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Friday, January 25, 2013

Quick Links

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 makes hand holding the camera more comfortable. The tiny grooves on the lens collected a little bit of lint and dirt but were easy to clean. I’ve read complaints about the grooves before doing so but I did not see this as an issue.


Canon EOS-1D C Information | CanonRumors
The EOS-1D C broken down a bit more.
A reader sent in some information about the EOS-1D C.
1) A 25P firmware is coming next week.
2) Canon is aware that high iso, high motion doesn’t mix well with 4K aggressively compressed to MJPEG.


Sony FS700 slow mo goes low light with Speed Booster and the new SLR Magic T0.95 lenses | Andrew Reid | EOSHD
The Metabones Speed Booster was also incredibly useful with the FS700 on this test. I could hand-hold the camera whilst doing full frame wide angle 24mm F1.0 shots at 100fps and 200fps, with a lens I had bought half a year ago for my 5D Mark III! These lens adapters are wonderful.


Dude, You Gettin' a Dell? Former Apple Editors Choose 'Yes, Bro' over Mac Pro for Performance | Dave Kendricken | No Film School
But it’s not just hardware and machinery, these things come in conjunction with Apple’s snoring and Adobe’s opportunistic body check to FCP in the NLE market. Nobody’s post solution system is all well-rounded or smoothly integrated as Adobe’s. All the right components are in place for mass exodus and even public outcry from loyal users — though with solid alternatives such as Dell’s really growing into place, at least there’s no risk of moral panic.
Was intrigued by this response in the comments:
I feel the results in this test are somewhat cleverly exaggerated. If you look at their methods, for some reason they are using the 2010 model, though I am quite sure the 2012 update was shipping by mid-August. They use an NVIDIA (and thus CUDA capable) card in the Dell, the Mac has an AMD card, which won’t give nearly the performance benefit in CS5.5.
And did they include time spent messing with the system when the software starts acting up?!
- Not that I'm an Apple fanboy or anything!



The Inside Scoop on Adobe Audition | Digital Production Buzz — Jan. 24, 2013
Durin Gleaves, Product Owner for Adobe Professional Audio, joins us in the studio to tell us more about the current version of Audition and give us a sense of what we can expect for professional audio in the future.


Action Sports Cameras Part 2: Drift HD Ghost, Contour+2 Camcorders
| BH Online Videos
This B&H video features the second half of our action camera roundup. It examines the Drift HD Ghost and the Contour+2. Both models are compatible with multiple mounts for hands-free recording of action sports. They both shoot Full HD 1080p video at 30 fps and each one also supports mobile connectivity with a smartphone or tablet.


Infographics: Charting Hollywood’s Odd Obsession With Orange and Teal
| HUGH HART | Wired
Stanford University statistics student Edmund Helmer decided to paint a more analytical portrait of the cinematic love affair with the orange-teal combo by examining hundreds of movie trailers and transforming the color data into a dramatic spherical infographic.Pictured above, the image represents the distribution of color data — hue, saturation, and brightness — extracted from 312 movie trailers


Brattle Theatre: Digital Projection & HVAC Renovation | Kickstarter
Brattle Theatre is holding a Kickstarter campaign to get a digital projector and upgrade their HVAC system:
1. DCP (fancy term for a digital projector): Life moves pretty fast. If you’ve stopped and looked around recently, you’ve probably realized the movie industry is moving away from film per se, and toward digital technologies. Don’t worry! We will still show 35mm as much as possible, but as much as we like showing this format, many of the new films and restorations of classic films are only being provided in digital format now. So DCP is a necessary addition. But it’ll cost us $90k to do it right.


Shugo Tokumaru "Katachi" | Kijek / Adamski | Vimeo
Pretty good stop-animation made with approx. 2000 silhouettes extracted from PVC plates using computer-controlled cutter. I thought it was cool, though there were parts where the lighting become noticeably uneven (and I usually don't see that kind of thing, so it has to be pretty obvious for me to notice it.)



