Saturday, September 06, 2008

Nikon D90 - nice DSLR that also shoots HD video

Nikon’s new stills camera shoots nice 720p movies

Nikon is about to ship their new DX format DSLR, the D90.

So why should you care?

Because it also shoots 720p movies.

Yep, that’s right - 1280x720, progressive frame, nice depth of field (roughly equivalent to Super35mm/Red One), 24 frame per second movies.

With sound.

How much? $1000 for the body, $1300 with an 18-105mm lens.

Read on for the deets.

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Wednesday, September 03, 2008

iSee4K - MUST HAVE iPhone/iPod Touch app for Red One users

Perfect little app calculates DoF, FoV, frame rates, storage, etc.

My buddy Paul Alvarado sent me a link to this one - it is a GREAT little app for iPhone/iPod Touch that is a MUST have for anybody working with a Red One camera that can have an iPhone/iPod Touch on set. It is called iSee4K, and it helps you figure out a bunch of the things you need to know both for the cinematography as well as data wrangling aspects of the Red One camera. If you ever saw my post on Red One Geekery: Real World Info on Redcode, you saw the handy charts that showed data rates, maximum frame rates, frame sizes, codecs, etc. It took several charts to contain all that info, there’s lots of variables, and it is too much to keep in your head. So Edward Watkins has turned all that and more into a handy little iPhone App. Read on for the most excellent deets.

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Friday, August 29, 2008

HEY! Apple releases ProRes for Windows

Free ProRes Decoder for both Mac & Windows

Poking around looking for some information for a client on workflow, stumbled across this little bon mot - Apple has released a FREE ProRes codec for Mac & Windows - it is mentioned on this page towards the bottom, and there are links for the decoders included:

ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0 for Windows
ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0 for Mac

Analysis follows after the jump.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Red One Geekery: Real World Info on Redcode

Everything you wanted to know about shooting Redcode, but were afraid to ask - Part 1

Shortly after I got my Red One camera, I went out to go play with it. I wanted to do some baseline testing - from my many talks with Graeme Nattress, Red’s codec guru, I knew that Redcode was a variable bitrate codec. That means that the datarate can vary depending on the content of the scene. OK...so how MUCH can it vary? Quite a bit, I found out. Read on for this and other geekery…

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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Making Movies Now - bigger, sometimes better, definitely riskier

Why moviemaking is getting bigger, sometimes better, but definitely more dangerous

I opened the LA Times today and the front of the Calendar section was dominated by a picture of Brad Pitt sprawled on a couch with the headline Sparking Curiosity with the subhead “The trailer for ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ is everything it should be” and talks about the buzz around the movie. The company where I’ve been working the last 3 months provided the cameras, recording system and workflow, same as was done for Zodiac (I mentioned this in Couple bits of awesomeness the other day).

A fun read about how great the trailer looks to be.

Reading the continuation on page E4, that dovetailed into a minor article entitiled “Indie biz needs more discipline” - which discusses the 99.9% chance of failure of a movie budgeted under $10M.

Hmm...what does this imply? Read on.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Couple bits of awesomeness

Red Build 16 and Ben Buttons trailer

Quick note on some things:

a.) Busy, not dead. Waaaaaaaay busy.

b.) The trailer is (finally) out for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was shot digitally on the Viper, recorded to S.two recorders. I’ve been working with the vendor that provided the gear, it is nice to see what masters of the game (director David Fincher, DoP Claudio Miranda) can do with digital tools when they commit and know EXACTLY what they are doing.

c.) Red Build 16 is imminent, and it is a Big Deal for those tracking Red. Months later than wanted/expected, but major new stuff in there. IF it does what Jannard and crew claim, I’d say the Red will have finally, fully arrived, fulfilling virtually all of the promised capabilities. (How soon till we can save curves on Red Alert and load into camera?)

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Saturday, May 17, 2008

The very, very serious problem with democratization of technology in moviemaking

LA Times article on tough times for indies

Times are tough for indies right now - I just finished reading an LA Times article - Cloudy skies for Cannes indie market talking about how tough the market is for indie (as in, non-studio produced) content these days. And I think technology is largely to blame.

Backing up, here’s the evidence, as stated in the LA Times article:

-the number of buyers for indie are are thinning:
Not that long ago, the sellers of movies made outside the studio system knew that not only were there nearly a dozen forceful buyers competing for movies, but also that those distributors often were willing to roll the dice on less conventional fare. That’s all changed in a hurry.

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Friday, May 09, 2008

WOW. Reason to want to make movies

“The Fall” - most gorgeous trailer....ever?

Check out this trailer for The Fall. If the imagery doesn’t grab you at first (I saw posters on the street walking to work, and I literally stopped to gawk at the one sheet), how about “David Fincher and Spike Jonze Present.” Directed by Tarsem, known for his music video work.

Wow.

How gorgeous is this? In the middle of a 60+ hour work week, I watched the trailer 3 times, with co-workers, dimming the lights, waiting for the 1080p to download, and standing enthralled.

I took the time during lunch to scroll through, find 20 amazing stills in it, copy/paster to Photoshop and save’em out as JPEGs so I can have them rotate out as desktops every few minutes.

It is THAT good.

Plus, it looks like a good story, unlike some technically proficient, but plastic spastic blockbusters opening today. Which imagery do you think will stay with you, haunt your idle reveries, more?

-mike

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