Notes On Video

Colorists Resources Round Up Part 2 | Jonny Elwyn The last post I did called Colorist Resources was very popular so here is yet another round up of some of the latest tips and tutorials to hit the web. Upcoming Editing Workshop, and why VFX Matters | The Molecule Coming up on Saturday, June 8th, Manhattan Edit Workshop presents “Inside the Cutting Room: Sight, Sound, and Story.” The Molecule’s Chris Healer will join Academy Award winner Ross Shain and experts from Gravity World to talk about the importance of Visual Effects to post production. CARTONI JIBO Lightweight Portable Jib Can Be Assembled In Less Than 2 Minutes |  cinescopophilia The JIBO‘s innovative unique feature of the 3 easy mounting sections provides fast and easy operational flexibility and can be assembled or disassembled in less than 3 minutes. JIBO adds the benefit of diagonal tracking and elevation to the traditional pan and tilt movement of a standard Fluid Head. Petrol Bags Deca Camera and Ac...

Canon 5D Re-Revolution? | James Miller | Philip Bloom The 5D3 now has the ability to record a number of resolutions, limited at the moment by the speed of data written to the CF card. For now on a fast 1000x card I can manage 1920×1080 for a limited number of frames. At 1920×840 I can record until the 4GB file size is reached.  Canon 1D C vs 5D Mark III Raw (and C300 / GH2 resolution comparison) | Andrew Reid | EOSHD The 5D Mark III raw is impressive and compares closely to the C300, but has a few more tricks which elevate it. The comparison above is shot at 1080p but with an anamorphic lens to correct the 3:2 aspect ratio, the 5D Mark III goes to 1280 lines from a full frame sensor, even higher in 1:1 crop mode. It uses a larger sensor than the C300 and the footage is more gradable because it is raw. Notes for emerging composers… how to get noticed by producers | Chris Jones Blog 1. Submit what was requested We were pretty clear, we needed MP3 files with th...

The Cost of 4K: From Acquisition to Archiving | Juliet McNally | AbelCine The 4K footage will take up 3TB of space and the 1080 footage will take up 690GB of space (these figures are rounded up slightly for safety). For a multi-day 4K job you’ll want a 6TB housing with two 3TB modular shuttle drives (one master and one backup), while both your DIT and dailies colorist will have housings which already come with the drives, so you’ll have four drives in rotation from the start. Red Giant BulletProof (Beta)- Download it now for FREE! | Red Giant BulletProof is free as beta software until the products full release (and we’re aiming for this summer). This version is Mac only, but we fully intend to support windows as the product further develops. I miss digitizing footage from video tape | Scott Simmons | ProVideoCoalition There’s something to be said for sitting back and watching a clip play out in real time: You might see a subtle emotion from an actor’s face or get a look ...

Coolidge Corner Theatre : 290 Harvard Street, Brookline MA 6:00 – 7:30 pm Cocktails, Food, & Networking. 7:30 – 9:00 pm Presentations. Film Development & Financing Panel Co-Presented with Women in Film Video New England (WIFVNE) Join us for a discussion on development and financing with Boston-based feature film producers Paul Bernon, Sam Slater and Blythe Robertson, moderated by journalist and WIFVNE Board Member Shannon Mullen. Paul Bernon and Sam Slater founded BURN LATER Productions in 2012 to produce and finance films, television, and web content. The company is currently in development on feature films, a television series, web content and is actively looking to produce additional content. Their film DRINKING BUDDIES, starring Olivia Wilde, Jake M. Johnson, and Anna Kendrick premiered at SXSW and was acquired by Magnolia Pictures for a August 2013 theatrical release. RSVP & More Info:  May 22nd Spring MPC Meeting at Coolidge Corner Theatre

Outlining As You Write | Stu Maschwitz | Slugline While sort of an advertisement for this script writing tool, a lot of the article is about writing, not the tool: I'm working on an outline for a feature, and I thought I'd share my process. The document I've started in Slugline will evolve from notes and ideas, to a rough treatment, to a complete outline, to a scriptment, to a completed screenplay. Throughout this evolution, I'll use various Slugline features to support my workflow. The “Frankenstein” Steadicam | Evan Luzi | The Black and Blue Interesting article about making do with what you have (and the budget you have), rather than the 'right' way to do it: I’m even more proud of the fact that we completely dismantled the RED battery mount and found a way to gaff tape it to the bottom of the Steadicam rig. Then we used the cable to juice the RED with its own batteries. This had a two fold effect: it gave us more power and it gave a greater counter...

