Tuesday, May 06, 2008

10 (+1) Reasons Scarlet Changes the Game in 2009

Don’t overlook the impact of RED’s entry-level camera, even for pros like you.

RED will not debut Scarlet, its entry-level camera, until early next year, which means that those who are already hype-weary with all things RED are already moving on to a different part of the site. Nontheless, there are solid reasons that Scarlet will change the entire landscape of low-budget digital video, assuming RED can get enough of them into the hands of the public (more about that at the end). Scarlet’s impact will be somewhere between that of the Canon 10D when it debuted and that of the iPhone. Here’s why.

1) 3K native sensor. It’s easy to lose sight of how major a step forward 3,000 pixels of horizontal resolution is for a digital video camera when that camera is debuted alongside an existing 4K camera and a 5K camera due at the same time. So let’s try this with the hype language used by the digital still camera manufacturers: 8.5 megapixels. Per frame. And this is not cheating by calling a 1280 native sensor HD (yes I’m talking to you, HVX-200). 3k means you could cut this image down 35% to HD. You could sneak it onto an IMAX screen without anyone seeing pixilation. It will be years before Sony or Panasonic have anything like this at the price. Speaking of which…

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

3D Display at NAB

Great strides are being made in 3D technology, which is great news for the few projects that need it.

Day One of NAB was 3D day in the Content Theater, and at the end of that day, I participated in a podcast discussion with Ron Brinkmann and Mike Seymour all about stereo imaging, which seems to have been a major official trend at NAB this year. At the end of the on-air discussion we did an informal poll and found that half the folks in the room felt that 3D display would be a bona fide new artistic medium within the next few years, and the other half - with whom I’m aligned - felt that stereoscopy remains the fringe curiosity it has always been, at least in regards to narrative filmmaking. U23D as an experience is hard to top - I even overheard other moviegoers express how preferable seeing that movie in IMAX was to actually attending a U2 show - but the legitimacy of 3D display for a mainstream Hollywood film is only being debated, it seems to me, because James Cameron has put the issue on the table.

My thought is that even if Avatar does revolutionize the use of 3D in tentpole Hollywood blockbusters, few (if any) other filmmakers will be able (or willing) to match, let alone top it. Also, as long as headgear is required to view images in 3D - and the polarized specs I received for U23D take the cake - we humans are really no further along technologically than when we started down this road (although the imaging technology itself for the price point is improving by leaps and bounds thanks to IMAX and high-frame-rate digital displays).

Until it’s a hologram, no goofy glasses required, any move toward 3D is going to look like what it’s always been - something cinemas grab onto when sales are under downward pressure. 3D can be fun - 10 year olds love the 3D films I worked on for Robert Rodriguez - and James Cameron will no doubt provide an amazing experience, with or without the extra dimension - but 3D on the projected screen is is a boon to immediacy and sensation, not emotion and story. U23D in IMAX is a fantastic spectacle - better in many ways than actually attending a U2 show - but if we see more of these in cinemas, it can only mean that substantial stories have headed for the more intimate home theater.

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Apple: Does Denying a Rumor Only Validate It?

According to a highly reliable source, Apple emphatically denied in an NAB press meeting earlier this week any truth to the rumor that the Pro Apps are for sale.

Now, even if Apple sold Final Cut Studio and its brethren, I hardly imagine the buyer (and who might that be? Avid?) would do much to mess with its success, at least in the short term - but here is a company with a firm policy of not responding to rumors that is apparently issuing an emphatic denial and, well, one can’t help but think of analogous situations that have occurred in the recent past.

One thing that is certain, from speaking with a former Apple employee, is that the development team, once housed inside 1 Infinite Loop and very much on the radar, is now located far from the action. If you don’t think that matters, keep in mind that this is a company whose important decisions are all made by one guy. In that building. It may simply be that Pro Apps were important to Apple back when they needed to show that the Mac was not an inferior platform for high-performance, high-profile entertainment work, but that job has now been done, the app is mature and in no danger of leaving the platform, and the company has found other areas to, ahem, shake up. Like the multi-billion dollar mobile telecommunications industry, or the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry.

