Notes On Video

I'll admit that I wasn't that impressed when Rode announced the  iXY Stereo Recording Microphone for iPhone/iPad recently. At $199 to add a better microphone to the iPhone, I felt that the money would be better spent on a dedicated recorder. Now they've gone and announced the smartLav , which goes and turns an iPhone into a recorder - also - but this time with a lavaliere mic. Is that a good thing? Well the downsides, as Dan Chang notes in his article , include the fact that you need an iOS device, it has to be in Airplane mode to avoid interruptions, and you can't monitor the recording, so you can't be sure that's it's working correctly (the mic gets obstructed.) But then that's true for most self-contained recording devices. I guess I like a few things about this: the cost is said to be about $60 which is more affordable it could be useful for recording audio only sessions; a lav mic is less intimidating than putting even an iPhone in ...

Animating the Inanimate: Interview with Charlie Collier | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine At 20 years of age, Charlie Collier of Zapamation may be a young filmmaker, but he’s already got almost eight years of stop-motion experience behind him. A self-taught animator, he says he was able to get into this partly because of the flexibility he gained from being homeschooled; he was able to incorporate animation into the curriculum.  Stop-Motion Music Video Uses Hundreds of Polaroid Pictures | Brian Anthony Hernandez | Mashable Cool animation using Polaroid pictures... The video weaves a stop-motion tale using hundreds of Polaroid pictures, whose once-blank canvases were provided by ex-Polaroid employees now leading The Impossible Project. FocusMaker – A unique focusing tool for stills lenses | Matthew Jeppsen | Fresh DV Here’s a tool that I don’t really know how to classify…it’s called the FocusMaker, and it’s a simple $89 device that straps directly on to...

Seeing RED at Sundance | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine RED was part of a seminar hosted by HP: 4K and Beyond: The Evolving Role of Technology in Digital Filmmaking. Moderated by Schilowitz, the panel featured a number of post software developers including Adobe, ASSIILATE and Autodesk. The seminar focused on the 4K workflow, with the message that “you can edit 4K now.” F5 & F55 Launch Event & Workflow Technologies | Sony Professional | Vimeo View highlights of the F5 & F55 Launch Event, and learn about some of the workflow solutions presented at Sony's DMPC (Digital Motion Picture Center) on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, California. Working in True 4K with the F65: Belle - the UK's first 4K cinema production | Andy Stout | Red Shark "We were after a really naturalistic look for Belle, in keeping with the period," explains Smithard. "The F65 produces images which have a softer, more pleasing quality, and you could really fee...

Day for Night: Magic Bullet Looks vs Baselight suite | SUPER MASSIVE | Vimeo An interesting comparison. Baselight maybe looks more 'realistic' but hard to see what's going on!: Footage shot with various camera settings on ARRI Alexa, 19-90 zoom lens. Half graded with Magic Bullet Looks and FCP 3 way colour corrector, gradients added. Half graded on Baselight suite for comparison.H264 compression very harsh on all gradients and masks, horrible artefacting - all baselight graded material looks perfect on Dolby monitors. Download least compressed h264 for closest impression. (But still knocked down to prores and then H264). How to Keep Track of Your Battery Levels | DSLR Video Shooter Most people don’t know this, but there is a built in way to label your batteries as full or empty. This works best with the Canon LP-E6 batteries, but you can make it work with any battery with a simple mod. If you look at the back of your LP-E6 battery you will see two colors, blue and...

Color Matching a Canon C300 to an Arri Alexa | Art Adams | ProVideoCoalition The C300 doesn't have the subtlety of color that Alexa offers, nor can it match Alexa's dynamic range, and it doesn't duplicate that delicate Alexa softness that makes everyone and everything look great. On the other hand, the C300 is less expensive and much smaller and lighter, and is the perfect tool for certain projects. MATT ALLARD GOES HANDS ON WITH THE NEW SONY F55 – NO HIGH FRAME RATES UNTIL SEPTEMBER | Matt Allard | DSLR News Shooter I found the camera design to be very good. Everything was easy to find and the key camera functions are accessible without having to go into deep menus. Even as a first time user of the camera, it is very easy to get it turned on and shoot quickly. There is one major design flaw: the connection cable for the new Sony OLED or LED viewfinder sticks straight out the side of the camera.  While it is reasonably secure, it would be easier to knock and broken...

A SHORT WEEKEND WITH THE C100 | Sean Meehan | Cross River Pictures Sean has been shooting recently with a Canon C100 and loves it: First and foremost, I love the image out of this camera. So many of us have fallen in love with the look of the C300, and I would say that, to my eye, they’re pretty comparable. They could certainly intercut, and if you’re contrasting with Canon HDSLRs, the difference in sharpness, dynamic range and resolution is big. It’s not surprising, considering it’s processing the image in a way very similar to its bigger brothers. You're Not Too Old | Vimeo HOW WE MADE THE ATC MUSIC VIDEO “READY OR NOT” | Rick Macomber | Macomber Productions I wrote about this for Filmmaker Magazine, but here's Rick's report: The video has two distinctive shooting styles. Most of the narrative scenes were either shot on a Miller Solo tripod, on the Kessler slider or the Kessler Crane, all donated for the entire length of the shoot by Mike Sutton and Paul Ant...

