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10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Alejandro Jodorowsky
| Filmmaker Magazine

5. Be present, all the time.There is no difference between preparation and being on set. When I am filming, I am completely there. In every moment you are making a picture, every day, every hour, I am a hundred percent there.

UPDATE - Free Webcast: The Anatomy of a 4K Feature | ProVideoCoalition
Join us on June 27th at 11:00am PDT for this free webcast

4K is on the tip of everyone's tongue…but just how feasible is it today? Join us for a re-broadcast of a "How we make movies" event from RED Studios, Hollywood. Recorded in front of a live audience, Director Jeremy Torrie & Gary Jackemuk, colorist and DI Artist, discuss the benefits and challenges of creating a 4K workflow for their film, Path of Souls, while adopting the latest technologies to finish the film remotely.

Filmmaker picks a copyright fight with “Happy Birthday” | Ars Technica

Filmmakers and TV producers have long been harassed by Warner/Chappell Music, a subsidiary of Time Warner that enforces the copyright on "Happy Birthday," probably the most popular song in the world. If that song pops up in any TV show or movie, the creators are sure to get a hefty bill.

This One Page Could End The Copyright War Over 'Happy Birthday' | NPR

The complaint goes through the history of the song in excruciating detail. One key detail: The complaint says the lyrics were published by the Board of Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church in a 1911 book, long before copyrighted versions of the song appeared. Here's the key page:

The EOSHD 5D Mark III Raw Shooter’s Guide – AVAILABLE NOW! | EOSHD

It is available to download immediately and for the first week you can get 33% off the usual price making it just $19.99.It is an enormous 12 chapters and 106 pages.

The New Mac Pro: 4 Things You Didn’t Know | Mashable

There's No Power Brick
The case, by the way, unlocks and slips off effortlessly. This means the Mac Pro should be easy to service. As many who saw the Mac Pro on the WWDC floor can attest, the memory cards are quite visible and accessible.

The Sunday Conversation: Vilmos Zsigmond's technique comes into focus
| Los Angeles Times

Hitchcock was making these kinds of movies, and I learned a lot from him. I thought a lot about that revolution in the movies, that suspenseful kind of storytelling. It also showed in the lighting. One of the apartments we kept dark for the [character] who doesn't like light.

Filmmakers win exclusion from EU-US trade talks | MovieScope

Ahead of the G8 Summit, European filmmakers have won the battle to have film excluded from the EU-US Trade Talks. At a meeting in Brussels, attended by the EU’s 27 Ministers of Commerce who are responsible for defining the content of trade negotiations to be opened between Europe and the United States, the ministers bowed to filmmakers’ pressure for the exclusion of culture and the audiovisual sector from the negotiations.

Light & Shadow | Zacuto

A year and a half in the making, shot simultaneously on and after Revenge of the Great Camera Shootout 2012, Zacuto presents a Steve Weiss film, Light & Shadow.If you have only one takeaway from Light & Shadow, let it be a reminder that cinematography, like all art forms, is something that comes from within. The technical can be taught, and anyone can pick up a camera and learn how to operate it. To capture an emotion and move an audience through visual storytelling is what real artists are all about. The big question is this: can it be learned or are you born with it? With or without this born talent, it’s still upon you to keep learning and honing your craft.

Evaluating an Application's Video Color | Apple Developer

As discussed in Technical Note TN2227, ColorSync creates a color transform that provides a perceptual match between a known broadcast video color space (as specified by the 'nclc' tag) and the specific chromaticity and gamma characteristics of your display (as defined by the display's ICC profile). This color transformation is then applied to every pixel of each frame by the GPU in realtime as the video is played back on screen.

SUN - 4K | Sebastian Wiegärtner | Vimeo

I used the new Carl Zeiss Compact Zooms 28-80 2.9 and 70-200 2.9. Great zoom lenses, noticed nearly no focus and zoom shift. Everything shot within 3 hours on the Red Epic at 5K / 95fps. Be sure to download the 4K file here on Vimeo. So much better and less compression.
Edited in 5K natively. Software was Adobe Premiere CS6 and Film Convert. Added Grain with this tool, as I wanted to get a very organic look! Worked out pretty well and fast w/ Film Convert.

