Notes On Video

John Brawley long interview on the BMDCC | EOSHD Some info on the upcoming BlackMagic Design Cinema Camera : It's finally confirmed, rolling shutter is a feature, which is weird if they're using the rumoured Beyer Dynamics sensor, as that one has a global shutter mode. If that's indeed the sensor, it would make a lot of sense to use that mode, or even better, have the option to go between the global shutter mode at 24/25/30fps and the 60fps rolling shutter mode it's capable of, but it probably isn't even using that sensor. New Sony NEX-EA50EH shoulder mount 35mm camcorder. Power Zoom lens for FS100 and FS700 | Alister Chapman | XDCAM User Getting back to the camera, because the sensor is a 16.1MP APS-C sensor designed originally for still photos, there will be more moire and aliasing than you would see from a dedicated video camera sensor because the optical low pass filter is designed for still photo resolutions as opposed to HD video. Although based on the...

Completely out of left field, Sony announced a new large-sensor camera; the NEX-EA50 . It's a little hard to completely figure this one out and how it will compare to their existing cameras (the NEX-VG20 , NEX-FS100 and NEX-FS700 .) While it looks like a big upgrade from the NEX-VG20 in that it has XLR inputs and a shoulder-mount design, it doesn't have the ND filters of the FS700 , and there's speculation that the image quality will be closer to the VG20 than the FS100/700 . Sony has also come up with a power zoom version of their 18-200 lens. Not the fastest lens around, but for shoulder shooting (and with no ND) maybe you won't be shooting wide-open anyway! Until the reviews hit, we have to guess; this probably won't effect sales of the FS700 much at all, but even if the image quality isn't quite as good as the FS100 , this camera may spell the end of that one. UPDATE : B & H has it listed at $4,000 with expected delivery of October 15th. That...

ALEX BUONO: SHOOTING FOR “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE” | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine This article is based on the talk Alex gave recently in Boston: Alex Buono is perhaps best known for his work with the Saturday Night Live Film Unit. He shot the current opening for SNL, as well as many of the fake commercials seen on the show, but his passion is documentary and making independent films. “I’m always trying to get the next one off the ground,” says Buono, “and SNL, as much as I like it, it’s a lot of fun and I really like who I’m working with, [but] it’s this great day job I do while I’m trying to get a movie [going].” Ellen Kuras: The Biggest Crisis in the Digital Realm is Storage and Preservation | TribecaFilm With the ever-changing formats of digital production, acclaimed cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Summer of Sam; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is worried: how will filmmakers preserve their work? ’4K’ Video: A Hope for Japan’s Electronics Makers? | Daisuke Wakabaya...

I saw Woody Allen's latest, To Rome With Love the night before last. It had some funny moments - some of the scenes of the opera staged with the singer in a shower were hilarious - but it was too fragmented and uneven. Also, it was hard to tell what it was really about; was it a rumination on fame? Or the shallowness of relationships? It certainly wasn't really about Rome, or what the people of Rome were really like. it could have been set in London or Paris just as easily. Adobe is doing a free webinar on Speedgrade today. You could probably still sign up for it:  Upcoming: SpeedGrade webinar for editors It would seem that teenage daughters have no interest in seeing the latest Bourne movie. With summer temperatures in my house remaining high, my MacBook Pro is still getting hot, but I havent really had problems with the trackpad since it was misbehaving the other day. BUT I've been rather nervous about it. That's a problem with gear; when you start dist...

How to shoot interviews on the 5D mark III | Momentum Blog Tips on gear for doing interviews I also had with me 3 more lenses: Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II and Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L. For a second / backup camera i had my trusty Canon 7D with the Canon EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS that only mount on Canon EF-S bodies and it's my favorite 1.6x lens. With the latest Canon 7D Firmware Update (2.0) we also now have Manual Audio Control. Working with multicam in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6  | Scott Simmons | ProVideoCoalition You can think of a PPro multicam sequence kind of like a sync map because that’s really what it is only you’ll see it and use it after a multicam clip is created (though you still might want to create a sync map before creating a mulicam sequence just to get that top down overview of all your angles and how they relate to reach other). If Premiere Pro’s multicam sequence sounds a lot like FCPX’s Angle Editor when we’re done with this discussion then ...

Product Review: Magic Bullet Denoiser II | Jeff Foste | Pro Video Coalition Denoiser II just plain works and is quite robust. Even though it can be a bit time-consuming to render 1080p footage on a moderately-equipped machine, the final results will not only salvage otherwise unusable footage, but you will get the value of the $99 stand-alone price back in the first project you use it on! It also comes included with Magic Bullet Suite 11.4.1 Prores Faceoff | Color Studies How lossy is Prores LT compared to Prores HQ? I was surprised that, under the hood, the images from both codecs would be so different since they looked identical when converted from the original. Is Prores LT a total dealbreaker? Not necessarily. I could probably refine the skintone key in LT and get it looking pretty good, especially when blurring to include more values that the key didn’t get, but why not work with the best quality possible? Hard drives are cheap. lynda.com to host a free webinar on onl...

