Notes On Video

Inside Canon Japan 2013 | Creative COW In November 2013, I went on a Canon Optics Press tour to Japan with a small group of journalists, to meet with and interview a number of leading Canon executives. We also enjoyed a hitherto-rare event: a tour of Canon's optics factory in Utsunomiya, which has ordinarily not been open to outsiders (even several Canon employees on our trip had never been) where we met many of the people responsible for making those lenses and saw the processes that go into creating them. Say Goodbye to Old 5.1 Audio and Hello to the New Immersive Sound Standard | Cinescopophilia Now, Study Group 6 has developed a system for the next-generation ‘immersive’ and ‘personalized’ audio system, which will allow TV audiences to be ‘enveloped’ in the sound as it traces the source of the audio track both laterally and vertically across the screen. SC6Dual TRRS input and headphone output for smartphones |  RØDE The SC6 is an input/output breakout box for...

Only 7% of U.K. Films Earn a Profit, Claims BFI Report | Filmmaker Magazine Only 7% of British films released from 2003 to 2010 were profitable, claims a BFI report issued this week at London’s Screen Summit.  Visual Effects on a Budget – Don’t Fix It in Post | Filmmaker Magazine Visual effects supervisor Scott Squires appeared this week in an online webinar for Moviola.com entitled “Visual Effects on a Limited Budget.” His number one tip? – Don’t fix it in post. The Best Thunderbolt Expansion Peripherals for Editors | Jonny Elwyn So I’m thinking of upgrading my trusty MacBook Pro later next year, but it only comes with 2 USB 3.0 ports and 2 Thunderbolt ports and an HDMI port. So I’ve already begun looking into how to expand it’s usefulness through all these nifty Thunderbolt peripherals you can get these days. Here is an epic run down on some of the best available Thunderbolt devices. The final part of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera review…includes a look at...

10 MYTHS ABOUT MAKING IT IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY | Studio System News #3 BEING AGGRESSIVE IS A KILLER IN THE INDUSTRY. You would think, after reading #2, that being aggressive WOULD be a killer. After all, the “don’t” in that myth was someone who was very aggressive. But he wasn’t just aggressive; he was obnoxious. Aggressive is calling again when you don’t get a call back, getting your project made even though there are doubters, or putting your hat in the ring for a job that might be a bit of a reach. IS TV THE NEW CINEMA? From 'Scandal' to 'House of Cards,' Pundits Continue the Debate | IndieWire TV is good enough now, as Nussbaum says here, that it's no longer necessary to grade on a curve. Yet embracing the notion of the Third Golden Age (GA3) often seems to make people less rather than more critical. Safe in the arms of PBS or HBO, they relax and accept things that they would be tensely be on guard against if they were watching a network. ...

This just came in; a new slider company. Looks like a pretty solid system... Minneapolis, Minnesota – Trost Motion today announced the availability of a new kind of camera slider, tough enough for antarctic expeditions but so precise that it can be used for long lens and macro photography. Although it weighs only 15 pounds, a Trost™ can support fully-kitted RED and Alexa packages up to 560 pounds. Camera motion is so precise that it opens a new world of product photography – slow tracking shots across the face of a wristwatch, the bubbles on top of a caffe latte, or a gemstone set in a ring – all of these shots become possible and repeatable. Trost™ sliders can also be combined in a 2-axis configuration, giving camera operators remarkable flexibility and lightning-fast setups. “The design of the Trost™ slider was informed by three principles,” said Derek Trost, Lead Designer at Trost Motion. “Smooth, flawless camera movement; durability and reliability in the field; and a s...

