Notes On Video

Vincent Laforet on Directing, Cinematography and Knowing Your Craft | Filmmaker Magazine Laforet is currently undertaking a US workshop tour with the Directing Motion workshop, which will visit 32 cities over the next ten weeks. “I knew that there was a hunger for learning about the craft of filmmaking, and I thought this would be the natural next step,” says Laforet. “It’s a look back at everything that I’ve learned and applied, from both my work and working with other directors and cinematographers, and trying to condense that into how it relates to moving the camera and what’s in front of it.” Red Wants to Make the Dragon a Live 4K Studio Camera | Studio Daily Red is working to get as many Dragon cameras and sensors out the door as possible, but it did have some new tricks up its sleeve this year, including the Red 4K Broadcast Module ($6950), which adds an uncompressed YCbCr 4:2:2 video feed to the Red Dragon. 5D Mark III raw versus Panasonic GH4 | EOSHD The GH4 is m...

IFFBoston: How Do You Interview Subjects? | Filmmaker Magazine At this year’s Independent Film Festival Boston, the panel “The Art of Documentary Film Editing: Case Studies” featured moderator Jim Hession, editor of Rich Hill, Lucia Small, director and editor of One Cut, One Life and Bryan Storkel, editor of Fight Church. An audience member asked the panel how they interviewed people and whether they prepped them beforehand, adding “Whenever I interview people, they’re always really bad talking to the camera.” Ask the Screenplay Doctor: How to Pitch a TV Series | New England Film One of my partners and I have begun creating a pitch for a new television show. We've great faith in the idea, but I've never pitched for TV before. Is there a different approach to presenting our ideas when it is time? Besides a treatment, should we have a "pilot episode" teleplay at the ready? Should we also have a synopsis of several episodes? What do you recommend? 8 Things I...

P.A. Workshop | May 10 | Boston | Massachusetts Production Coalition Learn the skills to work on major productions in Feature Film, Television, and Commercials as a Production Assistant through an intensive daylong training program. Through interactive sessions led by top industry production professionals, attendees will gain the tools to be a successful P.A. on set and ready to work on a range of productions. With hands-on training and presentations, we will cover essential topics, including: ○ SET ETIQUETTE: The Do's and Don'ts on Set ○ SAFETY TRAINING: Truck and General Set Safety Practices ○ P.A. 101: Resumes, Job Search, Networking and More Rule Boston Camera is offering several events this month : Rule Boston Camera offers a number of events, some free, some paid, including the following: Wed May 7 An Introduction to the ARRI Amira Sat May 10 Vincent Laforet's Directing Motion Tour (paid workshop) Other News VIDEO INTERVIEW: VINCENT LAFORET ON HI...

BMCC variant Speed Booster works on GH3 and GH4 to give 1.28x crop, near full frame | EOSHD I had hesitated to try this for so long, but finally today a brave EOSHD reader sent me a tweet saying he had fitted his BMCC Speed Booster (with protruding rear-glass) on his GH4. It just goes straight on. First a BIG disclaimer. Speed Booster adapters have adjustable glass which can sit closer or further away from the sensor to fine tune infinity focus. IFFBoston: Five Questions for Fight Church Director and Editor Bryan Storkel | Filmmaker Magazine The documentary Fight Church looks at the intersection of Christianity and mixed martial arts, and how pastors training fighters can reconcile their faith with a violent sport. The film premiered at IFFBoston. Co-director and editor Bryan Storkel previously directed and edited Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians, which examined a devout blackjack team. NAB 2014 VIDEO: RODE MICROPHONES TALK ABOUT THEIR LATEST ...

Blackmagic Production Camera 4K Review | Videomaker You do need to avoid low light scenes and will probably end up using an external audio recorder, but other quirks are easy to work around. If you are a producer that needs to upgrade to 4K and are tight on cash, for less than $3,000, the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K produces images that simply can't be beat.  F35 vs. Blackmagic 4K | DV User See the images below, I can happily say the F35 more than holds its own, I actually prefer it.The F35 seemed to render and capture the colors I observed more accurately. The combination of the F35/Zeiss yielded that right shade of orange 'out of the box'.The Blackmagic felt a little duller in terms of color (some of this is was due to 4:2:2 ProRes). While the Blackmagic could be color corrected to match more closely, on F35 the information was just there, it didn't need to be invented or tweaked. Hollywood, Meet Oculus Rift: Studios Quietly Toying With New Virtual Rea...

