I’ve been overwhelmed working on my movie “Road to Red” , but I’ve finally locked picture and hopefully I’ll have a little more time to catch up over here!

So, with that out of the way, here’s a little catching up from photo shoot I did a while ago.

For one of the last units of “Road to Red” we shot in Catalina Island. We had to do some in-water, surface shots and we decided to use a 5D MKII and an Aquatech housing.

All I can say for now…

As I didn’t want to go out in the ocean, with a rig I had never used and time was crunching, I made a few calls to setup a little fun afternoon at Angely‘s house, shooting in her water heated pool… yeah, kind of cheating, as the water wouldn’t be nearly as nice when we headed out to Catalina…

A couple of gorgeous girls, warm water and a 5D MKII… what could make for a better afternoon?!

Miss Dia making my day with this gorgeous underwater pose!

Our biggest challenge was finding lighting gear. A pocket wizard water housing costs like $400…

Fortunately, one of the models I contacted had a boyfriend that was a lighting engineer…

and just happened to be working at Cosmos Sound & Lighting, who happened to have these waterproof LED lights…

So thanks to Vladi and Daniil, and Cosmos Sound & Lighting, of course, the game was on!

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The Aquateck housing, specifically made for the 5D MKII, has a transparent back with knobs and wheels, which give you access to pretty much all the menus and functions of your beloved 5D.

If you’re not used to the Quick Control Screen (like I wasn’t), get ready to make a new best friend, cause there’s no access to the main dial (the one you reach with your index finger)… so if you want to change your shutter speed, you need to access it through the Quick Control Screen using the Quick Control Dial (the big wheel in the back we all so dearly love).

The LCD screen view is clear and as functional as possible, but you can’t forget that you’re in the water… so you’ll have to fight drops and glare as they gather where you least want them…

Using manual focus on a lens is possible,
but it’s not as functional as you’d like…

but since you usually want to be as close as possible to your subject, when shooting under water, you end up using pretty wide lenses, so you probably won’t be requiring do all that much focusing, in most cases.

As I was only shooting stills, I just used autofocus all the time.

When I shot motion with this gear,
I would just switch back to stills mode, get a focus and engage video mode again to shoot.

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The last piece of the equation was to find a kind soul that would let us borrow a beautiful and colorful wardrobe, for us to soak all afternoon long…

A big thanks to Bruno Duluc who provided us the gorgeous dresses you can see in these pics!!!

We set ourselves out to do several concept shots, only too realize that we were probably a little too ambitious… as usual! haha!

I was very pleased on how this one turned out! I wanted to create the illusion of surfing on the flip side of the water surface. It was and hilarious process trying to make this happen, but in the end it was totally worth it.

I still want to do some photoshop work to it. Like compositing a wave and a cosmic sky… but until I’m done with my film, it will have to wait…

The other concept was to get a bicycle in the pool… which also proved to be quite challenging and cause some serious laughing moments… which if you think about it, it’s not the best thing when you’re trying to hold your breath underwater…

Well, and the rest is history as they say… hope you enjoyed the photos and don’t get too jealous when you watch the making of… haha! We had way too much fun!

A big thanks to my friend Renato Lucas @LucasinLA who shot and edited the making of. He’s new to Twitter so don’t forget to welcome him to the fam!

RadRaven, over and out!

T ; )~

I regrettably missed Visual FX for Guerrila Filmmakers, but I made it just in time to hit Liam Fin and Illya Friedman’s Big Movie Little Camera.

Liam was the first person to shoot a feature lenght movie on a HDSLR. The GH1 to be more precise. He also counted with the precious help of Illya Friedman from Hot Rod Cameras, who brought a powerful ingredient to the mix… a PL mount that allowed the little Panasonic to shoot with high grade cinema lenses.

Liam is a re-incident at this expo. He presented us with footage of his film “Rejouer” 100% shot with the GH1, last year.
His speech on independent filmmaking shows how much experience he has accumulated throughout his career. Being vice-president of Filmmakers Alliance has probably added a lot to the pot… Some of his tips are really precious, like showing us how shooting a take of your action, without dialogue, to capture a clean track of all those precious little sounds that will be a nightmare to recreate in post, can be a real life saver and enhance the overall production value of your film. Check out his website FInndependent.com

Liam also announced a new user group meeting that is going to start meeting in Glendale. You can get more info at HDSLRUG.com. Definitely going to try to fit that into my schedule!