New Blackmagic Camera Specific Metabones Speedboosters | Cinema5D Another look at the new Speed Boosters for the Blackmagic cameras: So, what do these adaptors offer in terms of increased light sensitivity and angle of view? The Blackmagic Cinema Camera Speedbooster offers a 0.64 angle of view increase, and a 1 1/3 increase in light sensitivity. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera Speedbooster offers a 0.58 increase in angle of view, and a 1 2/3 increase in light sensitivity. 10 Common Elements Of Award Winning Screenplays | Raindance Film Festival 2. Heroes Have A Second Problem To Solve In your bog-standard Hollywood movie, the cliche is of the action hero shot in the chest, the bullet stopped by an object in their chest pocket. Usually this is a copy of the Bible, or a picture of the girl they left behind. SNL Editor Adam Epstein: 6 Pieces of Advice for Editors and Other Creative People | Tribeca Film 1. WORK CLEAN Oh, hi there – it says here that you’re an “artist”...

Continuous Three Light Setup with Special Effects Lighting | The Slanted Lens A really interesting tutorial, both on lighting, creative visual effects, and types of fog : Today on The Slanted Lens we will use a continuous three ight Setup with Special Effects Lighting to create lighting for a superhero shot using a simple set, smoke and cookaloris or cookie. We will demonstrate the different hang times of the three Rosco smokes. We will show how to make a clookie or cookaloris and how to use it. We will show our lighting breakdown for the shot. Last of all we will show a very simple way to fly a cape. This has been a great shoot. I have a better understanding of the different Rosco smokes and how to use them. I hope you will find this helpful. Turbo.264 HD – a quick and dirty guide for Mac based editors | Matt Davis Turbo.264 HD by Elgato is a Mac application sold as a consumer solution to help transform tricky formats like AVCHD into something more manageable. Rather than de...

I don't make a practice of picking out continuity issues in movies, and I know how hard they can be to eliminate. Still, it can sometimes be fun to find them....particularly if something doesn't leap out at you right away and you have to go back to recheck whether what you thought you saw actually happened. Such was the case the other day as I was watching the first Colombo episode:  Prescription: Murder . In one scene, a character (actually, the murderer) picks up the phone, and then hangs it up, and the chord very obviously sweeps around the front of the phone. Actually, the chord almost stands out too much; it's reasonable to assume they put the handset on the "wrong" way so that the actor could easily pick it up - now there's a funny little prop staging detail that probably wasn't even picked up on until they came to shoot the scene. Anyway, he hangs up (frame 1): And about five seconds later (during which we're assuming no one made ano...

This week FxFactory released Cineflare's  Final Cut Pro X Hand Held Effect , a plug-in that turns your video into...well a bit of a mess if you're not careful. You can add whip pans, lens focusing, zooms, and bumps and jitters. All to give you that classic camera-operator-wasn't-ready kind of feel. The idea is that you apply it to a locked down shot to make it look a bit messy. And since you're doing it in post, you can play with it as much as you like. I find that very appealing, because making something look naturally accidental can be very difficult and time consuming. So why not do it in post? And it's $49, which isn't too bad. My only gripe; it's only for Final Cut Pro X , and even though I have Final Cut Pro X it's not my editing tool of choice at the moment. Of course, you could recreate the effects yourself using After Effects or Motion , but a plug-in will save you some time.

I upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 7 last weekend, and since then I’d been unable to use Messages to send texts through the iMessage interface (I could send regular SMS messages). I did some searching on the net and found some different articles that had a variety of suggestions for fixing the problem. These boiled down to: Turning off Messages and FaceTime in Settings Resetting Network Settings That didn’t work, and some other suggestions (like backing up and restoring the entire iPhone , or using a Jailbreaking utility) weren’t particularly appealing, and seemed more of a last resort. But I was awfully close to doing just that when I tried using the Restore iPhone... option in iTunes (with the iPhone connected to my Mac.) That was when it told me that I needed to first turn off the Find My iPhone utility. That was interesting, because other instructions had talked about turning off Messages and FaceTime, but hadn’t said anything about the Find My iPhone function. I tu...