Fringe Issue in Older Canon C300′s Solved? | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Since its release, the Canon C300 has received a lot of praise for its image quality and low-light sensitivity. But some users have reported problems with color fringing: incorrectly colored pixels that appear on in-focus vertical or horizontal borders adjacent to a blown out – or nearly blown out – background. This most commonly appears on man-made objects like railings and window edges, though it can also be seen in specular highlights on ocean waves. Review: Sony 10-18mm F4 OSS Wide Angle Lens (Sony NEX) | PETER WALKOWIAK | The Photoblographer With it's image stabilization and wide-angle of view, this lens is intriguing for NEX owners. It's not cheap though, at $848 : The lens itself has a metal body and feels very dense. It is a heavy lens due to its construction but did not feel uneven when paired with the NEX-6. The lens has a fairly wide base compared to the 50mm or kit lens and ma...

The Five C’s of Cinematography | Stew Redwine | Fresh DV Cameras don’t tell stories, people do. Since we can all agree this is the case, there is really only one thing you need to tell great stories… YOU. However, none of us are born knowing anything about the tools of the trade. In an effort to improve the one tool all storytellers have in common, their mind, a must-have addition to their library is Joseph V. Mascelli’s The Five C’s of Cinematography . Cine Meter for iPhone | Adam Wilt | Website Turn your iPhone into a lightmeter? Cool! Cine Meter is a professional film/video/photo application for your iPhone®, iPad®, or iPod touch®, using the built-in camera to provide a shutter-priority reflected light meter, an RGB waveform monitor, and a false-color picture mode. Cine Meter works on any iDevice with a camera running iOS 5.0 or higher. Shooting DNxHD with ALEXA in paradise | ARRI News One of the major challenges in the tropics is the humidity. From t...

Sony grows E-mount lens collection with 20mm pancake, 18-200mm power zoom | Zach Honig | Engadget Sony's doing its part to make its products more appealing by adding two new lenses (for a total of 13): a 20mm f/2.8 pancake and a 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS powered-zoom optic, which first made its debut with the VG30 camcorder, but will now be available as a standalone purchase. B & H:  Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 PZ OSS Alpha E-mount Lens ($1,198) Expected end of Feb B & H:  Sony 20mm f/2.8 Alpha E-mount Lens ($348) Expected middle of Apr. Hands-On Camera Review with the Panasonic GH3 — [Side By Side Comparos + Can it Beat a $250 eBay Bargain?] | Ben Pitt | Chase Jarvis Blog In many of my tests, the GH1 and GH3′s videos were hard to tell apart. The GH3 had a slight advantage for sharpness and its colours were a little punchier, but there wasn’t much in it. Here’s a frame from each camera’s 1080p output, split into three to show the GH3, GH1 and Sony’s NEX-5N – a...

Getting the Shot: Scenes from the Making of the Music Video, “Ready or Not” | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Filmmaker : How did you do the hood shot? Macomber : Originally I was going to lie down on the hood, but there was nowhere to grab on to the front of the vehicle. And there was no budget so I couldn’t afford the suction cups. Understanding Your New GoPro | ABE KISLEVITZ | Blog A friend just bought a HERO 3 and has been struggling with the many image options it offers, so here's some help: A few things need to be explained when talking about the technical aspects of video resolutions, framerates, and video quality.  In digital video there are a lot of different variables that go into what makes up the overall IQ (image quality). 1080P on a GoPro is FAR different than 1080P on an Alexa – and it’s not just the image sensor that makes it different. Processors in cameras are a huge determinant to how video gets from the sensor to the SD card. There are tricks and s...

Review of the Canon C100 | Philip Johnston | HD Warrior Philip Johnston puts together a video-only review of the Canon C100. He seems pretty impressed with the image quality that closely matches his C300. Blackmagic Cinema Camera (Part 2) POST & Other considerations | Den Lennie | F-Stop Academy Den : [The Cinema Camera workflow] made me sell my 17″ MacBook Pro and buy a 15″ Retina Display one. I took the decision early on to get the infrastructure to support this. I bought FCP X about 18 months ago and didn’t really start using it ’til early this year, but I’ve embraced it fully, don’t even have a copy of FCP 7 anymore, and so I’ve realised to go down the Thunderbolt route – I’ve got a Thunderbolt MacBook Pro and an iMac, with the full Resolve setup on both machines – it’s very, very important that you have to get the right hardware. DaVinci Resolve 9.1 – adds Retina Macbook Pro support | Cinema5D In the newest update to the famous color correction software DaVinci...

