News From Here & There

Is Film School A Good Investment?
Jason Brubaker answers the question; "should you go to film school?" by interviewing filmmaker and film school graduate Seth Hymes about his experiences:
High Definition filmmaking equipment costs less than a semester at most film schools. The craft of filmmaking, from lighting, editing, shot composition, writing – all of it is available to learn on websites like yours, as well as other sites all over the net. And these days, most connections happen through the net. And further, many new filmmakers find their agents because they produce a short and get some heat on youtube, rather than meeting them in school.
This echoes what I heard from Philip Bloom at a DSLR workshop last year. Philip essentially said that he probably wouldn't recommend someone going to Film School either; he said they should buy a Canon T2i and start making films.
FilmingStuff: Should You Go To Film School?



Birger Engineering Canon EF mount for Panasonic AG-AF100 Delayed Again?
Originally expected to ship in February, then delayed to May, it appears that the Birger Adapter has been delayed again, according to a Tweet by Art Aldrich of P2Pro.com.
Does not sound like Birger adapter for Canon EOS to Micro Four Thirds will ship in May. Looking more like June, according to Erik Widding
Twitter: ArtAlrich
See also: NotesOnVideo: Birger Engineering Canon EF mount for Panasonic AG-AF100



Making Money
A few days ago Robin Schmidt wrote a rather scathing article about a video producer who was selling "Producer Credits" for a training DVD he was producing. Robin's had a few second thoughts, and offers some alternative ideas for funding original content:
Blip.tv prides itself as the home of original web series online and the numbers are impressive. “Last year we had producers of shows making $500,000 a year on their Web series,” said Mike Hudack, chief executive and co-founder of Blip.tv. “In 2011 we expect that number to hit $1 million for some producers.”  You share 50% of ad revenue with the site, a much more generous share than you could possible hope for with YouTube.
ElSkid: Making Money From Original Content



More on Crowd funding
While crowd funding was only a part of the financing, and a lot of the money came from more traditional sources, No Film School presents an interesting look at crowd funding used for the movie Iron Sky. ‘Iron Sky’ Releases Lesson in Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing

And if you go to the Iron Sky site, they have published details of their financing campaign:
We have secured about 6.0 million euros through traditional film funding channels like the Finnish Film Foundation, Eurimages, Hessen Film Invest, Screen Queensland, pre-sales etc. We are now aiming to cover 900,000€ of the budget with crowd funding: securing money from volunteers via merchandise sales, preorders and an upcoming investment possibility, which gives You a chance to take part in this movie project.
IronSky: Crowdfunding – The New Way to Finance Movies



Canon Back To Normal By June?
CanonRumors reports that Canon says it should have production problems resolved by June.
CanonRumors: Canon’s Supply Chain Back to Normal by end of June?



Mixed Feeling about After Effects Warp Stabilizer
The Warp Stabilizer is a video stabilization tool that's new in CS 5.5 and Andrew Reid at EOSHD took it for a spin and found that though it produces good results, he isn't too happy about how it sucks memory, requires you to learn After Effects (rather than use in Premiere Pro) and is slow.
EOSHD: Pagan Wedding on the GH2 / How I fell out of love with Warp Stabiliser



Film Look
In a fairly lengthy post Christopher Hughes looks at HDSLRs, shallow depth-of-field and "the film look," and concludes:
The notion that shallow depth of field creates a film look is as ridiculous as people claiming to be a Director of Photography just because they own a Canon 5D.
ChristopherHughes: The “Film Look” is more than an F stop



Working with ARRI Alexa in Post
If you're shooting in Log-C with the Alexa, this article from Oliver Peters explains different tools and techniques for post-production work: DigitalFilms: ARRI ALEXA post, part 4




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