How to “sort of” give your Blackmagic Cinema Camera a Super 35mm sensor! | Philip Bloom So does it work? Absolutely. You can see clearly from the image below. It’s the same shot. Same camera, same light, same position just one is a passive flange distance adaptor the other the speedbooster. The full image is the speedbooster one which is clearly brighter, guesstimating it as about a stop brighter. CANON 5D RAW HACK – USEFUL FOR REAL WORLD PRODUCTION? | Dan Chung | News Shooter I know that sooner or later I will be shooting RAW much more often – but that might still be a few years away for most real world shooters (commercial shooters are getting there much sooner, it seems). Before then, recording, storage and post-production options need to improve and get cheaper. Right now I will only shoot RAW if I need the best possible image quality or need the extra latitude for a specific shot that would be hard to expose for any other way. Why you MUST have 4K and raw and why you a...

Workflow video: Simple post processing of 5D Mark III RAW footage in OSX | Cinema 5D Sebastian here has found a much more straightforward way to post process the raw files from the 5D Mark III which allows us to skip the relatively cumbersome After Effects conversion process. This new process only utilizes Adobe Photoshop’s raw import module New 5D Raw developments – plus my low light comparison with Blackmagic Cinema Camera | Andrew Reid | EOSHD The 4GB file size limit of FAT32 prevents continuous takes over 40 seconds currently. I asked Alex of Magic Lantern about overcoming this and he says it is perfectly possible but not a current priority. There’s a lot that comes before it – even basic stuff like assigning raw recording to a physical button.  Wait! What? You can only record 40 seconds at the moment? How'd I miss that? Easier 5D Mark III raw guide in 4 steps | Andrew Reid | EOSHD For 1080p will need a 1000x speed card, preferably 64GB as some of the higher ca...

Space Monkeys, Raw Video, and Giving Us All You've Got | Prolost One of the best looks at what's going on behind the latest Canon 5D hack: But there’s a price to pay for recording 14-bit uncompressed raw. It requires crazy-fast CF cards, and you’ll only get 15 minutes of video on that 128 GB card, according to Cinema 5D, who graciously posted their workflow and samples, “after struggling for a day” to get it all working. Low light test of 5D Mark III raw vs H.264 | Andrew Reid | EOSHD The image is cleaner in low light with raw, with even exposures I rated ISO 12,800 coming out perfectly usable. I’m hesitant to say it as a matter of fact but based on my early observations the 5D Mark III seems to have surpassed the C300 as the ‘low light king’. Friendly’s “Build Your Own Burger” Campaign Shot with Blackmagic Cinema Camera | Blackmagic “It was my job to get the best images possible, and I couldn’t believe what the camera delivered in such an affordable and easy wo...

Canon 5D mark III RAW vs. Blackmagic Cinema Camera RAW | Cinema5D Lots of excitement about the announcement of RAW recording with the Canon 5D Mark III : What became clear is that both cameras provide very similarly capable RAW files. You can adjust everything and everything is possible. You can get similar details out of the sky and set all you like in post. Color temperature, tint, dynamic range, no problem. The 5D is just as strong as the BMCC, providing maybe a bit more dynamic range. BIG NEWS – Hands on with CONTINUOUS raw recording on Canon 5D Mark III | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Magic Lantern have done the seemingly impossible and given us a continuous raw recording mode on the Canon 5D Mark III. Once activated in the menus the 5D Mark III becomes essentially a full frame Blackmagic Cinema Camera and amazingly mine has not yet exploded. No more short bursts of raw, this is the real thing. Andrew has taken to Twitter to post some more enthusiastic impressions: Only just s...

Conversation Series: Blackmagic CEO Grant Petty Talks Pricing and 4K | The Hollywood Reporter “Too many manufacturers make products that are way too expensive or too complicated. You have to buy their service contracts … but often they are used as a way for the manufacturer to produce poor quality products and make money off the service Quick Note: Technicolor Color Assist now supports Apple’s Final Cut X | Vincent Laforet A quick note to say that the Technicolor Color Assist software which is a wonderful way to quickly set a look (or color grade/correction) on the set right there on the spot (on a shoot large or small) before those drives get shipped off into never never land… is now supported by Final Cut Pro X. 9 Tips For Low Budget Indie Filmmakers | DigiMediaDude Get a committed team.  Make sure it’s a small crew and tell them that no one will get paid (at least with $$). Own or borrow equipment.  Do not rent! Jacob Rosenberg’s Ten Rules for Filmmaki...