Then hunger stroke… I missed the morning breakfast, so I ended up loosing myself in Hollywood’s Farmers Market that is held on Sundays, next to the LA Film School and ended up missing the Bui Brothers… but I have to say that, that Chicken Skewer and the 4 Berry Lemonade really made up for it… But not all was lost as I made it just in time for Ami Vitale’s Interactive Storytelling.

Amy’s an accomplished photo journalist who’s transitioned to motion picture. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s been more then a few journalists getting under the spotlight of the HDSLR revolution, while many other technically inclined individuals, that could probably take better advantage of it, are not… So what’s the deal you may ask? Well, journalists are natural born story tellers… and beautiful images without an equally strong story to support them, tend to be nothing more then an elaborate camera show off…

Amy has really embraced this new technology with heart. She even went back to school to learn Multimedia but confesses she was daunted by shooting “video” at first.

Amy introduced us to some of her early work, composed of beautiful touching, black and white pictures taken in a period of 6 months where she lived among local natives, with no electricity or running water… simply amazing stuff!

Amy’s work has taken her to places and moments in time that characterize the crazy world we live in… Her stories are visually and substantially captivating, displaying a one of a kind sensibility to immerse us in these worlds, and now she’s able to carry that same feel to her motion picture work.

You can see smore of her work at amivitale.com

Amy emphasized how important your pitches are, giving an example of how she sent countless proposals to cover the story of 4 of the last 8 white rhino’s being moved back to Africa, in a final attempt to preserve this dying species and she got a “NO” from every single one of them. Later on she put her heart into it, re-wrote the proposal, sent it to only 5 people and got a “YES” from all 5…

For her, the prospect of being able to shoot video and stills means the world is ours for the taking. You just need to make a compelling story and you have so many outlets to sell it too.
The white rhino’s footage ended up being sold to 4 or five different entities, being National Geographic one of them.

The action was non stop and right after Amy’s, you had to run for another great raffles drawing…

Then you had to pick either Roberta Munroe’s Best Short Film Workshop Ever or Jared Abraham’s HDSLR E.N.G. Well.. I ended up not catching either of them and decided it was time to spend some time in the Expo Floor.

The “usual suspects” didn’t miss the show, but it was great to see many new comers supporting this unique event.

Brian Valente, from Redrock Micro, couldn’t hide the excitement as the minutes counted down to the announcement of his new product… which by now you already know it’s a high quality Electronic View Vinder, aimed for HDSLRs… and by now you probably also know that Zacuto announced their own flavor, only a few days later… Exciting times!!!

The great thing about shows like this, and what makes them so important, is the chance of coming face to face with some of the most prominent and creative people in the business.

Illya Friedman, the creator of the first PL mounts for HDSLRs, hiting the floor and sharing his knowledge with one of the vendors.

It’s also a chance of seeing rigs and configurations you’d never get a chance, except in photos on-line somewhere.

I find these experiences extremely inspiring and enriching!

There are currently so many options and add ons in the market, that only you can decide what will work best for your needs.

Configurations are virtually endless and we all contribute to how they shape the future to come.

This is also a unique opportunity to meet developers and share your real world experiences. And if you’re just getting your feet wet, there’s also nothing better then hearing and meeting people that can give you invaluable advice and insight towards your next step…

The prices are also so varied and this is the best way to have an idea of what you’re paying for, or how well it come together with the rest of your equipment.

We get inundated with info on the web, but there’s nothing like actually touching a device, turn it on, play with it and see how it feels to you! And that’s why it is so important to make sure these events keep being held, for years to come.

Jag 35 also caught my attention with their new view finder, that is supposed to be hitting the market very soon.

A viewfinder, called Monitor X, that allows you to not have your eye glued to it, in order to be able to see what you’re shooting.

This will definitely please some users and with the prices Jag 35 has gotten us used to, I’m sure it will find many fans!

And like I said, there was so much stuff, it would take a whole other article just to give you a rough idea of the great products in display…

So the time to go back to the main theatre came way too quick and I had to get on the move again…

One of the coolest cat of the HDSLR world, and re-incident at this Expo, was about to do his presentation…

Rodney Charters, aka @rodneykiwi, the DP of the popular show 24h, embodies a passion and devotion to the craft that spreads all over the audience.