It's Friday, so I guess we all have to run out and spend money! There's been articles about the best time to buy different gear, whether it's best to rent or buy, etc. etc. I'm not sure I can provide any advice except this; if you aren't going to be shooting with it in the next 30 days, don't buy it. Buying things before you really need them doesn't make much sense - often you find out you didn't need the thing much at all. At least, that's what I've found. B & H Sales B & H has a bunch of "special" sales over the weekend: There's a wide range of stuff there, the most interesting to me are (but there's a lot more listed): Canon 32GB VIXIA HF G20 Full HD Camcorder $899 Rokinon T1.5 Cine Lens Kit for Canon EF $1,299 (That's $300 off. I'd do this, but I already have the 35mm and 85mm lenses!) Canon CN-E 24mm T1.5 L F Cine Lens $4,970 (save $250. There's similar savings on other Canon Cin...

This is a really good cover - and ukulele too! Have a great Thanksgiving!

EOS C300, EOS C300 PL Firmware Version 1.1.1.1.00 Please note that we suspended download services for Firmware Version 1.1.0.1.00 that was posted Tuesday November 13, 2013 due to a discrepancy in color balance. We would like to apologize for the inconvenience. Firmware Version 1.1.1.1.00 corrects this color balance discrepancy. Any cameras that are running firmware version 1.1.0.1.00 should be updated to firmware version 1.1.1.1.00. Firmware Version 1.1.1.1.00 incorporates all the functions and modifications listed below: EOS C300 Cinema EOS Camera & EOS C300 PL Cinema EOS Camera 1. Fixes a phenomenon where the previous Firmware Version 1.1.0.1.00 offered incorrect color balance. 2. Ability to move the magnification viewing area around the LCD using the MAGN Function. 3. Support for a 1440x1080/35Mbps recording mode. 4. ISO up to 80,000 has been added. 5. Added functionality to support the optional Canon GPS Receiver GP-E1. 6. A Key Lock menu setting has been added w...

Landon Van Soest Crowdfunding for Artificial Retina Documentary Light Darkness Light | Filmmaker Magazine I haven’t had a lot of luck with crowdfunding in the past and thought my project could get lost in the ether on a site like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. My film was one of just a few initial projects when Crimso launched so I was able to have a personal connection with the site administrators, and they featured us in a lot of their own outreach and marketing efforts. Big League Cine Summit | Big League Film School.com What Is Big League Cine Summit? Starting December 10, 2103 For three days you will have access to presentations by top cinematographers on specific topics and techniques. Each day will feature a set of presentations that you can access. You will discover information and techniques that the pros use that goes far beyond what you can get from any tutorial. This is the inside stuff! Click on the button below to see the presentation topics. Exclusive review ...

“Directors These Days Really Have to Understand the Business of Film”: Producer Christine Vachon in Wroclaw | Filmmaker Magazine These days when there’s a lot of downward pressure on the budgets of the movies we make, when we have to be more and more inventive about how to make our films work with the amount of money we have, we really need to be able to chart the audience. I only succeed as a movie producer if my movies make their money back. And the only way I can do that is to have an idea who the audience for my films is, and how to reach them. DaVinci Resolve 10 Adds Editing to its Toolset | Filmmaker Magazine But now Blackmagic is finding that the newer colorists have some editing background and for small changes “would like to just finish a project in Resolve rather than have to go back to the NLE.” When should you use raw - and when should you avoid it? This is the definitive answer | Red Shark News Shooting raw video seems to be a very loud and persistent buzz f...

What Screens Want | Frank Chimero Interesting discussion about software and how it's changing the way we interact with things...and it has a bit about the history of motion pictures too: Muybridge had discovered how to bottle movement, and like any good inventor, he did experiments to see if he could reanimate his frozen horses. Muybridge’s first attempts to set time in motion were to print the high-speed photographs radially on a glass disc and spin it while it was lit from behind. He called it a zoopraxiscope. VFX Protest Planned for Obama’s DreamWorks Trip | Animation Magazine Hoping to raise awareness about the plight of U.S.-based visual effects artist, activists are planning a protest during President Obama’s visit to the DreamWorks’ campus in Glendale this Tuesday (Nov.26). The Hollywood Reporter says about 500 green T-shirts have been purchased by organizers in the hopes that artists will wear them to express their support for this cause. ‘Go Green’ Demonstration...

