Notes On Video

3 Minute Short Film Challenge BTS | Aaron Strader | Vimeo I already wrote about the 3 Minute FIlm Challenge ( Filmmaker :  INSIDE A THREE-MINUTE FILM COMPETITION ) but Aaron Strader made a Behind-The-Scenes video: I was asked at the beginning of the day to shoot a BTS by Paul Antico and Rick Macomber. Shot everything with my Canon 60d. Big thanks to Todd Mahoney for supplying me with great GoPro video! Part of the July 1, 2012 "Under 3 Minute Film Challenge" sponsored by Anticipate Media and Macomber Productions. For this challenge each cinematographer, using a pen as a prop, had to produce a narrative script and shoot it in a few hours on location at The Willows Park in Salem, MA. In addition the phrase "This isn't going to be easy" also had to be used in the story. 3 Minute Short Film Challenge BTS from Aaron Strader on Vimeo . Interview with the creator of the Automatic Speech Alignment feature in Audition CS6 | Ellen Wixted | Adobe Brian King ...

The next BIG THING is coming | Sony Professional | Facebook Sony Professional has posted the following graphic on their Facebook page and invited people to guess what's coming. Given that they say to stay tuned to www.sony.com/xdcam , it would appear to be some sort of professional video camera. Could it be a new version of the PMW-F3 ? Or 4K support for the NEX-FS700 ? Or something else entirely? Preparing for Battle as a No-Budget Filmmaker | LEWIS MCGREGOR | Dare Dreamer Lewis documents his low-budget production: There is a high chance that a no-budget filmmaker will have 3 things — a DSLR, a pirated copy of Adobe’s software, and an overall amount of knowledge of special effects from Video Copilot. When you start the film you start at the very bottom, once your cast has been cast, locations found and it comes to the end of your pre-production as a no-budget filmmaker you may have noticed you have solely inherited these responsibilities Epic Slow Mo with the Sony FS70...

INSIDE A THREE-MINUTE FILM COMPETITION | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine I finally finished the write-up of a recent gathering of local DPs and actors to shoot some quick projects. It's up on Filmmaker's site: Freelance videographer/filmmaker Sean Meehan had connected with Rick just two months earlier when Jared Abrahms had retweeted that Rick was looking for a shooter to assist on a documentary. For this event, “Rick put out that he was looking for some actors,” said Sean, “and I responded to him on Twitter asking, ‘What age range are you looking for? I might have some people.’ He told me the age range, and then in the second tweet right afterwards he said ‘Also, do you want to work with the C300 in a little while?’, and I jumped at it.” EXCLUSIVE: Blackmagic Answers Your Questions about Their New Cinema Camera | FilmmakerIQ An interview with Blackmagic President Dan May on the forthcoming Blackmagic Digital Cinema Camera : [BMD] We are just waiting finish a few ...

14-year veteran of the Saturday Night Live Film Unit, Alex Buomo will share how shooting with Canon DSLRs, along with the new Canon C300 has revolutionized the way he works. WHEN: Wednesday, August 1 5:30-6:30pm Food & Drinks 6:30-9pm Presentation with Alex Buono WHERE: WGBH Yawkey Theater One Guest Street, Brighton, MA RSVP : events@rule.com

“THE SOLAR ODYSSEY”: SHOOTING WITH THE SONY NEX-FS100, PART TWO | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine The second part of an interview I did with Todd Mahoney about his experience with the Sony NEX-FS100: You were using the kit lens? Yes. The only problem with the kit lens is if you are trying to do a zoom pull, it’s very tight. It’s not smooth enough; that was the only downside of the lens. I think that with the FS700, when they make a lens for the rocker, that will solve that. Overview of Miller Compass series of tripods | Philip Bloom Philip looks at just some of the tripods he uses: A good tripod should be right up at the top of your list when you buy kit, along with some basic lighting and basic sound gear. Before a camera, before lenses. Why? Because these are not camera specific. They will also last you through multiple cameras. A good tripod will last a hell of a long time, that is if you spend money. I had been asked to recommend a good tripod recently for $100. I could...

Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 provides powerful, advanced video color grading | Jeff Foster | MacWorld While it’s a powerful color grading and filmic effects creation tool with 3D stereographic finishing capabilities, it may not be for everyone, or practical to use on every video production you edit. The workflow takes some getting used to, but if its effects are needed, the learning curve will prove worthwhile. Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 Review | Ron Risman | CameraTown Premiere Pro is not a consumer piece of software, and as such, it really shines when it has the necessary power, ram, and storage to let itself go. While Premiere Pro CS6 will run on most computers with a minimum of 4GB of memory, there are some basic hardware requirements that your PC should have to really allow the software to shine. First, your PC needs to have a 64-bit processor (most of the computers in the past 3-4 years do). Why Can't We Have Beautiful Digital Cinema Cameras? | Joe Marine | NoFilmSchool Article...

The second part of Zacuto's Revenge of the Great Camera Shootout 2012 has been posted. To recap: In Part One of Revenge of the Great Camera Shootout 2012 you were presented with unlabeled footage of a complex party scene designed by Bruce Logan ASC, the test administrator. We heard form legendary DP’s in the industry talking about what being a “cinematographer” really means to them; in many cases challenging us to rethink our understanding of camera technology and how it relates to filmmaking–and how all of that relates to talent, creativity, collaboration and experience. In this episode you get to see the reactions of audiences to the tests, and you also learn which camera was which: After watching it, these were the takeaways for me: How subjective any test and comparison is How different DPs set things up differently, so the results were even more subjective. It's really impossible to produce a completely unbiased comparison While a couple of cameras visually stood ...

A Quick Hands-On with the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera | CreativeVideo CVP in the UK got to see the prototype of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera [$2,995.00], and offer some thoughts: The first thing that everyone at CVP who hadn’t previously seen the camera at NAB said was “I really didn’t expect it to be that big!” – It seems that most people expect the Cinema Camera to be not much bigger than an iPhone, yet the reality is that it’s a fairly chunky unit that weighs in at a hefty 1.8Kg for the body only… At this weight it’s far heavier than an SLR and the lack of any natural handgrip position means that in standard form it’s really suitable for tripod mount use only. A new hands-on report with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Andrew Reid offers his interpretations of CVP's thoughts: Raw (and even ProRes compared to highly compressed DSLR footage) allows you to bring up a hell of a lot of shadow detail. So even with a sensor rated at a native ISO of 400 r...

At the recent Three Minute Film Challenge DP Brandon Vincent was documenting the event with a DSLR film camera, and I had to ask him why: You’re shooting film today. Why are you doing that? Well, I’ve been meaning too. I found an old, well it’s not super old, but an older film camera that I used back in college. And I figured I'd find some old film, stick it in, and make myself shoot film. I’m really doing it to make myself more selective. I don’t want to be just popping off pictures, and hope that I get a good shot. I want to make sure that what I’m shooting is exactly what I want, everything’s the way that I want it, and I’m not going to bracket 6 pictures just to make sure I get my exposure right. I want to be as selective as I can and not waste the images, because I’ve only got one roll of film today, it’s 24 frames, I’ve got to make them count. Two weeks later I checked in with Brandon to see how the pictures turned out. Unfortunately, the place I used to go is cl...

It was back to the Brattle Theatre Trailer Smackdown last night for a fun evening of bad trailers and a competition of trailers made by 17 different teams just for the event. I wrote about the Smackdown last year, and it wasn't that much different this year; only the trailers had changed! It's fascinating how bad, odd and weird some old trailers are! See also  NotesOnVideo : The Joy of the Bad Trailer Here's some that stood out...

Yesterday I went to a Learning Lab at Rule Boston Camera for the Sony NEX-FS700 . I've written up the experience for Filmmaker Magazine: A look at the Sony NEX-FS700 which should be up today. As much as I'm impressed by the engineering and the image of the Canon C300 - and the fact that it works with Canon lenses natively - if I was buying a camera today I think I'd be drawn to the NEX-FS700 . Of course, this is all a little moot, as I don't have the money to buy either camera! Speaking of Rule Boston Camera , they have two other Learning Labs and a Pub Night coming up. Be sure to RSVP to events@rule.com : Learning Labs: WED: July 18: LED Lights: Ready For Prime Time with Lighting Designer John Gates 10:00am-12noon WED: July 25: Capturing High-Quality Digital Stills & Multi0Media Content With photographer Steve Dunwell 10:00am-12noon Pub Night: THU: July 26: The Long & WInding Road: Thriving in Today's Film, Video & Digital Ci...