Similarly to last year, Rodney showed a retrospect of his life, starting with how his father prospered in the war as a photographer and friendly booze provider… haha! The rest just flows as visual poetry, as we watch his career evolution, through either his own pictures or the cameras that have passed by his hands… unfortunately, we were once again asked to not take stills, so you just have to feed from my words, that can’t remotely come close to making justice of the whole experience.

Just like Shane Hurlbut, Rodney has also been a key player in pushing the envelope in the HDSLR world.

Each one of his words comes out passionately as Rodney offers a small insight to his vast knowledge. He rejoices on the fast evolution we’ve been witnessing for the past 2 years, but also points out how things could even go smoother, if only  the powers to be would allow it… pointing out his tweet to Canon about Nikon’s auto-focus… “it’s a piece of software! You already have all the controls in your cameras, what are you waiting for?”

But the digital revolution goes way beyond the HDSLR world and although RED wasn’t anywhere to be seen, this year, news of how well Arri’s new camera is performing can only make us all dream…

Rodney excitedly  reports 14 stops latitude on the Alexa! “Shoot inside an appartment and through the windows you can still see a well exposed sky… Looks like an HDR picture taken with your iPhone 4!”

He then moved on to show some examples of how the 5Ds have become vital for VFX plate work, both with still and videos, and both combined.

The use of several cameras in a spherical configuration, intricately and solidly rigged to a car, allow drive through streets, while capturing the whole environment, which is later put together in a 3D software, allowing directors to move the camera freely in green screen work.

Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k

The no camera policy makes it really difficult to illustrate most interesting things, like a “jerry rig” put together with T2Is to do spherical plate work on a budget… very inspiring stuff.

He also showed an amazing clip made with 12 cameras set at different focal lengths… it’s hard to describe but it was the only moment, during this expo, that I heard that “haaah” of disbelief  you used to get when the first 5D MKII images where shown a couple of years back…

Rodney also mentioned the software 5D to RGB, saying he was very impressed with its results. So much so, he said that on any future HDSLR project he works on, he’s going to insist to have the material processed with it. So we can safely guess 5D to RGB is going to become an important part of the workflow, on most high end projects.

As you came out of the theater, you could feel the enthusiasm that sprouts around you. Everyone’s engaged in some form of technically creative conversation… Your head just spins after so much inspirational material…

You can see more of Rodney’s work at: http://www.rodneycharters.com/

The whole weekend we’ve all been waiting to see the man that first brought us HDSLR motion picture to our screens, and what news he would bring for the Vincent Laforet world… Without any introduction necessary, this was probably the most anticipated speaker of the Expo.

Social media and the notoriety that “Reverie” gained so quickly, allowed Vincent to catapult himself to impossible heights in the motion picture world, in such a short time. So there’s nothing more inspiring then seeing his evolution and ascension.

What’s also so amazing is the humble tone of his words. This is what I think makes Vincent so great. A guy who is as accomplished as any photographer can dream to be and now heading head first into another career he discovered because Canon launched a camera that happened to shoot pristine HD.

Vincent admits his biggest downfall was to have gotten so gear obsessed for the past 2 years, in despite of focusing on story.

Filmmaking is a concatenation of interesting recipes… but story telling is definitely the backbone of it all. You can have the simplest images, but if the story is there, you still find yourself glued to a screen, if nothing else, to find the outcome of it all, while the most amazing images without substance can become the most boring thing after a little while…

Vincent presents himself as a story telling devotee, pointing it as the fuel of his commitment and dedication.

Nonetheless it’s very impressive to see the show reel Vincent put together in a “gear obsessed” year, which is really a prove of the passion for his craft. The 5D MKII, 1D MKIV and 7D were the tools that allowed him to get prepared to shoot big productions in such a short time.

Vincent has been instrumental in pushing the envelope of the HDSLR world, always sharing most of his secrets and gear recipe, posting articles and videos in his blog, like this one!

All in all the PhotoCineNews Expo can only be seen as a major success and a step-up from last year’s Collision Conference, which was considered ground Zero for the hybrid shooting world, and as far as I’m aware there’s still no other event completely focused on HDSLR, with this dimension and quality. So we can only hope that the sponsors understand its importance and will help us keep in touch with the forefront of this fascinating new world.