All Six Bonds Will Appear On Stage At The Oscars | GeekTyrant
I'm a big Bond fan. It's kind of cool if they do this, though I'm not sure what it means other than there will be a bunch of old guys on stage... ;)
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Bond it has been confirmed that all six Bond actors will appear on stage during the Oscars ceremony. This will supposedly take place during Adele's performance of her award winning theme for the latest installment, "Skyfall."


Please Read. Jim Smith Of WBZ Boston Needs Our Help! | Rick Macomber/Jared Abrams | Wide Open Camera
Rick Macomber passes along this information about a campaign for a colleague at CBS Boston:
My long time colleague and friend here at CBS in Boston Jim Smith needs our help. [...]
We just found out that Jim’s 20 year old son has a cancerous brain tumor. And Jim is a freelance reporter – which means he only gets paid if he works. In addition he has limited health insurance to help him with the expenses that his family will incur in the coming months. Jim’s son has a long hard fight ahead.


Thursday, January 24, 2013

Quick Links

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 the moment you leave your hotel room you're pretty much wet through until you get back and this obviously necessitated rigorous camera care. The ARRI ALEXA coped very well and during the whole five months of shooting we had no problems or camera faults at all. Undoubtedly we ended up with a certain amount of rustiness on Noga arms and other bits of kit, but the ALEXA seemed to rebuff most of this.


Can you do it all? The importance of a good team | Phil Arntz | Blog
You have to build a team, to be able to make a movie. Or lets say: Make a movie worth watching.You have to realise what you are good at, and what you lack and find people who make up for it! Find someone who is good at what they are doing and has fun doing it!


Wide Open Camera Fader ND Filter Test | Jared Abrams | YouTube
We tested the new crop of fader ND filters from Genus, Heliopan, Light Craft Workshop, Schneider and Tiffen. For more info go to our website.



Test new Zoom Zeiss 70-200 mm with Sony PMW-F3 | Vittorio Moretti | Vimeo
A short video with some test shots taken with the New Cine Lens Zeiss zoom 70-200 mm



Tempo - Visual Effects Breakdowns | Red Giant | Vimeo
Seth Worley and Aharon Rabinowitz talked at Tuesday's Boston Creative Pro User Group meeting about the making of their latest short: Tempo. A great little sci-fi thriller, and a great example of producing great VFX on a budget. Well worth checking out.
See: Tempo




LIFE OF PI: Max Ivins – VFX Supervisor – Look Effects | Vincent Frei | Art Of VFX
The flamingo shot was about inserting the elephant mural into the shot. Principal photography was done with a blue screen where the mural was to go. The big challenge to the shot ended up being the intersection of the water and the bottom of the blue screen-mural and the reflection of the mural on the water and, with all stereo screen compositing, tiny objects such as blades of grass, flamingo feathers, flamingo legs do not pull the same for each eye. So you end of with a huge number of stereo discrepancies that have to be repaired with either roto or removal and replacement – all in the correct stereo depth.

William Goldenberg gives us a behind-the-scenes look at editing this year’s most Oscar-worthy film, Argo | Production Apprentice
We were in the room a lot together. We talk about what the scenes are suppose to do, why they’re not doing them if there not and how we can make them even better if they are working. It’s a collaborative process once the shooting is done. While the shooting is going on I’m on my own. What I like to do is have a lot of conversations with the director I’m working with and even though they’re not saying specifically what to do, I find it easier and I can get into their head.


Vintage Typography Tutorial | BOBBY HAIQALSYAH | GoMediaZine
I have a soft spot for typography, and this shows you the steps in recreating an old typeface:
As the idea is to make a petty remake of a classic styling of a historic lettering, it’s paramount to remain faithful to the styling of the period. The International Association of Mater Penmen, Engrosser and Teachers of Handwriting (or IAMPETH for short) has a collection of scanned rare books on penmanship and engrossing in their online collection that is free to the public.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Quick Links


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 – another excellent camera for video, but clearly trailing here for sharpness and colour response (click the image to enlarge it and type F to expand to actual size).


