Please label tapes and disks: An open letter to DPs, camera ops, DITs

Man, there are a lot of high definition formats out in the world today. Just to spell them out would be a dizzying array of letters and numbers. 720p, 1080i, 23.98, 30p ... this list could literally go on and on so I won’t even attempt a partial list other that what I have above. Just take a look at this HD format chart. That’s a lot of different formats and it doesn’t even take into account the different flavors of a particular format that camera manufacturers often come up with on their own.

With that in mind this PVC post is an open letter to all DPs, ACs, camera ops, DITs, anyone and everyone associated with the camera department to please label their tapes and hard drives with the usable, relevant information of shooting format and frame rates, codecs and cameras so post-production will at least have an idea of what is being handed to them.

Black Glimmerglass and Hollywood Black Magic Filter Tests

World-class camera assistant Mako Koiwai recently shot a camera test with two new sets of diffusion filters: Black Glimmerglass from Tiffen and Hollywood Black Magic from Schneider Optics. He compared them to diffusion filter sets that he has in his own collection, which includes Tiffen Soft Effects and Schneider Classic Soft filters.

Diffusion Confusion

Digital filters are awesome for post image manipulation if you have enough bits to throw away. Glass filters, though, work at the highest resolution possible, in the camera head itself, and you’ll never have a better image to tweak than that.

Hands-On After Effects Masterclass in Dublin

As some of you know, Trish was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. Although we’ve spoken years ago at a conference in Sweden and Trish has given custom training to Sky TV in Italy, we’re yet to give an open-to-the-public hands-on After Effects class in Europe - until now.

July 17-19, we will be teaching at the Filmbase resource center on Curved Street in Dublin’s fun Temple Bar area. There is a maximum number of 8 students, and at least 5 need to be pre-registered for the class to come off - so if you are thinking about attending, don’t delay until the last minute to register! More details including an outline of the course are available on the Filmbase.ie web site. Hope to see you there…

For something closer to home, we’re also giving an introductory After Effects session aimed at print designers making the move to motion at the upcoming HOW conference in Austin, Texas. Austin is a fun city, and the HOW Design Conference is a great place to recharge your creative batteries, so we’re really looking forward to this conference as well.

Tiffen tests new no-ND IR filter for EX1/EX3/F35

The broadband dyes used in the Sony F35, EX1 and EX3 sensors work wonderfully well in most regards. They allow us to capture subtle hues of color that electronic cameras have not been able to capture in the past. Unfortunately this comes at a price: the red dye passes a little too much light at the edge of the visible spectrum, so the cameras see red in some places where our eyes don’t.

Optically White Balance the RED with Schneider CTB Filters

The RED can capture some pretty amazing images in 5600k daylight, but it stumbles a bit when shooting in 3200k tungsten light. The Schneider CTB’s help it get back on its feet.

Face Replacement Part 2: ADVANCED

In part two of this series I’ll show you how to track and composite a face onto another body using After Effects and Mocha AE. Some more tips and hurdles, should be fun.

Face Replacement Part 1: BASIC

In this two part series, I’ll show you how to track and composite a face onto another body using After Effects and Mocha AE. Learn some of the tricks and hurdles you may have to deal with when trying to produce this type of effect.

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