So, until next year… happy shooting!!!

RadRaven, over and out!

T ; )~

PhotoCineNews Expo was this year’s re-incarnation, with a luxurious cast of speakers that would once again set the bar for this ever evolving HD capable, Single Lens Reflex world.

The morning starts early for these guys, and just like last year, free coffee, donuts and bagels seems to be the perfect lure to force folks out of bed, when they would otherwise be doing a Saturday sleep in…

Planet5D, the most prominent HDSLR Blog, headed by @planetmitch was this year’s sponsor of the introductory breakfast.

Mitch Aunger aka @planetmitch – Mr. Planet5D himself!

So much happening at the same time… Hard to pick what to attend. Something for everyone or any goal. I decided to skip a more technical discussion panel with some of the highest authorities in the HDSLR lenses world. Illya Friedman, the creator of the PL mounts for HDSLR, Richard Schleuning from Zeiss lenses and Brian Valente from Redrock Micro were heading the session panel.

Yeah, I wanted to be there, but I made a choice to hear a real story teller speaking, which also gave me a chance to take a peek at the Glidecam workshop being held in the theatre next to the expo floor, at the same time.

For a while now, Glidecam has been the affordable solution for indie filmmakers, to have access to flying a camera smoothly through their scenes. In this demo, following the moto of this event, the rig had an HDSLR mounted to it.

The GlideCam looks very capable but it takes time to master its intricate balancing, which is the backbone for flying your camera smoothly. Meaning it’s not something you can just pick out of the box and start “rock staring” it.

It was time to head to the the main theater to hear and see the wonderful story of Gail’s adventure shooting her new documentary.

Just like last year, Tom Stratton was hosting the main theatre and after the due introductions to Gail’s body of work, we were in for a treat.

Gail set out on a trip with her daughter to document and film the stories of individuals – ordinary people who are following their own dreams, passions, ambitions and doing extraordinary things.

As a veteran photo journalist, mostly shooting with a 5D MKII, her images are captivating and her subjects’ words touching… It’s always amazing to see passionate people persuing their endeavors!

99 days trip! 33 flights! 6 continents! Sleeping on the floor of bamboo huts, sometimes… at 59 years of age! So, next time you go bitch about not having the means to make your project, think again…

Gail proved to be a master in keeping costs down. She also knows the need for a filmmaker to be shameless and selfless when it comes do beg, bargain, barter and still (shots, of course), in order to bring his project to fruition. Gail even shot 2 days to make a video for a Hotel, in exchange for 2 week stay.

99 days, 33 flights and a crew of 2, for only $19.000 (pre-production and production)! Now that’s pretty God damn impressive!

Gearing up to move to HDSLRs wasn’t cheap, Mooney recalls, but she had to bite the bullet in a ball park investment of $15.000, which included cameras, laptops, hard drives, cards. ect…

The small form factor allowed her to travel light and swiftly, which with only having herself and her daughter as crew, was an absolute must! It also allowed her to be more casual and capture very intimate interviews, that otherwise, wouldn’t have been as genuine… 3 out of of her 7 subjects have already perished, making her material even more precious…

Hearing her words and passion makes you wonder about how many times have you’ve asked yourself about what can you do to make the world a better place… This is the kind of work more of us should aspire to do.

Gail’s experience as a veteran photo journalist makes her very resourceful and creative, using equipment most of us wouldn’t think of. Like using a Scotty vest to “wear” your gear into an airlplain (like a laptop in the back compartment?!), avoiding extra costs and making it possible to take equipment in flights where your allowed carry on luggage was extremely limited. “They don’t weight what you’re wearing!”

“The travel Gods were on our side!” Gail rejoices. “Never lost a bag, no delayed flights, everything went smoothly.”

She used social media to keep growing her audience and not only help fund her project but also the people/institutions she was shooting.

Ironically but not surprising, Gail found support in smaller manufactures, but a closed door in larger ones… You figure out who…

You can check out Gail Mooney’s work for yourself at: openingoureyes.wordpress.com

So inspiring! So relevant! So… What are you waiting for?! When are you going to bring your next project to life???

