Notes On Video

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 ...

“How Do You Get Anybody to See It?” Paul Schrader on Taxi Driver and 21st Century Filmmaking | Filmmaker Magazine “The new technology allows people to make films very, very cheaply, but it also unhinges the vital connection that has existed for over 100 years between capitalism and motion pictures.” Filmmakers are now free, he explains, to “make movies the same way you can make poetry, songs, paintings. You can make it for no money.”  Magic Lantern Team Discovers 2K RAW Video Capability on the 5D Mark II and III | PetaPixel In what may very well be the most exciting Magic Lantern development ever, the team has discovered a RAW DNG output in live view on the 5D Mark II and 5D Mark III. What this means is that, in the near future, 5D Mark II and III owners may be able to record crystal clear 2K RAW video that blows H.264 output out of the water and then some. The Canon 1D C review | Andrew Reid | EOSHD The 1D C is a frustrating camera and I want to fall in love with he...

Here’s some quick notes from the three speakers at last night’s Boston Creative Pro User Group meeting : Ben Consoli Final Cut Pro WorkFlow Ben Consoli of BC Media Productions started the evening off with a demonstration of Final Cut Pro X. He explained that he intended to show the workflow, not provide a training session as such. He said that the first thing he does when importing new media from a camera or card is create a camera archive of the material. He then demoed creating metadata in Final Cut Pro X , and how to add metadata, create Roles and use Filters. I’ve seen several metadata demos before, and I understand how they can be useful if you work in a certain way. Unfortunately, I have many bad editing habits, and I tend to just throw things onto timelines and start cutting, rather than go through and tag and divide things up before I start. Maybe if I had a production assistant I would be doing that more... That said, Final Cut Pro X can demo well. The Precisi...

ARRI Says: Don’t Believe the (4K) Hype | Studio Daily And just today I got an email from Best Buy introducing Sony 4K Ultra HD TVs Noting that ARRI is showing footage on a Sony 4K display in its booth, Shipman-Mueller encouraged viewers to take a critical look at those pictures."4K, right now, is way overhyped," he said. "What's more important than resolution is overall image quality. Once you have that, you can upres [the images] to 4K, and they look spectacular." (Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera) Footage in your pocket | John Brawley This footage was shot over about an hour at my local market on Sunday morning.  So yeah, it’s just home movies.    I was literally grabbing shots where I could whilst I was shopping !  But, you do get to see what one man can do with a pocket cinema camera and a 12-35 Panasonic m4/3 zoom.  The Why, The Where and The When to Move the Camera | Shane Hurlbut Motion is a very powerful tool in telling your story. It can ...

The Challenges of Shooting Global News Coverage with Matthew Allard on 4.17.13 | Rule Boston Camera | Vimeo I went to this talk last week, and it was really interesting...worth watching: Award-winning shooter and editor, Matthew Allard, shares his 23+ years of experience covering breaking news stories around the world — from major sporting events to terrorist bombings — while shooting almost exclusively with large sensor cameras.Currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Allard works as Team Leader/Cameras for the Asia/Pacific branch of AL JAZEERA, shooting with HD broadcast cameras including the Sony NEX-FS700, the Sony PMW-F3 and the new Sony PMW-F55 as well as a plethora of Canon DSLRs. Six Questions Apple Needs to Answer in 2013 | Scott Macaulay | Filmmaker Magazine Forget the Apple TV, where’s the Apple TV SDK? The iPhone has been Apple’s growth driver since its launch in 2007. But it wasn’t until the following year, when Apple opened up the iPhone operating system iOS to thi...

Sony E 10-18mm f/4 OSS (SEL-1018) - Lab Test / Review | PhotoZone Another review of this E-mount zoom lens, with some highs and a few lows: The build quality of the Sony lens is, again, impressive. It has mostly an all-metal body based on a metal mount. While this may sound like heavy stuff, it is an amazingly light-weight lens of just 225g. The inner lens tube extends slightly when zooming towards the long end of the zoom range. Both the zoom and focus ring operate smoothly. A plastic, petal-shaped lens hood is also part of the package. Mocha Corner Pin Tutorial | VACD | Vimeo This is a tutorial on how you can track motion in Mocha and apply the corner pin data on your After Effects projects. Why the Sony FS700 won NAB Show 2013 | Tony Reale | NextWaveDV Then I headed over to Sony to get the low-down on their 4K upgrade path. Low and behold, they had a Odyssey7Q hooked up to their FS700. That means Sony is embracing this as an option for FS700 owners. While talking abo...