SUN - 4K from Sebastian Wiegärtner on Vimeo.



Facial Reshaping VFX - Liposuction In Post Production | rousselos Aravantinos | Vimeo

Facial Reshaping VFX - Liposuction In Post Production from rousselos Aravantinos on Vimeo.



Inside Jaws, A Filmumentary by @jamieswb (2013) | Jamie Benning | Vimeo

After 16 months of trawling, reading, spooling, skyping, chatting, interviewing, editing and refining, I am pleased to release Inside Jaws, A Filmumentary (2013). As with my other filmumentaries this is a completely unofficial and non profit making project made with a genuine affection for the film. Enjoy.

Inside Jaws, A Filmumentary by @jamieswb (2013) from Jamie Benning on Vimeo.

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Lynda Obst: Hollywood’s completely broken | Salon
I'm not sure everyone has stopped buying DVDs to steal the video online. Some of us just bought a lot of their favorite old movies, and then stopped buying when nothing interesting came along:

There it was. Technology had destroyed the DVD. When Peter referred to the “transition of the DVD market,” and technology destroying the DVD, he was talking about the implications of the fact that our movies were now proliferating for free—not just on the streets of Beijing and Hong Kong and Rio.

JVC launch a 4K camera with Nikon mount which gets almost everything wrong
| EOSHD

The sensor – the size of 1.25 inch is no-man’s land territory for lenses. Smaller than Micro Four Thirds but larger than Super 16mm, it conforms to no common video standard at all. It’s also completely unsuited to the photographic Nikon full frame lenses JVC requires you to mount on it. It isn’t suited to DX glass either.

JVC ANNOUNCE JY-HMQ30 4K LARGE SENSOR CAMERA WITH NIKON LENS MOUNT
| Matt Allard | News Shooter

To make the 4K image span the four SD cards JVC uses what it calls edge blend processing.  What this does is where the four HD images that make up the 4K image overlap, it seemlessly blends them all together so you cannot notice that the images are stitched together.

Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM "A" | SLGear
You can pre-order this at B & H in a number of mounts for $799:

The Sigma 18-35mm ƒ/1.8 DC HSM "A" lens packs a big punch in features and image quality without a big punch to the wallet. Shockingly sharp images at all apertures, even at ƒ/1.8, with excellent flatness of field and good control over chromatic aberration, distortion and vignetting make this lens a no-brainer for users of APS-C cameras looking to upgrade from their kit lens.

Field of View on the BMPCC | Ruben Kremer
The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera:

You're thinking about getting one of these camera's, are you not?Of course you are. The active Micro Four Thirds mount will enable you to put practically every lens on this camera.But what will happen to the field of view (FoV) with the lenses you own?

Redrock Micro ultraCage Black Rig for Blackmagic Cinema Camera
| Cinescopophilia

Redrock Micro appear to be hitting their stride with camera cages. First the Cobalt cage for the GoPro Hero 3 cameras put some fuel in the car and now the ultraCage Black Rig for Blackmagic Cinema Camera sees them racing to the finishing line.

The Raw Time-lapse Tutorial – Part III – How To Shoot Day To Night Time-lapses
| Preston Kanak | Philip Bloom

As many people have proclaimed, day to night or night to day time-lapses are the ‘holy grail’ of time-lapse shooting. They tend to draw the attention of viewers because of their assumed complexity. At the same time, what people don’t understand is that they aren’t as tough to achieve as they appear. In this blog post, I will quickly walk you through a few different ways of capturing these types of shots.

7 Recommended No-Budget Post-Production Tools | Filmmaker Magazine

1. Blender - 3D Modeling & Animation (Win, Linux & Mac)I’m constantly amazed at what this FREE program can do. It includes many features found in competing 3D apps that cost hundreds and many times thousands of dollars. Even if all you use it for is to create cool looking 3D text for intro credits it is worth downloading and learning. Best of all, the online Blender community is awesome.