The theatre emptied fast as people rushed to the famous raffle drawings in the Expo Hall…

As it’s becoming tradition, Tom Stratton also hosts the raffles drawing and gets the crowd going with all the amazing prizes the sponsors kindly put out to be given away.

The next choice was though… Adobe was doing a demo of the CS5 HDSLR workflow with Jacob Rosenberg, while Gene Martin was doing his presentation on HDSLR Audio in the Field and Jon Reiss, a quick sum up of his must have book for any indie filmmaker; “Think Outside the Box Office”…

As an indie filmmaker about to finish my first film, I could not miss Jon Reiss’ presentation.

The world of film distribution has never been as challenged as today. The models are outdated and the people in charge aren’t the best crowd readers out there… Dying markets like DVD and emerging ones like the web or apps for iPhones and iPads, open new opportunities for the indie world, but jumping in head first, without having a good idea of what’s out there, or what’s the best path for your film, can easily become suicide.

After marketing his own film for the last 3 years, Jon Reiss shares the knowledge he’s gathere in his book titled “Think Outside of the Box Office”.

A lot of it can sound like common sense, at first, but I definitely recommend this book, after attending Jon’s presentation, for anyone who’s seriously thinking of taking their movies through a less traditional distribution method.

Hungry! This waking up early and eating donuts for breakfast can get to you quick… so I was more then ready to get my energy replenished.

First thing in the after lunch menu was Final Cut Pro Green Screen Post with Frank Rohmer, but I was still in a food coma and eager to wait for Snehal’s presentation…

Practical Filmmaking with Snehal Patel was a breath of fresh hair!
We see so many people doing workshops and writing “how tos” and what not, but without wanting to hurt anyone’s susceptibilities, it’s so easy to tell who has real filmmaking experience…

HDSLR has matured so much in the last year. The time to be mesmerized on out of focus shots, and on what Stu Masovich so cleverly named as bokake porn, is coming to an end. You still find many people focusing on the shallow depth of field, but few, talking on how impractical it is to use a 5D MKII with a fast lens, wide open (meaning  at it’s shallowest depth of field), and that’s where Snehal started, just to get things into perspective.

In my own empirical opinion, this is where the phrase “filmmakers you’re now photographers, photographers you’re not filmmakers, now!” comes to mind (still trying to find where I read this. I’ve quoted it before and would love to give credit to its author!

Photographers and filmmakers have skills that can easily be carried into each other’s medium, but they’re completely different games, that now happen to have a common tool. They are both gigantic fields, filled with an immeasurable amount of knoledge to master, and transitioning to the opposite medium, without any previous background, can be pretty tricky.

As a filmmaker turned photographer (no I didn’t only start taking stills when the MKII came out), I agree with this sentence because although I’m a relatively experienced filmmaker, I still find a film shoot way more challenging then any photoshoot… So take what you want from this, agree or agree to disagree, but do not take any of these mediums for granted, just because you have a machine that is capable of doing both…

Only after 25 mins of hearing Snehal, I would go out on a limb to say, that his workshops must be definitely worth while!

Time was crunching and I was forced to return to the main theatre so I wouldn’t miss Alex Buono’s presentation.

This is how good this year’s event was! There was no way to attend all the good stuff…

Alex Buono’s turn out was the largest of the Expo, so far. And after the hype generated with the Saturday Night Life intro being shot by Alex on 5Ds and 7Ds, nothing else was to expect.

Alex started by introducing himself. A student at USC, got his first gig as a PA in the movie “Twister” and never looked back. His reportoir spans from film to Tv, from “DPind” to producing, but it was shooting SNL’s intro with HDSLRs, that put him in the spotlight of OUR world!

The big sensor sizes and their inherent low light capabilities is what attracted Alex to the HDSLRs. What else is new… Form factor was also a big decision point, but we’ve heard all that before… Guess it might do the job for the more skeptical types to see an established TV DP raving about the capabilities and advantages of HDSLRs…

Alex showed great admiration for @timescapes and mylapse, time-lapse work. He also showed some examples of taking advantage of shooting Raw for time-lapse, with post panning and zooming, a technique that is still not over explored. Hmmm… I should do some… But then again, my producer would probably kill me if he found out I was time-lapsing instead of editing… ;(

Buono also pointed out how accecible things are today. He showed mylapse‘s interesting and affordable solution for time-lapse panning, like a MILapse. Something that would have costed tens of thousands of $$$, not so long ago… or something like the Little Bramper.  A circuit board that let’s you ramp exposure to compensate light during time-lapses, supposedly costing under $100… although I couldn’t find it anywhere on-line…

The whole point is to show how filmmaking is more accessible then ever, to the masses. Doesn’t mean it replaces craft, as I hear so many DPs freaking out, about…

Then Alex Focused on the importance of using cine style lenses referencing the importance of Illya Friedman’s work at HotRod Camera.