14mm Tests (Canon, Rokinon, Zeiss and some Nikon) | Drew599 | 599 Productions
My conclusion, the Rokinon 14mm 2.8 or T3.1 is a nice lens for the money you spend. It has some issues with distortion and flare but some people might welcome the look of the lens. It seems that the Rokinon did give a "mustache" distortion to the image, as I've heard it described from some fellow shooters. The Canon and Nikon lenses were very sharp and controlled the flare much better than the Rokinon.


Blackmagic Design, “Kodak” and Others Join Micro Four Thirds System Standards Group | ERIC REAGAN | Photography Bay
Olympus Imaging Corp. and Panasonic Corporation jointly announced the Micro Four Thirds System standard in 2008 and have since been working together to promote the standard. Now we are pleased to announce that five more companies have recently declared their support for the standard and will be introducing products compliant with the Micro Four Thirds System standard.


After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Converting a Comp to Ray TracingWhat do you gain; what do you give up? | Chris and Trish Meyer | ProVideoCoalition
In the movie below, I walk through the procedure of taking an already-built 3D composition that used the classic 3D rendering engine and converting it to use the ray-traced 3D engine. There are both gains and losses: The type gains translucency, reflections, and depth, converting it from a postcard to a glass object - but the flat poster artwork applied to a building loses the use of blending modes and has to rely on ordinary opacity to make it work in the scene: 


The Importance of Placement of Auralex® Acoustical Products | AuralexAcoustics | YouTube
Interesting video that gives advice on where to place acoustic paneling in your monitor room (i.e. where  you listen to audio playback) to reduce reflections. Covers absorption panels, bass traps and diffusors.



7 Tips for Shooting from a Helicopter | Peter West Carey | Tutsplus
Doors Off, PleaseIf at all possible, fly with the doors off. Depending on your situation, you may be able to request this (assignment) or not (vacation helicopter ride). Always ask. But also realize that it can get cold with the doors off, so be prepared for the temperatures.


A New Approach to Making Films That Matter | John S. Johnson | Good
The number of documentary films being produced has exploded over the last 20 years. The Internet Movie Database shows an exponential increase, listing 1,860 documentary titles for 1991 and 16,886 for 2011. But while the audience for documentary film has dramatically expanded, competition within the marketplace of ideas has kept pace.


How one man made a film at Disney World without Disney's permission | Amar Toor | The Verge
Armed with a Canon camera and a skeleton crew of actors, the 36-year-old director began surreptitiously filming at both Disney World in Orlando and Disneyland in Anaheim, taking every precaution to keep his project under wraps.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Quick Links

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 shortcuts that can be made to ensure the camera pumps out all the different modes we want in the end.


Which is the Better Value, Canon C100 or C300? Plus a Short Film Scene Shot with the C100 | Joe Marine | No Film School
Looks at Philip Johnston's review, as well as some other clips produced with the Canon C100:
With a few modifications, you can basically get all of the benefits of the C300, and save a few dollars in the process. It’s not clear what differences there are internally between the C100 and the C300, but at almost half the price, the C100 does most of what its higher-priced sibling can do — except for the missing slow motion options (even though with a little work it’s technically possible to somewhat replicate a 60p look using the 1080 60i setting in the camera).


Creating 3D Portraits Using an Array of Digital Cameras | Michael Zhang | Peta Pixel

Baeza began experimenting with the technique starting in 2003. He uses both film cameras and digital Canon point-and-shoots that have been modified with Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK) firmware.



3D Plane Crashes and Charlie Victor Romeo | Matthew Kohn | Filmmaker Magazine
When we saw the demonstration of stereoscopic 3D camera technology, designed specifically for the recording of live performance, we were amazed and completely hooked. To have an opportunity to place the perspective of our film audience in the best seat in the theater exactly serves the requirement we require to make the Charlie Victor Romeo film as powerful and unique an experience as it is a live one.”


How to Get Producers to Beg You to Work | Evan Luzi | The Black and Blue
Step 2. Don’t Cause Any Problems On Set
Stay out of on set politics, be quiet and calm, do your job and do it well
As if pre-production isn’t crazy enough for producers, it’s followed by the swampy waters of production. And like getting stuck in the mud in the Bayou, production is often a dirty, uncomfortable, and slow process.