The Sony A7 and A7r are trickling out, and we're starting to get a better idea how they perform as video cameras. It seems like the RX10 is the one for video (though at least one poster has reservations - see below.) At $1,298 the RX10 is not cheap, but it's considerably less than the A7 ($1,698) and A7r ($2,298) . It seems that if you're looking for a full-frame camera, the Canon 5D Mk III still does a better job in video than the A7r (that's disappointing.) The RX10 is scoring because it has less moire and artifacting present in the footage compared to the A7's and it includes built in-ND filters. There's no interchangeable lenses, and the sensor is not as big as the other two, but it's small and light, (you can't have everything!) Finally, it looks that the A7 and A7r video are very similar in quality, even though they use very different chips. Sample video – comparing the Sony RX10, A7R and FS100 | EOSHD Andrew Reid at EOSHD has pos...

Sony A7-first look | Cinema 5D Cinema 5D takes a look at the video capabilities of Sony's new A7, and finds it an improvement over previous Sony's (like the A99) BUT they also think that the A7r will have better video (though at $2,299.99, it better be incredible!) I'm curious to see how the two compare, as I thought when the cameras were first announced that there were people saying that the A7 would do a better job in the video department... Sony themselves are looking at the A7r as superior in image quality when it comes to video. For that reason a dedicated full length A7r review is coming soon. Daytime Sony A7 footage will follow soon too. Adapting Your Canon Arsenal with Duclos | Shane Hurlbut With Canon’s new arsenal of Cinema Primes and Cinema Zooms being either PL or EOS mount, we have a predicament here. Who has the money to buy two sets of lenses? Which rental house has all this money sitting around to engage both mounts? To my knowledge, Can...

INTER BEE 2013 LIVE SHOW REPLAY: SONY NEX 18-105MM F4 SERVO ZOOM LENS SHOWS PROMISE | News Shooter If you have a NEX mount camera, I think this lens looks really interesting, the $598 Sony E PZ 18-105mm f/4 G OSS Lens : The new lens seems well suited for run-and-gun shooting with its constant f4 aperture and Optical Steadishot coupled with a nice mid-wide to mid-telephoto zoom range. Autofocus seemed quite snappy although it did struggle from time to time in the low light of our set. Manual focus is fly-by-wire which works quite well, but is no substitute for a ‘proper’ manual focus ring. It should be available before the end of the year. 3 SIMPLE BUT CRITICAL FILMMAKING TIPS FROM RON HOWARD | Fast To Create Challenge your story idea. Imagine yourself asked to watch it. Really imagine others committing the time to view it. Understand what you and your friends would appreciate about a movie version of your idea, then go for it. HEVC H.265 Royalties Are Killing It Even B...

Are Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) Files Backwards Compatible w/ CS6? | ProDesignTools Adobe officially states, “Each of the following CC apps support the ability to export to the CS6 version of the program: Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash Pro, Dreamweaver, and After Effects” – with the caveat that, “New features added may not be supported in the exported file or implemented by the CS6 application.” And the same would go for CS5, CS4, or CS3. Fare-thee-well Magic Bullet Grinder | ProVideoCoalition Grinder’s demise probably happened upon the launch of Magic Bullet BulletProof. The good folks at Red Giant confirmed that Grinder is indeed gone. That is entirely understandable as BulletProof is a one-stop-shop data-wrangling and DIT tool for all things DSLR. BulletProof incorporates pretty much every feature that Grinder had so it might seem rather pointless for Grinder to still be developed.  Red Giant replied: Red Giant ‏@RedGiantNews Our plan is to add more automati...