Category Archives: Uncategorized

Enjoy this wonderful video shot on a HDSLR.

Uploaded by nbolt on Apr 1, 2011
I shot a photo roughly every two miles between take-off in San Francisco and landing in Paris CDG to make this airplane time lapse. More of these wacky time lapses at http://beepshow.com

Shot with a 5d2, a time-lapse controller, and a 16mm – 35mm, mixed with some iPhone shots. The music is a modified demo track “Gain” by DETUNE ltd. denkitribe http://soundcloud.com/denkitribe/gain on the Korg iMS20 iPad App. I'm pretty sure the track is copyrighted but it's My First Synthesizer score so I'm hoping denkitribe is cool with it. Edits and pans in After Effects CS5 and iMovie.

The photos during take-off and landing are all computer models and totally rendered because I would never use an electronic device during times when the FAA prohibits them. I did get lucky and have a whole row to myself to setup the tripod and gear.

Thanks to my neighbors for not minding an SLR click every 2 to 30 seconds for 11 hours, and thanks to the whole Air France flight crew for being insanely friendly and allowing me to shoot. Thanks to @ztaylor for showing me the Korg iMS20 iPad App. Thanks to @jayzombie and the #nerdbird on the way to SXSW this year for helping me come up with the idea. Thanks to @somnabulent for the idea of live scoring. Thanks to you for actually reading this far. You are a champion.

This is pretty cool. Great for the DIY filmmaker. Cost effective too.

RigWheels – Camera Wheels for Creativity

“RigWheels are a simple and sleek and portable way to add motion to your images utilizing support equipment that you may already own. Because RigWheels can be used in so many different ways, they are the easiest and most portable way for you to add smooth camera movement to your arsenal of production tricks. RigWheels can mount directly to your camera rig and can easily be configured as a pipe-dolly, skate-dolly, slider, etc…

What make RigWheels unique are their 4 high quality bearing wheels per carriage. The bearings are strong and sturdy allowing them to carry a load of 50 lbs per carriage. 4 wheels per carriage give you a very smooth roll and because the carriage is already constructed all you have left to do is mount them with one bolt. It's the smallest, easiest and most versatile wheel available for a great price.

In this new era of HDSLR video production, size and portability are critical factors in deciding what equipment to use. RigWheels can easily live in your backpack giving you the option of smooth motion wherever you travel.
RigWheels along with a nearby piece of pipe, glass, plexiglas, laminate, track or other smooth surface can give you the same seamless smooth motion as other options that cost hundreds more.”

Go to the RigWheels website to find out more.

This is a response to an article at Studio Daily Blog.

For the last 30 years I have been interested in getting the “Film Look” with video. Ten years ago it was a revolution to have a video camera do 24p, the DVX-100. We have wanted 24p for a long time. Now you are about to throw it our the window. Do I want my media productions to look like soap operas? Yuck! When I saw “Avatar” on a 260 htz set it looked like a soap opera. The motion was wrong. I purposely use a data projector to watch movies at home so there will be no post processing.

There is a reason motion pictures have standardize on 24p, it looks right to the human eye. When I watch a film, I want to be lifted out to reality into a good story. I don’t want to see reality, I want to escape to the movies. I first saw Doug Trumbell’s Showscan at Showwest before it was released to the public. It was truly amazing. I then called it “Live Film”. It looked like real life. I thought the person on the screen was there. But it proved to not work well for long form dramatic films. It did work great for theme park rides where you want to simulate reality. Even IMAX uses 24p for it frame rate. There is something pleasing about watching a good film. Don’t through the baby with the bathwater.

Don’t get me started about the silliness of 3D and how it takes you out of the film experience.

This is a fun historical film for AT&T.

Back in 1976, microprocessors had a maximum of 8.5K transistors for 64bits of memory. The Queen of England sent her first email, and Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I.
And a post-Star Trek but pre-TJ Hooker William Shatner made this film for AT&T about the future of microprocessors.
The chips were tiny at that time, to be sure, but paltry in terms of memory by today's standards. Yet Moore's Law had already been in effect for 11 years by this point, enough time to see that the future was going to be full of miniscule, powerful machines, even they weren't the predicted picturephones. Today's “microworld” is still getting smaller all the time.
This version of the film was slightly revised in 1980.
An Owen Murphy Production
Directed by Paul Cohen
Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

Just saw this on provideocoalition.com

Canon jumps on Thunderbolt
Steve Hullfish | 03/10
Canon first to jump on Apple Bandwagon

So, when Apple recently announced support for Thunderbolt the biggest question after the release by many in the video community was: “Who else is going to support this?”

The answer has come from a major player: Canon. This is a natural partner who can obviously utilize Thunderbolt’s 10Gbps port.

Thursday Canon announced that it would be coming out with at least one video camera that would use Intel’s Thunderbolt port.

According to Canon’s Hiroo Edakubo, “We are excited about Thunderbolt technology and feel it will bring new levels of performance and simplicity to the video creation market.”

Most of the players so far who have hinted at delivering products for Thunderbolt have been storage/hard drive related. Though AJA’s John Abt has teased on the Intel site: “Welcome to the future, Thunderbolt technology enables the fastest and simplest I/O for connecting AJA’s award-winning professional video capture and playback products to your laptop.” And BlackMagic’s Grant Petty also hinted, “Thunderbolt technology will revolutionize mobile media creation. It’s a game-changer and will accelerate our ability to build the highest quality video creation products that are affordable to everyone.”