LAFF Review: Documentary 'Casting By' Heralds the Unsung Yet Crucial Art of the Casting Director | Indiewire

The film is primarily a love letter to casting director Marion Dougherty, a pioneer in her field. Dougherty came to prominence in the 1950s, when the studio system was on its way out. Going against the grain of the contract player technique, Dougherty would plumb the depths of the New York theater scene for actors to take parts on live television. This eventually segued into higher-profile TV series (“Naked City,” for one), and then on to films.

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Sony’s Sub-$10,000 PMW-300 Is the EX3′s Successor | StudioDaily

Sony announced the PMW-300 camcorder, refreshing its XDCAM line-up with a semi-shoulder mount camera that uses the same EX-mount interchangeable lens system as the PMW-EX3, meaning both 1/2-inch and 2/3-inch lenses can be used. And it adds the broadcast-friendly 50 Mbps MPEG HD 422 codec to its recording options.

Behind the Scenes of the New Sony 4K Commercial | Sony Blog

If you’ve seen the spot, you know this was no small production. But what exactly does it take to create something like this? As it turns out, it takes 4 days on location and a whole lotta people. Our team selected Miranda Beach in New Zealand as the main set (ironic, since our Cinematographer on the job is Academy Award Winner, Claudio Miranda. No relation).

First impressions of the F55 | Sony

Cinematographer and hugely influential blogger Philip Bloom got his hands on the F55 back in April and immediately set about making a short film designed to put the camera through its paces. “It’s a surrealistic short film set in a disused tunnel, which really pushed the camera’s sensitivity and is a challenging first use of the camera,” he says. 

Regaining discipline and the importance of planning…PLUS a challenge for you!
| Philip Bloom

This brings us back to the idea of tight rushes. Editors love tight rushes…just not too tight. It’s always better to overshoot than undershoot. Nobody wants to run out of shots, it’s preferable to have too much to play with than too little…but the sign of inexperience is overshooting.

What Cameras Are Festival Filmmakers Using in 2013? | No Film School

From everyday devices (Apple iPhones) to old stalwarts (Panasonic AG-HVX200), and high-end (Arri Alexa) to DSLRs (Canon 5Ds), filmmakers are making quality movies with a dizzying array of cameras — over 33 were used in making this year’s Tribeca offerings.

JVC GC-PX100 TEST FOOTAGE | VideoMaker
The $900 JVC GC-PX100 camera looked interesting because it promises over-cranking of 200fps or more....but looking at this footage shot with the camera, I don't think it's very useable, except for home movies.

We took the JVC GC-PX100 into various shooting environments to test its high-speed frame rates, autofocus, detail, moire, rolling shutter, low light capabilities, dynamic range, color, saturation, and image stablization.

Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L Non-IS Discontinued? | CanonRumors
Still seems to be listed at B & H for $1,299:

We’ve heard from a few people that the EF 70-200 f/2.8L is in the process of being discontinued. A few people have said they have attempted to get broken lenses fixed and have been told by Canon USA that parts for the repair are no longer available and will not be in the future either.

Technicolor's Color Certified Program ensures consistency across displays (video)
| Engadget

There's THX certification for TVs, ensuring potential buyers that they'll get solid home-theater visuals, so why shouldn't there be an equivalent for your gadgets' displays? Technicolor, along with software company Portrait Displays, is stepping up to the plate with a new standard for guaranteeing hue quality across PC and mobile panels. 

Resolve V9 "Copy a look with Auto Keyframes" | icolorist | Vimeo

How to copy a grade with 2 keyframed shapes from 1 clip to another using the Auto Keyframer

Creative Stop-Motion Makes Excellent Use of Forced Perspective and The Moon
| PetaPixel

In preparation for the all-night festivities to come, Vania Heymann, a second year student in Bezalel school of art and design in Jerusalem, put together this very creative mix of video and time-lapse that uses forced perspective and the moon to advertise the coming festival.

Steven Spielberg Predicts 'Implosion' of Film Industry | Hollywood Reporter

Steven Spielberg on Wednesday predicted an "implosion" in the film industry is inevitable, whereby a half dozen or so $250 million movies flop at the box office and alter the industry forever. What comes next -- or even before then -- will be price variances at movie theaters, where "you're gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you're probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln." 