Still lenses do a great job and keep your budget low, but depending on what you’re doing, they might just not cope with your needs.

Critical focus inherent to the shallow depth of field created by the big sensors, demand cine style focusing rings, with long courses, so you can smoothly and precisely achieve perfect focus. Still lenses are traditionally build with fast autofocusing in mind and for that their focus ring courses are reduced, so it takes less time for the machine’s autofocus to reach the desrired focus point. That only means you can get there fast… if you’re moving them manually, you’ll have problems to park it precisely at the desired focus mark. So although you can find amazing optics at a reduced price, if your camera and or subjects are moving, you’re in for a challenge.

Alex then ended with his preferred shooting settings. As a defender of the shooting clean style, he was also kind enough to show us his picture style settings.

Whooosh… None stop action at PhotoCineNews Expo! But very cleverly, Michael Britt was saving the best for the end of the day!

Last year I described Shane Hurlbut as the most passionate DP I had ever heard… So expectations were pretty high… Unfortunately this year we were all forbidden from using our camera’s during his presentation. And if it was difficult to give you an idea of how his presentations are with pics, without, it’s nearly impossible…

Shane embraced the HDSLR technology very early on. He was putting it to good use while others were focusing on showing jellow cams or moiree parterns. He has probably pushed handheld camera work with 5D, with non stabilized lenses, further then anyone else. He has even had an actor through a camera into the air to simulate a baby’s POV… and his reaction to jellow cam tests; “what are you talking about?!”

Shane has proved that when used the right way, for the right purpose, jellow cam becomes nothing but a past time for someone that has nothing better to do… yeah, it creates tracking problems… but how much of your own footage do you usually track?! And if you do need to track “a” shot, then watch out for that one, but cut the crap about that stuff and go shoot! (not exactly his words, but you get the idea…)

The body of work Shane has produced since the Collision Conference, last year, is nothing short of amazing and some shots are definitely worth a breathtaking sigh.

He understands the freedom this technology has given him and he’s exploiting it to the limit!

All I can say is that next time he’s doing a presentation, do yourself a favor and go watch him! If you don’t get motivated to shoot, then you’re probably in the wrong field…

Check out Shane’s work here!

So, after ending the day on a high, all you could do is feel dizzy with all the information flying around in your head, go home, have a martini (or whatever rocks your boat) and get some rest, cause the party was restarting at 9am, Sunday morning…

T ; )~

PhotoCineNews Expo was kind enough to provide RadRaven.com readers a discount code to attend the event, so take advantage of it and don’t miss out on one of the most important HDSLR driven events of the year!

Use code “RadDiscount” at check out for $15 off any ticket, which makes the floor ticket free and the full Expo Saturday and/or Sunday pass $60 each!!!

And last, but definitely not least, RadRaven.com will be doing a “classic” RadRaven style coverage of the event, so stay tuned cause it’s going to be a ride!!!

T ; )~

As you may know, dust bunnies are not so hard to remove on stills, at least on the majority of occasions, but when we’re talking about motion picture, the story doesn’t always have a happy ending.

I also mentioned (on that same post) that I was going to look at a “feasible” solution to “clean” the dust off your clips… and here it is!

If you are a proficient After Effects user, this method might not be the ideal solution for you… It is intended for those who don’t usually venture into this level of post production, but need a quick and easy fix, to what otherwise could be a good shot turned useless… it isn’t perfect, but it might “save your life” sometime…

I was shooting in the desert, in the middle of a “mild” wind storm… and as you know, there’s a lot of dust in the desert… I was also trying to push the envelope and shoot some video in the middle of my photo shoot, to evaluate the workflow impact and see what I could come up with, for potential future applications. (I will probably write more on this soon…)

The results were pretty exciting until I got home and started seeing dust spots all over the place… and if you like changing lenses as often as I do, you’ll be running the very same risk, whenever you shoot outside.