Black Magic Camera – Podcast EP #3 – John Brawley Interview | Podcast | FStopAcademy John's been playing with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and is interviewed on this podcast: In this exclusive interview I asked John about his career, how he got to where he is now shooting prime time Australian TV drama and feature films around the world and he also reveals how the Black Magic Design Cinema Camera originated as a passing comment. John has also been working closely with the design team at Black Magic and how responsive they have been to his suggestions to make sure the image from the Black Magic Camera is just right before release later this month. Making Team GB “Don’t Stop Me Now” for Adidas UK | Philip Bloom | Blog Philip had to shoot this ad very quickly: We had massive cue cards to help, a few painful attempts at me singing it to them to get the pace and timings, and of course nice loud playback. Essentially a lip sync music video with lots of people, quite the oppos...

Alistar Chapman 's XDCAM-user site is a great resource and something everyone should keep an eye on. Three of his latest blog posts are of particular interest: ' What to do if your highlights look clipped. FS700 in particular, but applies to many cameras | Alister Chapman | XDCAM User The first is that in the majority of setting the FS700 like most pro video cameras (EX, F3 etc included) records up to 109% (data bits 16 to 255). In the video world white is bit 235 (940 in 10 bit) or 100% and this is supposed to be your maximum with 104% typically allowed for broadcast. Anything above white is known as a superwhite. Why isn’t the PMW-200 as sensitive as an F3 or FS100? Pixel size is the primary thing that determines the signal to noise ratio of the camera. Cameras like the FS100,F3, C300 and GH2 etc have big sensors with big pixels, that’s why they have low noise. That’s why 1/3″ cameras don’t do as well as half inch and half inch doesn’t do as well as 2/3″ and so on. Mo...

How Not To Market Your Movie | Jason Brubaker | Filmmaking Stuff Nobody cares about your movie unless they care about your movie. Stop sending long emails talking all about YOU. What’s in it for me? Really? You want to make another no-budget drama with no star talent? Usain Bolt Took a Bunch of Photos with a Swedish Guy's Camera. Who Owns the Rights to the Sprinter's Snapshots? | Krystal Bonner | Slate Under most countries' intellectual property laws, including the United Kingdom’s, the person who actually pushed the button owns the photograph, unless the work was made for hire. That means Wixtröm technically does not own the copyright to Bolt’s photos, unless he and the sprinter negotiated a rights transfer in writing. F3 Act II | The Sony Tech Guy | Pro Video Coalition A wrap-up on the updates to the Sony PMW-F3 which were announced a couple of months ago. Also the  CBK-MH01 which appears to "just" be a monitor hood; rather expensive at $619.95. ...

Anatomy of a Grade - Ep 09 - The "Bleachy Western Look" | Chris Hall | Vimeo A tutorial for DaVinci Resolve ; though I think you'll need to know Resolve to follow along: Colorist Chris Hall demonstrates a "Bleach Bypass" effect on a period Western film. Special thanks to DP Andrew Russo (awrusso.com/) for the great photography! Fixing A little “Got-cha!” in the LightWorks to Premiere Finishing Workflow | Peter J. Haas | aBlogAbout.Haas Peter is using an interesting workflow from Lightworks to Premiere : I’m currently cutting a feature documentary in EditShare’s latest Pro version of LightWorks, and we’re very interested in revisiting this workflow for finishing. We were running some tests yesterday and noticed a interesting little bug in the workflow we hadn’t noticed before. After a successful import of the AAF sequence into Premiere, the media relinking kept returning an error for files we knew matched. It didn’t seem to be an issue with the AAF, ...

If you were buying a camera at the moment, which one of those two would you pick? That is a question that seems to keep coming up the last couple of weeks, and I ended up discussing it again last night with someone trying to make that decision. No conclusions were reached; I think part of the problem is that the head says "The Sony NEX-FS700  [$7,999] is half the price of the Canon  C300  [$15,999], it doesn't make sense to get the C300 " but the heart says "Yeah, but get the C300 !" As I see it, the pros and cons of the cameras (compared to one another, not to other cameras) are: Sony FS700 Pros: Price (half the price) High Speed (Super-slow mo) Supports wide range of lenses 4K maybe[1] Cons: No idea what the 4K costs Support for Canon EF lenses limited by the lens adapter capabilities LCD panel positioning is limited AVCHD compression[2] [1] Still no info on when, what cost, and what cost for the hardware. [2] Some people think AVCHD isn'...