Seminar: BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT Saturday, June 15th

Saturday, June 15th @ High Output Studios, Massachusetts
Coffee & Bagels 9:30 AM /
Seminars 10:00 - 12:00 Noon 
RSVP & Tickets: Working Methods Seminars Learn how brands work with agencies, producers, filmmakers, and content creators to create unique and engaging work in today's multi-platform media landscape. The seminar will also explore product placement in feature films, television and web content - and the rights and clearances involved when featuring products in a production.

SPEAKERS & PANEL
Eric Korsh - VP Brand Content, Digitas
Arestia Rosenberg - Senior Content Producer, Hill Holiday
Michelle Ferullo - Product placement specialist for feature films and TV.
Moderated by: Margie Sullivan - Executive Producer, Redtree Productions

Boston 48 Hour Film Project

Tuesday was the Finale of the Boston 48 Hour Film Project. From something like 80 films, the final list had been winnowed down to 14 films. I'd already attended one of the six original screening nights, so statistically I should have seen at least two of these films, but I'd only seen one of them before.

There were some great videos. The winner "All for Knot" was a great piece of acting, shooting and editing, and three or four of the other movies were almost as good. All in all, pretty impressive.

Below are some of the best entries (unfortunately, I couldn't find a couple of other movies I wanted to include.)





Anything from The2ndAct on Vimeo







Behind the Scenes of "Love Hurts" from Ben Pender-Cudlip on Vimeo.

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Adobe Premiere Pro CC and GPU support | Adobe

Also, some customers may be aware that in the past there was a not-so-secret way of enabling non-supported GPUs by the ‘hacking’ or removal of a text file. This is no longer necessary in Premiere Pro CC. As long as you have a reasonably modern card with at least 1GB of VRAM, you will still be able to enable that card in the Project Settings dialog.

TYLER STABLEFORD TALKS ABOUT HIS MOVE TO VIDEO, NON-PROFIT WORK AND THE FUTURE OF FILMMAKING | News Shooter

Photographer, cinematographer and director, Tyler Stableford, like many others, started shooting video in 2009 after the release of the EOS 5D mkII. Over the last three years it has completely changed his business and landed him some big name clients but he’s still a storyteller at heart. I met up with Tyler at this year’s NAB show for a brief chat about his work.

New Rokinon 16mm f/2.0 Wide-Angle Lens for APS-C and Micro Four Thirds
| B & H Photovideo

Rokinon has announced a new 16mm wide-angle manual-focus lens for DSLR and mirrorless cameras in both the APS-C and Micro Four Thirds formats. As a standard wide focal length with an f/2.0 maximum aperture, it is bound to please APS-C and Micro Four Thirds shooters who have been looking for just such a fast and versatile optic.

An incredible achievement – Roald Christessen builds his own raw cinema camera and grading software | EOSHD

The camera has a global shutter CCD sensor, which is the same Trusense (ex-Kodak) sensor used in the Ikonoskop. It gives a lovely cinematic image and very filmic colour with no rolling shutter skew. To see what I mean read my two-part shoot with the Ikonoskop here and watch the shootout footage vs the Blackmagic Cinema Camera below.

A Different Kind of Alchemy: From Amazon Studios Development Slate Script to Novel | Hollywonk

Then the screenplay was optioned by Amazon Studios, and because of the publicity it received, the publisher contacted me to suggest that I write the story as a novel. I told him that would get right on it, and emailed him the manuscript five minutes later. Timing is everything.

Judge Rules That Movie Studio Should Have Been Paying Interns | New York Times

A Federal District Court judge in Manhattan ruled on Tuesday that Fox Searchlight Pictures had violated federal and New York minimum wage laws by not paying production interns, a case that could upend the long-held practice of the film industry and other businesses that rely heavily on unpaid internships.

A LONGSHOT BULLSEYE: WHY HBO GREENLIT GAME OF THRONES | The Mary Sue

We had this pilot script and we were budgeting it and scratching our head whether we should go ahead and greenlight this, and we were trying to figure out the production challenges. We knew it had to be able to stand next to projects in this genre being done on the big screen yet with a more limited budget.

The Mac that Thunderbolt built: The newly compact Mac Pro | C|Net

Instead of empty PCI Express slots and vacant hard drive bays, the new Mac Pro will come with six 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports powered by three controllers separate controllers.