Life after Red | Michael N. Sutton | RedUser Not surprisingly, Mike Sutton 's column yesterday that mentions RED prompts some fiery response in the RedUser forum: I think the point of my article is missed here. Its about progress and making better products as well as company policies, practices, etc in the end. If you think its okay to ban someone for speaking honestly or threatening lawsuits over names like Scarlet for TV's is okay then none of what I write will be acknowledged anyway. Attacking my spelling is fine if that's all you got. I am not a writer I am a shooter. WEEK 2: Setting Up Your Color Correction Workspace | Patrick Inhofer | Splicevine Patrick continues his series on Color Correction, this week: Optimizing Your Room For Color Correction The point of an external monitor is simple. It bypasses your computer’s color management system, which is off-loaded to the monitor. The monitor is fed from a specialized board or box that’s hooked up to your compu...

NEX-FS700 Significantly reduced shutter when in Super Slow Mo! | Alister Chapman | XDCAM Rolling shutter is almost gone when shooting at high speed with the NEX-FS700: This is very interesting and requires further investigation as it suggests that the sensor read out process is different in the high speed mode. It is probably just a significantly faster scan rate, but it could also possibly be a global shutter of some kind. It’s just a shame that you can’t access this read out mode for normal shooting. My 5 cinematography tips |  Twitter Evan Luzi  offered these 5 tips is one post: Use Less Lights Point the Camera & Shoot Bounces Work Gaffers = good Perfection is a Commodity Jake Ures ‏added: 6. Light can never be too soft. 7. A steadicam is not a dolly. 8. Don't move the camera if you don't have to. Sony F65 hands on review part 1 | By Martin Chab | Zitrin A review of Sony's big, expensive camera: Let me tell you one thing. The Latitude of this ca...

NeedCreative Podcast Ep. 3 - It Was A Great 3 Minutes | Anticipate Media A week after doing a three-minute film challenge, Paul, Ric, and friends get together to discuss the results of the project, as well as criticism from Steve Weiss of Zacuto - some people dream of being criticized by Steve Weiss : In this third special episode Jason Sidelinger and Paul Antico talk with special guests DP/Director/Writers Rick Macomber, Matt Stapleton, Sean Meehan, and actress Nicole Trauffer about the first Boston Area "Under 3 Minute" Film Challenge organized by Paul and Rick Editing “The Amazing Spider-Man” | Digital Production Buzz An audio interview with editor  Alan Edward Bell : This time he’s back with stories of editing “The Amazing Spider-Man.” What’s it like working on a high-budget production? How does he organize his edit team? How does he determine the path from dailies to finished movie? How does he balance technology with story-telling? Alan is a great guest – be sur...

Sony NEX-FS700 Kit and Gear Walkthrough | Tony Reale | NextWaveDV Tony talks about what he likes about the Sony NEX-FS700 , and also what gear he likes to use with it. He's a fan of the 18-200 kit lens (with reservations) and likes the Metabones adapter for use with Canon lenses: In this video I talk about my new Sony FS700 video camera. People have asked me why I went from HDSLRs to the new FS700 and I explain my reasons while also showing the gear I have in my kit. KineRAW S8 Camera Test Footage | Cinescopophilia A Chinese company is working on some interesting cameras. A few details can be found here: There are three Chinese KineRaw cameras the KineRaw S35, KineRaw S16 and the KineRaw S8 in the making. [...] and now we see more test footage of the KineRaw S8 camera has been put up by Dan Hudgins. The KineRaw S8 is similar to the KineRAW S35 and KineRAW S16 cameras except for the lack of Cineform compressed recording. and here:   KineRAW S35 Camera Vs Sony F3 Camera ...

Canon Cinema EOS 1D C – Vimeo footage and 4K source file direct from card | Andrew Reid | EOSHD A sample from the Canon 1D C that was posted recently: I’ve had a look at the 4096 x 2048 MOV file in Adobe Premiere Pro at 1:1 (100% view). What do I think of it? Well viewed at 100% it is certainly on the soft side. It does not contain the kind of resolution a standard 1D X still JPEG has but for video it is very good. It is not near what true 4K should look like, but then the only 4K cinema camera on the market than can really be considered ‘true 4K’ is the $70,000 Sony F65 with an oversampling 8K sensor and RGB 4-4-4 colour sampling. Work In Progress: The Digital Bolex Camera Is A Crowdfunded Filmmaking Revolution | Jonathan Poritsky | The Creators Project An interview with the creators of the Digital Bolex .  They say it's on tack for August release, but while there's a lot of history of the project, there's not a lot about the status of the camera itself: ...I want...