Anyhow that’s all just speculation. Beyond the denial, all I know for sure is that a) Final Cut Server looks great and b) attending NAB after losing my iPhone in the powder at Sugar Bowl was like living in L.A. without a car.

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

NAB 2008 Super Session: A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget

At the show ruled by suits and dilberts, the rebels get their turn

With big exhibitions like The NAB Show falling out of favor, and some disappearing altogether in the 21st century, NAB struck back this year by offering more educational fare than in years past, featuring keynotes and panels of experts from the industry, as well as day-long classes. On Wednesday was “A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget,” a keynote and panel on getting cinematic production values out of equipment you may already have sitting around your studio.

The session was kicked off with the Legend of Zelda fan trailer “linked” here (nerdy pun for gamers paying attention) which appeared on April Fool’s Day, followed by a keynote by Stu Maschwitz of The Orphanage (and author of a fantastic blog) and then a panel featuring Dave Basulto of Clarity Pictures, Alex Lindsay from Pixel Corps, D.P. Taylor Wigton (447 Productions) and moderated by Brian Valente from Redrock Micro.

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Here Comes Hulu

Network Television Finally Reaches the Web Legally

As I type this, Hulu is temporarily closed as it is prepared for public roll-out on Wednesday.

What, you might ask if you’re too busy creating images to watch them on a beta website, is Hulu? As best I can tell, it is an attempt by network television - specifically NBC, although other networks are apparently invited to join (and ABC and CBS have not as of yet) - to take control of how its content - its shows - can be viewed online. Not offline - this is not IPTV, where you can order up a show to watch on your 50 inch plasma - instead, it’s a direct response to YouTube as the online home of every type of video. Instead of continuing only to demand the removal of network shows from other services, Hulu attempts to be the place to go to get them, and it makes its money back via advertising. In some ways it’s a brand-new model, and inevitably in other ways it looks an awful lot like the old model.

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Thursday, March 06, 2008

Creative License Renewed!

adobecards.com: sign of things to come or a splashy tease?

Now if only you could create something like this entirely with Adobe software.

Or does the joker indeed get the last laugh? 

(1) Comments • Most recent comments by: Scott Gentry, • Permalink

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Star Wars Main Title (as if by Saul Bass)

Parody illuminates two contrasting styles

A friendly reminder: if you want your motion graphics work to be shared far and wide, humor and satire can be a great way to go.

Note: the AEList apparently beat me to the punch on this one… s’okay, wanted to test video embeds here anyhow…

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Monday, February 25, 2008

Golden Compass: First Flop to win VFX Oscar in Nearly a Decade

For once a great performance is not overlooked simply because hardly anyone saw it.

Visual Effect Academy Awards™ are not much different from any other category in at least one respect: great performances in films that underperform at the box office tend to be overlooked. I and many others thought that Transformers had this year’s visual effects Oscar™ all sewn up not only because the work was amazing - not just the amazingly complex 3D animation but some really fantastic compositing. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (on which this author contributed a few shots) was clearly not going to win as that would break an Oscar taboo: the repeat winner (since Pirates 2 took a statue only last year).

And yet, nearly as much of a long-shot seemed to be The Golden Compass simply because the film was a flop, and Hollywood is allergic to losing money (despite many examples to the contrary) - this despite that many in the visual effects community believe it contained the most ground-breaking work, raising the bar for complex interactions between computer generated creatures (realistic looking daemons, the animals representing the soul/anima of the human characters) and recreating grand scenes of steam-punk London and Oxford and grand vistas of the Arctic. Not since What Dreams May Come has a vfx film lost money at the box office and taken the statue.

Perhaps Hollywood’s love of giving the prize to anyone but ILM - who along with the 49ers were the bay area force no one could beat in the 80’s and early 90’s - trumped the box office vote. However it happened, a great visual effects film (albeit a failed re-telling of one of the best novels of the past decade) won.

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