Sony E 35mm f1.8 and Sony E 10-18mm f4: A Very Good Standard and a Wide Zoom | Ben Boswell | DxO Optics Positive review of these two lenses for Sony NEX cameras, note that the scores might not seem that impressive, but they do well compared to similar lenses. I'm intrigued by the 10-18mm f/4 [$848], though the 35mm f/1. 8 [$448] looks good too, importantly, both support optical image stabilization. If you own a Sony NEX camera and are looking for a wide angle zoom lens and a standard then these are the two. To put their quality into context here are the best similar lenses to fit on a Panasonic Lumix, the Panasonic Leica Summilux DG 25mm f1.4 and the Panasonic Lumix G Vario 7-14mm F4 ASPH. With the slightly smaller Micro 4:3 sensor in the Lumix camera these two lenses are equivalent to a 50mm and a 14-28mm, so a very close match. Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC Lens Hands-On Preview | ePhotoZine A look at this just announced lens, but not really a review. The lens is a solidly b...

Blackmagic Cinema Camera: A Minimal Kit Guide | IAIN ANDERSON | MacProVideo Grab a 240 GB drive from Blackmagic’s approved SSD list. I use the Kingston SSD V+200, which can record for about 2.5 hours. To guard against hardware failure, a second SSD isn’t a bad idea, though some brave souls have shot direct to 2.5” spinning disks. One other option on set would be to use a Thunderbolt cable to record direct to a Mac laptop from the camera with the included Media Express app. TOP 10 EDITING MISTAKES TO AVOID | VideoMaker 1 – Poor Audio Mix One of the most obvious editing errors is the need to fix your audio mix. Almost every edit has two primary audio components: voice and music. Both play important roles in your productions. The voices communicate content. They impart information and tell the story. SIGMA PRODUCES FIRST F/1.8 CONSTANT APERTURE STANDARD ZOOM LENS | Mat Gallagher | News Shooter It seems Sigma is pushing the boundaries of lens design once again with the intr...

Blackmagic Camera Post Workflow | Derek Johnson | Hurlblog In our second post on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, we are going to look at some workflow options for getting both the CinemaDNG and ProRes files out of the camera and into the NLE of your choice. Keep in mind there are many factors that dictate how you will approach post workflow – storage space requirements, speed, hardware, software, quality and final delivery – just to name a few. 4K recording for Sony NEX-FS700 (two options) | F-Stop Academy With an optional advanced firmware upgrade, the NEX-FS700E will output 4K bitstream data over 3G HD-SDI. The HXR-IFR5 interface unit has a 3G HD-SDI input and will transfer the RAW 4K data to record on to the Access Memory Card in the AXS-R5 recorder NAB2013 - BLACKMAGIC CINEMA 4K & POCKET CINEMA CAMERA | Andrew Wonder Blackmagic took NAB by storm Sunday night when it slipped to attendees (and then the internet) that they would be showing a new generation of cinema c...

HOW WE DID IT: SNL “HISTORY OF PUNK” | Alex Buono Right away we knew we wanted a grungy 16mm handheld look, with hard contrasty lighting and strong primary colors that screamed that late 70s period. We certainly weren’t going to shoot with an actual 16mm camera – no time for processing on this schedule and I don’t think there’s even a lab in New York that still processes 16mm. My first thought was to use a 4/3” sensor camera like the Black Magic, with some beat-up old 16mm lenses. Note that Alex is also going to be doing a "Art of Visual Storytelling" workshop series around the country this summer: Visual Storytelling Tour Females Beware: It’s a Feeding Frenzy for You in the Ocean of the Film Industry | Evan Luzzi | The Black and Blue Amber’s story doesn’t have a dramatic ending. No, this ending is more like an ellipsis — incomplete, but suggestive — that implies females will have to learn how to toe the line between a professional relationship and a personal one ...

H6 Handy Recorder | Zoom Interesting new recorder announced by Zoom: The world's first handy recorder with interchangeable mic system XY mics capture remarkable stereo depth and clarity Mid-side mics provide continuously variable stereo width Four XLR/TRS inputs for external mic/line connections Up to six channels of simultaneous recording High-definition audio of up to 24-bit/96kHz And if you're looking for a portable recorder to use with your DSLR, or other video camera, the new Tascam DR-60D ($349) looks really interesting too. Records Up to 4 Channels Simultaneously Screw-On DSLR Camera and Mount to Tripod Operates on 4 AA Batteries Up to 24-bit, 96 kHz PCM Recording Two XLR/TRS Combo Mic/Line Jacks B & H has posted a look at the recorder here:   Hands-On Review: the Tascam DR-60D The full Panasonic GH3 review | Andrew Reid | EOSHD At first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking the GH3 isn’t a huge step up from the GH2 in terms of im...