I really didn’t have a whole lot of time for this project, but I didn’t want it to go to waste either. So after finishing the pics and delivering them to the client, I decided to load these clips into my laptop and play with them whenever I had a chance. Finally one day it hit me! Why not use exactly the same method that so efficiently and effortlessly, got rid of the dust on my stills?!

Aperture has some very powerful editing features. Especially now on version 3! But it’s the powerful set of batch processing capabilities, that make this workflow feasible.

I had the project inside of Color when I was about to give up on it, because of all those damn dust spots. I was happy with pretty much everything else, specially considering I had shot this with basic photography equipment and mostly available light. Well I did use lights in a few of the shots… but I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a while to hear about those…

So, after sending the project back to FCP, rendered and color corrected in Color, I exported the whole clip as sequential Tiffs into a folder I would then import to Aperture.

My Aperture loved dealing with these uncompressed 2mp pics, comparing with the 21mp RAW files I usually load it up with. It was so much fun whizzing through the pics with the arrow keys. I felt like a pro animator playing with my living cartoon… haha!

Back in my sequential Tiffs project I chose a frame to start working on and using the Spot & Patch tool, exactly in the same way you would do in a regular still, I started getting rid of the damn dust spots.

Very soon my frame became an immaculate image, like it had no longer been haunted by unwanted debris on the sensor. But the real fun part was only about to begin!

Using the lift metadata tool, I “copied” the miraculous Spot & Dust settings, so I could stamp them onto the rest of the frames.

I soon learned that the dust had shifted throughout the shoot and that these adjustments should be double checked on a shot by shot basis. Not frame by frame, though, which is why this is both cool and feasible!
Aperture makes it very easy to visually select a range of frames to isolate a particular shot that you wanna stamp the settings to. All you need to do is cycle to viewer, by pressing V.

The Spot and Patch tool, although great, does have it’s limitations. It works flawlessly in uniform backgrounds, but anything that has a lot of detail, will show what it’s really doing and you’re bound to see a blurred spot, where it is applied.
Narrowing down the size of the Spot & Patch circles and playing with the Radius, Softness and Opacity can help minimize the problems, but in some parts you’re just better off not using it at all. Usually, when a spot goes over a lot of detail, it has a tendency of not being visible. There’s no magic formula to determine when to use it or not to use it… with time and experimentation you’ll be able to decide that for yourself. After all, although not in the most traditional way, you’re in dust busting land, now… The good news is that using the lift and stamp tool, you can easily delete a Spot & Patch circle, lift the metadata and stamp it to the range of frames where you don’t need that particular one. The other cool thing is that because Aperture is not processing a RAW file, so it flies through the frames, when you hold either the left or right arrow keys (going back or forward, respectively), which allows you to see your footage in slow motion, flip book style!

After playing with the arrow keys for a while, I was confident enough to exported the Tiffs of that particular shots, back out to a new tests folder. Then I reimported it back into FCP, too see it in proper full frame rate motion. Since Aperture doesn’t have a 10 bit option for Tiff export, you should use 16 bit, to make sure there’s no color information loss.

Before you import any frames back into FCP make sure you go to user settings and under the editing Tab set the Still/Freeze Frame duration to 1 frame, otherwise your frames will have whatever duration is previously set and you won’t be able to visualize your shots correctly.

Create a new sequence and make sure your sequence settings correspond to the original frame rate. I also recommend using either ProRes HQ or even uncompressed, if your system can handle it. Select all the frames in the browser and drop them in the timeline in one go, so they’ll be layed out sequentially. Depending on your system’s capabilities you might see a red line on the top of your timeline, meaning you have to render it. But even if you get a green line, I would recommend rendering anyway, so you can see the shot exactly how it will be once you’re all done.

Once you’re confident all your shots have been fixed, it’s time to export the whole “enchilada” into a folder and import it back into FCP.

For peace of mind, I duplicated the sequence I had originally exported the frames from and overlaid the Tiffs over the clips, so I could make sure nothing had changed throughout the process. After making sure the frames and cuts were matching, I felt comfortable to move forward. It is most rewarding to turn the top layer on and off and see the difference you made, after going through all this trouble…

All that was left to do was to rendered it and watch a color corrected, dust busted version of my clip with a smile on my face!