How We Did It: SNL "Djesus Uncrossed" | Alex Buono I’m reading the script for the first time, thinking – “We’re supposed to shoot all of this…TOMORROW?”  The script was written by Zach Kanin and Colin Jost – two of my favorite writers at the show – and the scale of the spot was massive.  It was essentially: Ancient Rome and the Holy Land, to be shot in New York City with a few hours of scouting. Canon EOS C100 review – an underestimated cinema camera | Cinema 5D Here’s a camera I can truly recommend. It has no big red labels screaming things like 4K, 12bit, or 3D for that matter (that was last year’s hype), in fact it has nothing too fancy about it: It’s HD, it does 30p max and has a mediocre file compression system. But don’t be fooled by technical specs, because this camera is superb within its boundaries and a surprisingly strong, well rounded tool from top to bottom. UPCOMING WEBINARS | Assimilate Shooting, Color and Post with the Sony F5, F55 and F65 Wedne...

Last night I went to one of the six screenings of films made in this years Boston 48 Hour Film Project . This year 84 teams started the event and 81 finished - 63 of them on time. Having watched a team make a film, and being aware of what goes in to this sort of thing, I really think that everyone did a great job. Not all of the films were brilliant; and it's probably not surprising that none of the films were really perfect, but it was still an interesting - and inspiring - night for aspiring filmmakers. Here's some more tips I gleaned from the showing: Plan your time: A significant number of films were 'late.' You have to plan out your post time, how long it will take to render that last edit (and leave yourself enough time incase there's a problem with that render) AND leave plenty of time to get to the drop-off point. Audio, audio, audio: The consistently weak part in many of the productions was the audio. Image quality was actually pretty good (thanks to...

The Independent Screenwriter: Larry Gross | Filmmaker Magazine “The independent screenwriter” — is the term a tautology or oxymoron? While the word “independent” is often applied to directors and sometimes producers, it’s rarely seen appended to the job title of screenwriter. Is that because so many independent directors write their own scripts? NBCUniversal: “Transmedia storytelling will be a part of Social TV” | IP & TV News I might be an old codger, but aren't people tired of this yet? Social TV will be equivalent to watching TV. The second screen, sharing with others as you watch, interactivity  – the “social” part of TV will all be part and parcel of the regular TV experience. KESSLER PARALLAX – A BRILLIANT SOLUTION TO AUTOMATIC PANNING ON A SLIDER | Dan Chung | News Shooter This week Kessler announced a simple add-on auto panning solution for their popular Pocketdolly and Cineslider. Essentially a bar attached to the slider that couples to a panning base o...

Ray Harryhausen , Effects Innovator Behind Jason and Sinbad, Dies at 92 New York Times Quick Links The Next Steven Spielberg Uses A Smartphone | Readwrite Blackberry has teamed up with famed Sin City director, Robert Rodriguez, to create a short film using the new Blackberry Z10. Former Cannes film festival winner, Park Chan-wook, used a smartphone to film Paranmanjan - it won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival.  Filmmaking on an iPhone: What are the benefits? | Kristian Day | Zacuto One of the finest products in the plethora of those that have flooded the market is the Zacuto iPhone Point N Shoot. On my television cooking show, Crowding the Pan, we shoot entirely on an iPhone 4S with a limited budget. This could be anywhere from zero dollars to $3000 an episode (depending on if someone is sponsoring us or not that week). The Real Deal on Redrock’s “One Man Crew” | Crew of One For interviews, this $1,495 rig looks int...

Today Adobe announced that they are moving to an all-rental model for their creative software. You'll be able to rent a single title like Photoshop for $10 a month ($20 after the first year), or get access to the entire Adobe collection for $50 a month (there's some discounts for the first year for current users.) I've been using Photoshop since version 1.0, and Illustrator almost as long, and I just switched back to Premiere from Final Cut Pro , so I'm not an Adobe hater, but I must admit that I'm not a fan of being forced into a rental model. I already wrote at some length about this last year when they first announced the Creative Cloud:  Are Software Subscriptions A Good Idea? Color me a little skeptical about Adobe's justification for moving to the rental model: on the one hand they say that maintaining the Creative Cloud and Suite was a distraction : Producing these different versions was a distraction, and this move, Morris told me, will “giv...

