Shooting Indy Cars with the GT35pro

Back in April the Indy Racing League took their cars to the beautiful Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham Alabama. It wasn’t an actual race but rather an open test, meaning teams could run throughout the weekend and tweak their cars until their heart’s content. It was the only road course that the IRL was testing on this season and from reports around the Internet the league was very happy with the fan support as there was a huge turnout, especially for a test. The hope is that the IRL will return to the track for a fully sanctioned race very soon. A test day is great in that for a small fee you can get up close to the action around the track and in the pits. I took my trusty Canon HV20 and the GT35pro lens adapter and head down for a day of shooting Indy cars.

Want an ikan monitor? Enter their contest.

If you are in need of a small external monitor for your video shoots or maybe a small supplemental monitor for your edit suite then head over to ikan corporation and enter their Wish I had an ikan contest. From the ikan website:

If you can create a short narrative film either featuring an iKan product or the Ikan name, then you are eligible to win cash and prizes from Ikan.

Start Date: April 27th
End date: August 1st

1st place: $2,000 cash

2nd place: $1,000 and a V8000HDMI LCD Monitor

3rd Place: a V8000HDMI LCD Monitor

It seems strange that the 1st place winner would get cash and no ikan monitor but with $2,000 cash you can spend it how you want! Rules are available here. Good luck!

Fun clips for the end of a long agency edit day

As we sat for a long while at the end of the edit day recently waiting for either an approval or changes to come down from on-high we killed some time listening to / watching the usual smattering of You Tube videos and Internet clips that are parodies of many of the things editors face everyday. A lot of these clips make perfect sense after an edit runs the gauntlet of an advertising agency approval process or a cut is sent to a client who has no idea what the process is that a television commercial has to go through to get to air. The above clip is the classic Rough Cut Lady Song. In the same vein below is the Impossible Promo Approval Guy:

Both of those have made their way around the Intranet for years.

The GT35pro meets the RED camera

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to take part in a RED camera test with my friends at Compass Cinema. We went out to local camera rental house CameraTrux and where they had set-up their RED with an assortment of lenses as said “test away!” Since I’m a post guy I take every opportunity I can to play with cameras and things outside of the edit suite so I took my HV20 and the GT35pro adapter along for the ride. When it wasn’t too annoying I tried to shoot some footage along side the RED to compare and contrast with the footage from the GT35pro. I shot footage of the still life as well as the chain link fence outdoors. It’s funny when you think about a 4K camera with some really great lenses being intercut with an under $1,000 consumer HDV camera and vibrating lens adapter and how it shouldn’t seem possible but they actually go together pretty well with the video compressed down for web viewing. The RED footage is a transcode through Clipfinder to 1080 ProRes and the back-to-back shots have been color corrected with Colorista to make them match better ... except for the fence outside. I couldn’t seem to get those tones to match closer. I need to keep reading Steve’s great book The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction

While they look pretty good here on Vimeo I did a test where I took a similarly dark shot of the still life and the red-berry bush outside and did some grading on the RED raw R3Ds in REDAlert vs. the Canon HDV files in Final Cut Pro ... It’s quite the difference in latitude and what you can do with the image. As was to be expected.

A video only an editor or engineer could love

Live Action Oscar Nominated Short Films on iTunes

For all of us out there that love (and make) short films it’s especially pleasing when the presenter announces the winners of the short film categories on Oscar night. I always wonder what the winner is thinking and feeling as they make that long walk from the back of the room up to the stage to accept their Oscar. In the early 90s they tried to do away with the shorts categories (at least on the telecast from what I remember) and there was such an uproar by a number of prominent filmmakers that they kept the categories intact. A couple of years ago they tried to give all of the shorts awards away at one time and that was an awkward train wreck. It has been suggested more than once that the shorts need to go. Sure the Oscar telecast is bloated and long but for a filmmaker the act of even having the shorts categories represents something to strive for. The knowledge that you have just as much of a chance as anyone at a real Oscar nomination is a great incentive to do you best work on your short film. The odds are still great but dedicated filmmakers work against the odds all the time. Since shorts are such a staple of the Internet the Academy should embrace the short film format more than ever. Even CNN has a story about the shorts filmmakers!

iTunes has recently posted all 5 Oscar nominated short films for sale via Shorts International. The direct iTunes links can be found at this link on Ticklebooth. The animated ones are all linked here.  I haven’t been able to find and view the Documentary Short Subject nominees so if you have a link to them please post it in the comments. The Oscars are this Sunday so get your viewing done before then!

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