If you’ve been living under a rock, or maybe haven’t given it your full attention quite yet, here’s the skinny on Thunderbolt so far:

Thunderbolt was originally code-named LightPeak and is an Intel technology that uses the same connection as the mini-display port on a Mac. It is designed for high-speed, dual-protocol (PCI Express and DisplayPort) I/O technology. Basically it’s the next step after USB3 and Firewire800, with the twist that it’s also a display protocol.

At 10 Gbps, Thunderbolt simultaneously delivers high-speed data and display transfers in each direction. At that rate, it is possible to transfer a full-length HD movie in less than 30 seconds or backup a year of continuous MP3 playback in just over 10 minutes. Cool, I was trying to figure out how to get my C-SPAN archive onto my MacBookPro.

Thunderbolt can be daisy-chained. Initially it will be released on Apple products as a copper-wire cable but will eventually utilize optical cables that will allow very long cable runs. The cable will allow power over the cable for bus-powered devices.

Thunderbolt is not just a cable and port. It transmits and receives packetized data – going both directions at the same time – with all the traffic handled by a controller chip in the computer and other external devices – like the newly announced Canon cameras. Intel is promising workstation performance expansion on a laptop. Obviously, with this type of throughput, the types of devices that will be able to benefit from this speed are things like hard drives, RAIDs, and probably IO devices like those by AJA and Blackmagic. This could also allow for “expansion chassis” type devices that will allow laptops to tap in to workstation-like power that was never before possible. For example, many people use workstations, including the MacPro towers, because they need the slots for graphics and video cards. Those cards could possibly sit in an expansion chassis or some kind of external device and be linked to a Thunderbolt-enabled laptop. Intel also claims that adapting existing I/O technologies, like GigE, FireWire or eSATA should be simple to do.

Beyond Canon and Apple, LaCie has also announced support for Thunderbolt. Others are sure to follow.

More good news for production people.

This an article from www.streamingmedia.com on the impact of Thunderbolt.

“For video mixing, however, the use of a laptop has been limited by both connectivity options and the processing required for HD production. The advent of Thunderbolt, along with the joint release of quad-core i7 processors in laptops, though, has enough throughput to allow multiple uncompressed HD streams to flow in to and out of the laptop. The potential for video mixing and streaming, plus external connectivity to multiple cameras and monitors can't be understated, given the throughput and multiple-protocol basis for Thunderbolt.”

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Just read an article on www.reelzchannel.com which is bad for filmmakers. They want to re-edited the “The Kings Speech” to get a PG-13 rating. THIS IS TOO BAD! The MPAA is a crock ‘O sh*t. “The Kings Speech” is not an R rated film. The “The Dark Knight” IS and was rated PG-13. Hollywood has an incredible bias against Foreign Films. I have seen so many films from overseas that should have not been rated R like “Topsy-Turvy” about Gilbert & Sullivan. They should simply resubmit the film for what it should be rated, PG-13. Even my 90 year old mother asked, “Why is this film rated R?” A few swear words? You hear these words on television now. Where's the sex, where's the violence? There is none!

Now back to that scene. It would dramatically change the film. Oh well it is only a film. NOT!

Films are part of our culture. They should never be censored, that is up to the filmmakers not the MPAA. I remember when Spielberg added the word, “Penisbreath” to “ET” to get a PG rating instead of the dreaded G. It was out of place in the film and you could tell the actors were uncomfortable saying it. Only for the MPAA. (By the way the filmmakers re-edited “ET” to take away the gun's and put in walkie talkies to make it “more kid friendly”. The blanding of society.

The MPAA was established because films were no longer being made for all audiences and the prudish people were complaining. If you don't want to see these films, don't watch them. The ratings today need to be about what is in the film. I would prefer to know about violence instead of swearing or sex. If they have these things tell us so but let us make up our own minds if we want to see them.

I am surprised the Weinstien Company would edit this film because normally they distribute R-Rated films anyways. Most of them because of violence. I guess because very few Academy Award winning films have been R-Rated and the bets are on the it will take the Oscar for best picture that they have decided to do this. Shame on them.

UPDATE:
I just read on the Indiwire that yes it is going to be edited.

“Deadline reveals that no footage from the film was edited, but instead, the Weinsteins got clearance for PG-13 by muting three of the five prominent “Fucks” in the film. So: 2 fucks good, 5 fucks bad. And who says the MPAA are ridiculous?

Well, it looks like Harvey Scissorhands is gonna get his way. Last month, it was revealed that Harvey Weinstein was entertaining the notion of snipping/editing “The King’s Speech” so it could get a much more box office friendly and school children approved PG-13 rating. As a whole, the film is pretty harmless, but the big sequence in question was a scene in which the titular king launches into a tirade of expletives during a session with his speech therapist resulting in a string of 15 f-bombs. And while director Tom Hooper swore he wasn’t going to take a knife to his film, somebody has, and the edited version of the movie has been given the thumbs up by the MPAA.”

Here is the latest.