I spent much of the last couple of days following around a team working on the Boston 48 Hour Film Project . I intend to write more, but here's my initial impressions: Things will go better if your core team has worked together before. The most pressure occurs at the beginning (coming up with an idea and a script) and at the end (getting the edit together and done by the deadline.) The in-between part - the shooting - can go pretty easily assuming you have the gear you need and the crew know's how to use it. If your editors and VFX people aren't involved in the scripting and shooting they'll be in better shape for the sprint to the finish on the last day. Have a call time for Saturday morning already set; otherwise it will be midnight on Friday night, the script won't be written, and the cast and crew will be calling wondering when/if they are needed in the morning. Have permissions for locations locked down before Friday evening, otherwise you'll waste t...

SIZE MATTERS — JONAH KESSEL FIELD TESTS THE CANON C100 IN BURMA | Jonah Kessel | News Shooter It does have things that aren’t perfect about it but, for me, the benefits far outweigh the negatives by an enormous margin. While the C300 is without doubt a better camera, I’m not convinced its the best camera for people like me. How to get sound from the Canon 5D Mk III to the Ninja 2 | Hireacamera | Vimeo Unlike most camcorders, the 5D Mk III with its new Firmware update doesn't export the sound digitally through the HDMI. Here we show you how to get around this and what you need to watch out for. GUESTS: Kanen Flowers, Jessica Sitomer, Paul Korver, and Gary Symons |  Digital Production Buzz Shooting “Hero Punk” with Blackmagic Cameras Get Your Career Back on Track Cinelicious Loves Film Restoration and 4K! Apps and Hardware for Mobile Journalists Words of Advice from a Master: Ridley Scott | Vincent Laforet Ridley Scott has filmed quite a few of my favorite...

Canon 5D Mk III Firmware with Atomos Ninja 2 | LensProToGo | Vimeo In this video, we take an initial look at the new Canon 5D Mk III Firmware teamed up with the Atomos Ninja 2. Canon 5D Mark III finally gets a clean HDMI out…. | Den Lennie | F-Stop Academy The new update from Canon means you can finally record a clean HDMI out and record to an Atomos Ninja 2 – this means you can shoot in ProRes 422 albeit 8 bit. The fact is when Canon released the 5D MArk III the new CODECS were a vast improvement on the old h.264 that we all had to deal with on teh 5D Mark II and 7d. 3.5k Canon 5D Mark III raw video with Magic Lantern and latest updates | EOSHD These past days I’ve been trying to make myself useful to Alex at Magic Lantern, testing the DNG raw video recording on the 5D Mark III with a nightly build of Magic Lantern.Here’s what the video quality looks like in the DNG video modes at 30fps. Making Digital Video Look Film-like | Mastering Film One of the first exercis...

I just spent the last day trying to help a friend diagnose their Mac problems. They had tried upgrading their Mac Mini to Mountain Lion and the install process got hung half way through, objecting to the hard drive. Somehow the hard drive became corrupted and the install process asked whether we wanted to choose another disk, get help, or try the Disk Utility to repair the drive. But even if we chose the repair option, it wouldn't let us repair the hard drive. The next thing to try would have been to boot off the SuperDrive and try and repair the hard drive, except that the internal SuperDrive had stopped working a few months ago. I thought about buying an external SuperDrive, but when I did a Google search and the consensus seemed to be that you can't boot from external SuperDrives. Then I discovered this article:  Make a bootable USB flash drive to run & repair Mac OS X | MacYourself. I thought that sounded like a great idea, and went and bought a 32GB flash dr...

The Druid City: Interview with Kristyn Ulanday and Max Esposito | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Esposito : We both felt like we weren’t telling some of the stories that we thought we would be telling when we got out of journalism school. We decided one of the ways to find and tell those stories would be to drive around the country and go off the beaten path and really look for them. New Firmware v1.13 for Sony PMW-F5 & PMW-F55 | CineTechnica In case you missed it over the weekend, Sony has released firmware version 1.13 for both the F5 & F55. Along with a few bug fixes, this update also includes much-requested features like adjustable Exposure Index (EI) while shooting Raw, and remote start/stop trigger.  Shane Hurlbut Returns |  doddleTALKS Tech Director of Photography Shane Hurlbut, ASC, returns to doddleTALKS Tech to discuss how he approached selecting cameras for his new film Need for Speed, and by testing those cameras, how he found that they ...