My Panasonic GH4 Has Arrived. My First Impressions | Erik Naso I did a quick grade and I mean a real quick one. Its a tad more blue in the shadows than I like and I kind of jacked up the green on the leaf but hey I’m moving fast today! As you can see the highlights hold on and have a nice white color. Thats a big deal and I’m really excited to push the GH4 around. GH4 4K and Slow Motion Samples | prolost First things first: Having held and operated the GH4, I’m more enthusiastic about owning one than anyone should be based on this hastily-shot footage alone. The camera is capable of much better. Other News So this adapter isn't really anamorphic; it changes the bokeh of the Sigma lens. VID-ATLANTIC CINEMORPH $40 ANAMORPHIC ‘LOOK’ FILTER FOR SIGMA 18-35 – A TASTE OF CINE GLASS WITHOUT THE COST? | News Shooter The new CineMorph Mod Filter for Sigma 18-35 marks another new departure for the firm. Fitted to the rear of the lens, it transforms the Bokeh effect...

Looks like the GH4 is going to be a hit, that's good news for Panasonic. Panasonic GH4 demands outpaces supply, production ramping up | Imaging Resource Panasonic Japan posted a message noting that orders for the GH4 have exceeded their internal expectations, and apologized to buyers who will have to wait for their cameras to arrive. They're beginning to ramp up production in order to fulfill the demand for the camera. Great first impressions of the GH4 from a user not familiar with Panasonic's Lumix camera line. Interesting that the author also doesn't see the point in buying the external Input/output box: FIRST USER IMPRESSIONS OF THE GH4 – BY W. ASHLEY MADDOX | News Shooter Recording media: I thought I had to buy a special card for it to record it 200 Mb per second, but it turns most of my current cards seem to work fine. If it continues to work with them, then Class 10 will be all I need to shoot 4K internally and also at the highest bit rate for 1080P HD...

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...

NAB 2014: 8K resolution coming in 2020 | Digital Arts At the NAB 2014 show in Las Vegas, Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed off massive 8K video displays and a giant 8K video camera, which the company is researching as the next logical step in the quest to crank out as much resolution as the human eye can possibly detect. Dirt Cheap GoPro Cages From $35 |  cinescopophilia Well if you invent it, it will get copied and churned out at a fraction of the cost. And so GoPro cages are turning up on Aliexpress dirt cheap. A simple and quick search reveals multiple GoPro cages selling from $35 up to $70+ and most have free shipping on Aliexpress. Nikon D800 hacked with 50Mbit/s high bitrate video option  | EOSHD I like the Sony A7R but the D800 has a few advantages. Biggest one is you can install an anti-moire filter in the D800 from Mosaic Engineering and there isn’t yet one for the Sony, doubtless if there ever will be room for one in that mirrorless mount. I also ...

Panasonic GH4 vs Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera Early Footage, Full Specs, & Why the AJA CION is the Most Exciting New Camera at NAB 2014 | No Film School This week has been a crazy one for camera announcements. Not only did Blackmagic blow the lid off of NAB once again with the announcement of the URSA camera, but Digital Bolex brought their A-game to the world of black and white cinematography, and Apertus (despite the fact that they couldn’t make it to NAB) announced that the Axiom Beta is well on its way. Letus AnamorphX-GP Drive This is interesting because it's shot in 4K at 12fps... Here's a quick sample of what the GoPro Hero3+ Black looks like at 4K 12fps with the Letus AnamorphX-GP anamorphic 1.33X adapter. I've sped up the footage 2x to achieve 24P, squeezed vertically to get back to 2.4:1 aspect, removed the fisheye, and did some basic grading using Film Convert. The Panasonic PX270 Video Review explained | HD Warrior I keep getting...

Panasonic GH4 – Slow-mo at 96fps and 4K rolling shutter test | EOSHD Between 24fps and 60fps image quality is very good, the same as you’d get from the normal speed 1080p video modes. The 100Mbit/s data rate is enough to prevent any mud or blockiness ruining motion blur or fine detail. If you’d prefer to add slow-mo in post from regular speed footage, it is perhaps best to choose the 200Mbit/s codec and 1080/60p though. Definition Magazine NAB editions in digital format. AJA say that their new CION camera is the culmination of years of development. But they must have been inspired by what Blackmagic Design has done in the last couple of years. A great production house camera: A professional promotional film shot in Jordan with the Digital Bolex D16 | Kurt Lancaster Some have claimed that Digital Bolex’s 16mm 2K cinema camera, the D16, is simply a “niche” camera. A cell phone is a niche camera if you’re using it for serious production. The D16 is a Cinema Camera and I wou...