Premiere Pro CS6: Interface Secrets | Larry Jordan | Blog
RAMP PLAYBACK SPEED
With playback stopped, press and hold Shift+L in the Timeline or Source monitor and playback will start in slow motion and accelerate to fast forward.
Press and hold Shift+J and playback will start in slow motion and accelerate to fast reverse.


A Graph of New Camera Gear’s Perceived Worth Over Time | Roger Cicala
| PetaPixel
Okay, this is cute:
It is possible, depending upon which forums you visit, that a product follows both paths simultaneously – for example a new Canon camera will often follow path A on a Canon board, while following path B on a Nikon board. I suggest we refer to this as The Fanboy Uncertainty Principle.


Monday, January 21, 2013

Quick Links

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 Resolve, Black Magic Design has implemented support for Macbook Pro Retina displays among other features.
Also worth noting: Support for the new Sony F5 and F55 cameras has been added.


Canon U.S.A. Raises Awareness About Counterfeit Accessories For Digital Cameras And Camcorders And Promotes Consumer Safety | CanonRumors
Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, has rolled out a consumer-safety initiative that will promote awareness of a consumer electronics industry-wide issue: the risks of using counterfeit accessories for digital cameras and camcorders, especially batteries and chargers. Counterfeit products are fake replicas of the real products, designed to take advantage of the superior value of the real product.


Once Upon a Time, There Was a Person Who Said, ‘Once Upon a Time’ | Steve Almond | The NY Times
I have since come to believe that these manuscripts reflect a more fundamental cultural shift. In evolving from readers to viewers, we’ve lost our grip on the essential virtues embodied by a narrator: the capacity to make sense of the world, both around and inside us.


Cutting the Cord | Ben Cain | NegativeSpaces
Wireless HD is finally here in a big way but with so many options now available, more on the way, and at so many different price points, which system is the right fit for your needs? This depends on many factors but among the current crop, don’t expect to find the perfect solution. At least not just yet.


Useful Tools for Editors: Welcome Back Home edition | Scott Simmons | The Editblog
One of my favorite blog categories / columns has always been the ongoing Useful Tools for Editors topic that has been a part of my coverage of our little industry since I began the Editblog many, many years ago. It was a part of my original site and then I moved it over to Studio Daily for a number of years. I'm no longer blogging for Studio Daily on a regular basis so it is time to once again move the Useful Tools for Editors column and bring it back home to the Editblog on PVC.


Five 3D Cameras Capture Panorama Images | DigInfo TV
"DIVE into World Heritage 3D,"exhibited by Panasonic at Digital Content EXPO 2012, is a system for creating panoramic images by shooting with five 3D cameras, then showing the images using five high-definition plasma display panels.


Lens Maker Thales Angenieux Recognized as a Living Heritage Company | Cinescopophilia
Cinema and broadcast zoom lens maker Thales Angenieux has received one of France’s biggest accolades by being recognized as a living heritage company. Founded by Pierre Angenieux back in 1935 the zoom lens maker now has a workforce of about 400 people.


Panasonic Shows off Working 4K Prosumer Camera at CES | Joe Marine | No Film School
Somehow this slipped through all of the news surrounding the CES show in Vegas, but Panasonic showed off a prototype similar to the Sony 4K camera we covered recently. This new 4K model was hooked up to a 4K display and is also capable of being connected to the 20″ 4K Windows 8 tablet they were teasing at the show


A client commissioned me to direct a commercial | Clients From Hell
ME: You’re saying that our commercial which involves a girl playing a piano has a girl who can’t play the piano?
CLIENT: You can fake it to music in post.
ME: What music, I haven’t had time to pick any music.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Upcoming Boston Events

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 Production Coalition

THURSDAY, JAN 31
Join us for the first meeting of 2013 to celebrate an exciting year ahead for the film and media industry with the MPC.
Revere Hotel Theatre 1
200 Stuart Street
Boston.

6:00 - 7:30 pm  Cocktails, Food, & Networking.
7:30 - 9:00 pm  Presentations.