Big Ass Light Test at EVS | Chris Collins | Wide Open Cameras Testing different film lights; with example video: We decided to gather as many edison plug film lights and put them against one another. We tested tungsten lights, LEDs, HMIs, and flourescents. We kept it simple: we lit our subject, Simone, with each light without any diffusion and through a 2×3 silk. Everything took place inside a 12×12 black duvatyne tent. Everything was shot on a Sony Fs100 with Metabones adapter and Zeiss ZE 35mm. Take a look at the results… Canon EOS 7D Firmware 2.0 Available for Download | CanonRumors Finally! Manual audio gain for the 7D : *Note At the time of posting, the firmware was not available if you select Mac OS X Mountain Lion, select Lion instead. Quick review of the Sony PMW 200 and a ten minute challenge! | Philip Bloom | Blog The PMW-200  [$6,299] is billed as the replacement for the PMW-EX1 [$5,899]. Philip seems to like it: Unfortunately, having never shot with th...

Last night the trackpad on my MacBook Pro started to misbehave. It acted like I was double-clicking or just clicking, nearly all the time. Context menus would open randomly, and it kept selecting parts of the web page as I tried to scroll though it. This started out as a slight annoyance, and quickly got worse. While it was still - almost - manageable, I went into System Preferences to see if I could turn off or adjust some of the behavior there. That didn't work. I tried attaching a mouse. That worked for about five minutes, before that too was being stymied by the behavior of the trackpad, which was still detecting mouse clicks and presses randomly. It became worse and worse, and operating the computer became an adventure; it was like I had a mad three-year old clicking at things as I was working. Applications I was trying to launch were removed from the dock, other applications were opening unintentionally, and it was switching from one application window to another as I d...

DaVinci Resolve 9: How To Upgrade the Pain-Free Way (plus 5 favorite features) | Patrick Inhofer | Tao Of Color The biggest problems I’ve had is when I upgraded an existing database and started working within that database. All sorts of funkiness would happen. Features wouldn’t work, buttons wouldn’t activate, projects would get flakey. The easiest way to avoid those problems? Create a brand-new fresh database Backup the old database Upgrade the old database Import any existing project into the new database. “Anniversary Day” 1st Boston 3 Minute Short Film Challenge | Rick Macomber | Macomber Productions Rick has posted his own blog on the 3 Minute Film Challenge: Sean had what I consider to be the best light – the magic hour – for his story, as you will see below. I thought he dealt with the changes in the afternoon/evening light very well in the time he had to finish. The C300 also performs very well in low light conditions. The only lights we used on Sean’s sh...

Vintage VS New Lens Shoot Out! | Steve Oakley Check out 2 new lenses against some 20 to 30 year old vintage glass. Surprising results in shooting resolution charts and real world images. In the mix are the Rokinon / Samyang 35 1.4 and Tamron 17-50 2.8 against classic vintage glass : vivitar 28 1.9, vivitar 28 f2 and kiron 28 f2 The Art and Technology of the PMW-F3 | Sony | Facebook Sony has released a new brochure on the PMW-F3 : NEW! PMW-F3 brochure with case studies, latest firmware information, features, and much more. Click here to download it: PMWF3 Brochure (PDF | 7.37 MB) Skin Deep | Matthew Allard | Vimeo Matt shot this video using the Sony PMW-F3 . Nokia PureView 808 Review (vs iPhone 4S) | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Before the iPhone I was very interested in camera phones and Japan was leading the way with stuff like the Sharp 903. It had an optical zoom, auto-focus and 3MP sensor as far back as 2002. The initially very poor 2MP camera on the first generation iPho...

Extending SpeedGrade with SpeedLooks | Eric Philpott | Adobe A short interview with Jeff August of LookLabs, who sells these LUTs for SpeedGrade , and will be giving a free webinar on the 16th: What are SpeedLooks? SpeedLooks are specially designed LUTs which emulate the look of film. They are based on Fuji and Kodak film stocks and they give images character instantly. What gave you the idea for this? For a long time I’ve tried to give a unique look to interlaced video. I wanted my shows to look different from the way broadcast looked – to give video a more filmic personality. More Canon C300 CP's! | BrianCWeed | CinemaEOSUser Some Picture Profiles for the Canon C300 : TRUvid2 was designed to be bright, vivid, & punchy (but not in a cartoony way like you get with EOS Std); for when you need to deliver right away and you know there won't be time for color work. TRUcine looks great out of the box w/ nice DR, really hangs on to the highlights & will grade very ...