boston Film Series curator And this is the current list of films with filmmakers (or documentary subjects) in attendance: Narrative Features: A FOR ALEX BENEATH THE HARVEST SKY BIG SIGNIFICANT THINGS DEAR WHITE PE...

I thought I was clear about what cards worked with the Sony FDR-AX100 in my previous posts , but an email from a reader suggests I wasn't as clear as I thought: Two days before a three week shoot my producer says he got the FDR-AX100 from B&H as a backup camera. He didn't get any cards, but I looked on B&H and had three cards that were listed as accessories, so I thought I was good. Of course, after meeting the producer, the cards wouldn't record 4K or even HD as XQD. I noticed on your blog you had a similar problem, but I have yet to see a confirmation that the Sony 64GB SDXC Class 10 UHS-1 card, in fact, does work. Your most recent post about the subject even further puts doubt in my mind. I would greatly appreciate it if you could confirm that card actually works. So just to be clear, I tried one SD card that the camera wouldn't work with, but it accepted this card: Sony 64GB SDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card . So far it seems to work fine; though I can...

APRIL 24th BOSCPUG: Director Graham Elliott and Screening of “New York in Motion” We are pleased to feature a special conversation with director Graham Elliott as he screens “New York in Motion,” his celebrated 60 minute documentary and dazzling portrait of the motion graphics industry in New York and breathtaking visual journey behind the scenes and screens of the industry that shapes how we see the world today. April 26th CAMERA DYNAMICS Workshop & Seminar | Massachusetts Production Coalition The panel will explore how camera movement can enhance a shot; furthering our understanding of character and plot development; building dramatic tension; transitioning between dissimilar emotions or geographies, and enabling our immersion into the scene before us. Technical and logistical aspects of camera motion will be discussed in addition to the artistic and aesthetic. They also have another workshop in early May May 10 | P.A. Workshop | Massachusetts Production Coalition ...

One of the best audio purchases I ever made was a wireless lapel mic. If you're a one-man documentary crew, wireless mics are about the easiest way to get "pretty good" audio, in most situations. Sure, they aren't perfect, but I'd tried shotgun mics and hand mics before that, and they had their own problems. I bought a Sony unit years ago, but I had to replace it back in 2010 when the FCC cracked down on the use of the 700MHz frequency , so I bought another Sony unit . The secret problem of wireless mics is that they are operating in available spectrum (currently 600MHz), not spectrum that's been specifically made available for them, and if the FCC decides to change things, we'll find ourselves having to replace everything. As we already did. And now it appears we are about to again, as the FCC is planning to have an auction next year, and the 600 MHz is going to be up for grabs. At the moment I have no idea what this will mean for current model...

Andrew Reid of EOSHD takes a look at Sony's FDR-AX100 in this piece:  A very brief look at the Sony AX100 4K Handycam and uncompressed 4K HDMI In it he asks this question: XAVC-S on the AX100 uses a bitrate of 60Mbit/s for 4K. It is a shame there’s no higher quality mode for those who don’t mind slightly larger file sizes. XAVC is an important new proprietary Sony standard. Why such a tepid implementation?  And when I saw that I thought "oh! oh! I think I know why" - because I encountered this when I was buying a memory card for the FDR-AX100 . There's a couple of confusing things about buying memory cards for this camera; one is that the camera specs are given in Mbit/s (or Mbps) while the memory cards seem to all be spec'd in MB/s. Here's the manual: So if you're buying the FDR-AX100 you see that it writes at 60 Mbps, but if you look at Sony's own card , they quote: The 64GB SDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card from Sony features a ma...