BOSCPUG: SETH WORLEY (TEMPO) & AHARON RABINOWITZ, SMOKE 2013 & FCP X JANUARY 22 TIMES: 7PM-9:30PM (doors open at 6:30PM)** **Meeting begins PROMPTLY at 7PM! VENUE: Bright Family 2K Screening Room The Paramount Center 559 Washington St Boston, MA 02111 Rule Boston Camera WEDNESDAY JAN 23 SONY F5 AND F55 OVERVIEW Join Sony’s Senior Product Manager, Juan Martinez for an in-depth look at the new F5 and F55 large sensor cameras with 4K Super35mm CMOS sensors delivering images with higher contrast, rich color reproduction and greater clarity for every production application. Learning Lab: 10am–12n Bagels + Coffee Pub Night: 6–8pm Pizza + Beer Rule Boston Camera Learning Lab WEDNESDAY JAN 30 A LENS FOR EVERY STORY Canon’s Technical Specialist, Ken Rowe, returns with an overview of Canon’s comprehensive selection of lenses including fast primes and wide-tele zooms (fully 4K ready) for a variety of cinematic applications. Massachusetts Prod...

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is hosting a Stanley Kubrick Film Series . Join us for a complete, chronological survey of one of the greatest directors in film history. All films screen on 35mm, except where noted. In This Series: Fear and Desire : February 1, 2013 Killer's Kiss : February 2, 2013 Fear and Desire | February 2, 2013 The Killing | February 2, 2013 Fear and Desire | February 3, 2013 Killer's Kiss | February 3, 2013 The Killing | February 3, 2013 Fear and Desire | February 6, 2013 Fear and Desire | February 7, 2013 Paths of Glory | February 7, 2013 Spartacus | February 8, 2013 Paths of Glory | February 9, 2013 Lolita | February 9, 2013 Lolita | February 10, 2013 Spartacus | February 10, 2013 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | February 14, 2013 2001: A Space Odyssey | February 15, 2013 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | February 16, 2013 A Clockwork Orange | February 16,...

Air Traffic Controller 'Ready or Not' Official Music Video | Rick Macomber | Vimeo I already wrote about observing the filming of some of the scenes for this video for Filmmaker : An Afternoon Music Video Shoot with the Canon C300 . Now Rick has posted the completed music video for the band Air Traffic Controller's latest song: 'Ready Or Not .' This video was shot on the Canon C300 over the course of several weeks, in multiple locations, and is a great example of short filmmaking. Once you've seen the video, Sean Meehan has done a very nice Behind-The-Scenes video too: Ready or Not - Behind the Scenes | Sean Meehan | Vimeo Video Tutorial: Multiple Range Selections in FCPX | Danny Greer | Premiumbeat.com Richard Taylor, creator of the great Final Cut Pro X resource site FCPX.tv, has created this short video tutorial to demonstrate how to create ‘persistent range selections in FCPX’, including a hiccup with the feature that you need to be aware of...

Review: The Marshall V-LCD56MD5.6 Inch Monitor is Perfect For HDSLR | Clint Milby | Pro Video Coalition How else would you describe a device that allows you to change how it functions by simply swapping out various modules to suit whatever your needs may be?  Specifically there are two modules on the back of the unit that can be mixed and matched.  First, the battery plate can be swapped out, easily allowing you to choose between ten different types of DV battery plates.  Hands-On Review: Sony NEX-VG900 Full-Frame Camcorder | Mia McCormick | B & H Mia McCormick demonstrates many of the camera’s features and discusses a few lens options that should help users take advantage of the large sensor. For the most part, this is a glowing review peppered with a few criticisms that might limit the VG900’s appeal to professional videographers, but you’ll also learn some tips and tricks for overcoming these limitations. Film-like video with shallow depth of field is...

Camera Shipping Update: 1/14 | Blackmagic Design Blackmagic posts an update on the state of their camera: Wanted to send out a quick update on camera shipments. The production lines have been up and running with sensors coming in. We have been sending out regular shipments of EF model cameras each week to all of our offices around the world, and each week we are getting cameras out at a faster rate. We are still not at full volume shipping though, because sensors are not quite getting to us at a pace that I could say was full volume. But each day I am seeing the volume get better from the sensor company. I am happy with the quality of the sensors. For the MFT model, we want to get through some more of the EF orders before I give a date on when we will start getting the MFT orders out. They are ready to go, but we need to get through most of the early EF pre-orders first. Dear GoPro Community | GoPro GoPro responds to complaints from their user community: All of us at GoPro a...

Behind The Scenes on BART: a Narrative Short Shot with the Canon C100 | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine Canon has released a Behind The Scenes for a new short that was shot with the Canon C100 : Canon subsequently contacted us about a second short, BART, which was also shot on the C100. While Pulse is a documentary piece, BART is a four-minute short that is entirely an exercise in narrative story telling. Canon was specifically looking for a film that had little language and had a lot of visuals to it. 4K comes to CES and Canon announces new Cine Primes | Michael Murie | Filmmaker Magazine A look at some new tech at this years show: Just a couple of years ago 3D was the rage, with manufacturers showing off their 3D displays and headsets. By all reports, 3D wasn’t so hot this year. Instead, we saw the first salvos in the 4K battle to convince consumers to part with their money for another high-end display. But when it comes to televisions, 2013 may be seen as the bridge t...