LIGHTING STRATEGIES: Placing the Fill Light for Faces

In this article I wrote about classical key light placement and classical portraiture to illustrate how artists and cinematographers have traditionally gone about lighting faces. Fill light is often derided as the light that simply opens up the shadows, but it can do much more than that. It can have a shape and beauty all its own, and it can save you when your key light placement is not optimal.

Ginter Goes Globetrotting with ‘Orbital’

Timelapse shooter, Tyler Ginter recently had an opportunity to participate the Mill’s timelapse production entitled Orbital. As Ginter explains, Oribital isn’t your ordinary timelapse production as it was filmed in New York City, Paris and Barcelona over a 10 day period, 2 days per city plus traveling each day.

Green Screen Lighting on the Cheap!

Before you go out and spend hundreds of dollars on a cheap light kit online or through a catalog, consider the option of making your own portable, durable and ultimately flexible low-voltage lighting kits. You’ll not only have more control over how much light you want to put on your background and your subject, but also how much you want to spend!

Slo-Mo with the GoPro HD Hero2

By now we’ve seen hundreds of really amazing videos with a GoPro strapped to someone’s helmet, snowboard, jumpsuit, surfboard or bike - but I wanted to explore the capabilities of the GoPro HD Hero2 shooting at 120fps in a stationary and tabletop setting and let the action happen around it… in Slo Mo!

LIGHTING STRATEGIES: What Makes Soft Lights Cast Soft Shadows?

It’s one thing to understand that soft sources make soft shadows. It’s another thing to understand why. Fortunately a friend from the insect world can help us if we will look at soft light through his eyes.

Sony’s FS100 camera to become “WorldCam” via free firmware update

Sony USA has just officially announced that the (so-far) segregated 59.94Hz FS100 camera (officially known as the NEX-FS100, often followed by a regional suffix, and then sometimes by the letter “K” to indicate that it is a kit, packaged with a lens) is about to go “WorldCam” via a free firmware update sometime at the beginning of 2012. “WorldCam” is a term used to indicate that a camera has the necessary framerates to be used worldwide, similar to an unlocked quad-band GSM phone that I have used for more than a decade to travel internationally without roaming charges. Beyond using a camera worldwide, having a WorldCam camera is also helpful when a producer needs to acquire content to be broadcast primarily in another country which uses a different framerate. This article will cover the novelistic history of the FS100’s uncertain potential capacity to become WorldCam, as well as some other improvements included in the upcoming firmware update… and some other improvements that are still missing.

For You, a Panel Discussion

A rabble of PVC writers (yes, that’s the collective term) spoke at this year’s Entertainment Technology Expo in Burbank. If you want to see some of the people behind the ProVideo Coalition content curtain, including myself, this is a “must see.”

The Smoke and Mirrors Behind Sweden’s Brokendoll

Winner of numerous ProMax awards in 2011, Sweden-based, boutique production company Brokendoll has garnered acclaim with their self-described “visually intense” high end productions for advertising, television and web.  You might think a company with this level of initial success would also have goals of growing, but according to Brett Richards, Brokendoll is intent on keeping their footprint small to maintain the quality of their productions, “It is important to the quality of the production that we have the right team on each job, so we avoid large, in house teams to maximize our flexibility.” 

Page 2 of 57 pages  <  1 2 3 4 >  Last »