5 VIDEO TOOLS THAT WEREN'T MADE FOR VIDEO THAT YOU SHOULD KEEP IN YOUR GEAR BAG | VideoMaker

WASHER: These little circular discs that come packaged with nuts and bolts can be a videographer's best friend. You're in a hurry, you need to unscrew that bolt on the bottom of your tripod plate and you reach in your pocket for a dime - but come up with only a nickel. 

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Zacuto C-Shooter Hands On Review | Erik Naso
A review of the ($949) Zacuto C-Shooter for Canon EOS C100/C300/C500 Cameras:

The Canon Cinema EOS cameras are the most ergonomic camera I have used. So why use a rig for them? Well for a couple of reasons. If your trying to shoot ENG style then holding a camera with no rig can get fatiguing really fast. Try interviewing someone for over five minutes holding the C100 up without a rig. 

Amazon Storyteller: A Sort-of-Free Storyboard Tool | Michael Murie
| Filmmaker Magazine

On the face of it, it’s surprisingly easy to get started. The tool displays the script in a panel on the left-hand side. Click on a line of the script and the tool creates a new storyboard frame. 

“Have You Been in Jail Recently?” Chris Doyle on How to Be a Cinematic Artist | Allan Tong | Filmmaker Magazine

Doyle always carries this mindset when he handles a motion picture camera. “You see some words [in a script], and it says, ‘It’s very wet,’ or ‘It was a dry, dull day.’ How [] do you film a ‘dry, dull day’? So you have to get away from words. You have to find a way to give ‘a dry, dull day’ an image. That’s what cinematography’s about.

16 Recommendations For Filmmakers To Discover Best Practices For A Sustainable Creative Life | Truly Free Film

Focus on developing Entrepreneurial Skills as well as the creative.  The corporate distributors don’t need your work to the extent that they will ever value it as much as you will.  If you want your work to last, engage, and be profitable, it is up to you to be prepared to use it to ignite all opportunities

Lawrence of Arabia: Sony's Beautiful 4K Restoration | Creative Cow

One of the issues was that all the 70mm prints over the last two decades had been struck from the duplicate 65mm negative that was made from the 1988 wetgate-manufactured 65mm Interpositive, a process that serves to camouflage many of the scratches and dirt. "We did not have the advantage of scanning this large format film with a wetgate, so all the film's flaws were very evident directly from the original negative," said Crisp.

DPs of award-winning films speak at Cannes | ARRI News

Amid all the excitement, ARRI recorded video interviews with three cinematographers who had award-winning films at the festival, all of them captured with ALEXA. HELI, shot by Lorenzo Hagerman, won Best Director for Amat Escalante; OMAR, shot by Ehab Assal, won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize; and ILO ILO, shot by Benoit Soler, won the Caméra d'Or.

Creating "The Pleasantville Effect" in FCPX | Larry Jordan | YouTube

Have you discovered the "Pleasantville" effect? This pretty cool effect allows users to keep a single object in full color while the rest of the shot fades into B&W. For more, check out this webinar excerpt from "How To Color Correct A Scene in FCPX"! 

How To Use Shape Masks in FCPX | Larry Jordan | YouTube

Trying to mask off the brightness of objects or areas in some of your shots? Learning more about Shape Masks can do a world of good. This webinar excerpt from "How To Color Correct A Scene in FCPX" shines some light on the subject!

Apple Announces New Mac pros (though shipping later this year)

Apple offers sneak peek at new cylindrical Mac Pro assembled in the USA | AppleInsider

The desktop also features dual workstation GPUs powered by AMD FirePro. That will allow up to 2 and a half times faster than the graphics of the last generation, capable of driving three 4K resolution displays on the new high-end machine.

Hell froze over: Apple previews new Mac Pro, video professionals rejoice? | Cinema5D

It looks like Apple relies entirely on Thunderbolt 2 (twice as fast as the current Thunderbolt) for expansion of any kind – even hard disks (it has flash memory built in, no hard disk drive). Expansion via Thunderbolt is a great idea, yet currently, there are very few devices available for that – it is possible to put some PCI Express cards into Thunderbolt housings but the solutions are very limited at this point. 

Apple reveal new 4K equipped Mac Pro suitable for uncompressed raw editing. Not just pro but genius! | EOSHD

Rather than have a fan and heat sink on every major component like in a PC, the new Mac Pro has a triangular unified thermal core at the centre with each component in contact with it on a different side of the triangle (via thermal paste). It then has a single fan to pull air through it. That is a genius design and surprising nobody else has done one on a desktop computer until now. 

Stop the CUDA panic! Adobe CC, Resolve, et al work fine on the new MacPro! | Philip Hodgetts

The preview of the new MacPro has, not surprisingly, polarized “the Internet”. It is however exactly the computer I thought Apple would produce for a new MacPro. Well, the tubular design was a surprise, but the lack of internal drive space, expansion slots were no surprise. But the lack of NVIDIA “cards” and therefore CUDA support, has alarmed many, quite needlessly.

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A little rain in my Pocket | John Brawley
John takes another look at the Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera, which is expected to ship at the end of July.

Using the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera with native m4/3 lenses I moved around pretty easily and unobtrusively.  Yes. The camera did get wet.  I tried to keep it dry, but it was inevitable.
I shot mainly at ISO 1600, but the first few clips were shot at 800.

BMCC prores test footage | Alex K Lin | Vimeo
The Blackmagic Cinema Camera (the original, not the upcoming 4K)

My take on it is that the BMCC certainly has its own look. I think although Canon has avery mainstream and popular color matrix, rendering beautiful blushy skintones, the BMCC has very naturalrendering of skintones and film mode makes you start coloring with a nostalgic desaturated look...

Product Review: Zynaptiq Unveil | Larry Jordan
Can you remove reverberation? Maybe with this plug-in:

As I was researching last week’s webinar – 3rd-Party Plug-ins for Final Cut Pro X - a reader suggested I check into Unveil, by Zynaptiq. I did, and what I discovered was that Unveil does the impossible: it removes reverberation recorded into a voice track.

Produced By: J.J. Abrams on Film's Future and his Love-Hate Relationship With Tech | Hollywood Reporter

He said in choosing film for Star Trek Into Darkness, he wanted to match the look of the previous Star Trek film. “Also with all the CG, it was important to me that it was as warm and human and analog as possible. It may not be obvious to many of the people who saw it, but I think it is more important than people know.”

How I Share and Send Files With Clients – A New Edition to My Arsenal – ‘MinBox’ | Nate Weber

I export from Premiere (or Adobe Media Encoder, FCP7, etc) right into my dropbox folder. This way it’s uploading the second it’s done exporting. Vimeo is connected to Dropbox now, so I can upload it from the Dropbox server to Vimeo’s server much faster than over my own connection. 

15 Tips for Producers from the Cannes Film Festival | Scott Macaulay
| Filmmaker Magazine

Learn how to collaborate. When I asked the five panelists at my American Pavilion panel what advice they’d impart to those starting out, Parts and Labor’s Jay Van Hoy, a producer on the Critic’s Week selection Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, said, “Learn how to collaborate.”

How To Build Trust With Your Documentary Subject by Michael LaPointe | YouTube
Interesting ideas on how to deal with interview subjects:

More on Adobe Creative Cloud

Apples, Oranges, & Creative Cloud: My Thoughts on CC | Jack Nack
Jack works at Adobe and offers his thoughts on the Creative Cloud:

We’d work our butts off to deliver every possible improvement, but when crunch time came, we’d have two lousy choices: either rush to finish a feature & make the release, or cut it, putting it 18-36 months from customers’ hands. 

An Update on Creative Cloud | Aharon Rabinowitz | All Bets Are Off Productions
Aharon attended an Adobe presentation and reports on their pitch for the Cloud:

Another area where Adobe is trying to accommodate us is in the area of being able to open our previous work, even if we are no longer paying for creative cloud. Nothing is set in stone, as they were just polling the audience, but they are clearly thinking about it. They asked us if it would be acceptable if, even after subscription lapses, we would be able to open and render out old work – and to even have the ability to make changes without saving them.