Dry Lake Muses from RadRaven on Vimeo.

Music by Oakenfold 

There is definitely a learning curve to this process. It will all depend on where you’re coming from and the experience you have with motion picture post.
Although I’m comfortable using After Effects, I definitely see myself using this method again. All in all, I found it a very interesting and relatively easy way to solve a nightmare… without spending a lot of time or money.

The best thing about this whole workflow is that it is not limited to dust busting! It might inspire you to know that using exactly the same process I tweaked the color a little, finetuning a few nuances I wasn’t able to fix in Color…

Yeah, you got it! Those amazing features that Aperture offers for color correction, like Vibrancy can now be used to “color” your videos using this workflow!!!

Now that Aperture supports video, I have no idea what the technical implications of making all these tools available to use on clips is…?! But with the advent of HDSLRs and the merging of photography and motion picture worlds, I don’t know what Apple is waiting for to make this all more streamlined?!
The new editing tools don’t really show there’s been any serious thought thrown in this direction… but then again, although I love Apple and would never be able to do what I do without them, I can never figure out what their line of thought is…

Hope you enjoyed this article, make good use of this workflow and I would love to see how you’re putting it to use! So don’t be shy! You never know… if it’s exciting enough, I might even feature you and your work right in here!!!

As usual, comments and questions are more then welcome! And if you have any other subjects you’d like me to address, make them known to me and I’ll do my best to make it happen!

T ; )~

By the way, if you’re not feeling nostalgic and just want to know about CS5, just scroll down until you see the big 5…

Those of us in non-linear editing should not forget, we’re riding a very young tsunami, that has barely started forming a couple of decades ago…
Still today, there are people using linear editing systems and odd boxes to put their images together. Only now are we moving to a data only world, but where tapes are still a reality. Only now are we truly submerged in the digital revolution, that despite the huge recent steps, still is far from its peak… so, it’s very fascinating to see the three giants of the non-linear editing world coming close to a full circle.

I believe that after the introduction of non-linear editing lead by Avid and Light Works, the next big corner stone happened 7 years ago with the announcement of Final Cut Pro 3.

Avid stood still on their high-end, untouchable pedestal, while Adobe killed Premiere, soon after that… Both moves couldn’t have been proved more wrong…

Avid wasn’t untouchable, after all! And Adobe later on recognized that shutting down Premiere, was probably not the smartest move…

so, Final Cut Pro had an un-catered  world to conquer, which it did, offering the first true democratic professional editing solution, in the history of editor kind!

But it didn’t stop there…

Apple kept raising the bar and on unprecedented move, bundled their DVD Authoring application and introduced a few very useful ones, like Compressor, creating a “one stop shop” for video professionals.

Their evolution seemed unstoppable!

The acquisition of Shake was made public…

They had bought the leading compositing software of the time! A software that had been used in every single film that won the special effects oscar, since it came out.
The lead compositing software of Lord of the Rings! Which had just exploded in the theaters around the world!

As it was to be expected, they brought it to the Mac and breaking ground again, Apple brought Shake down in price, making it affordable to people like you and me…

Then, the first studio picture was edited with FCP! Walter Murch the legendary editor, who also championed Avid and non-linear film editing, years before, finally decided to cross the bridge of “Avidgnorance” with the support of also legendary Digital Film Tree (the “boys” known for putting PRO on FCP). “Cold Mountain”, starring Nicole Kidman, took FCP’s status quo to a whole new level…
From that moment on FCP was unstoppable! Ready to take the world! Which it did!

Apple’s last game changing  move was democratizing color correction, by acquiring Final Touch, a $20.000 software and bundling it in their Final Cut Studio Suite, for free! Do you think you would ever see Davinci for a thousand bux, if it weren’t for what Apple did with Color back then?!

It was a wonderful time… I remember how much I rejoiced the news… how hard it was to find an upgrade box… the universe wasn’t working against me anymore… the future couldn’t look brighter…

But like everything that’s good, it didn’t last for long… well, at least not as long as I would have desired…

Apple had found another favorite toy… A toy which Steve Jobs and his magnificent team came to prove to be incredibly profitable, living in most of our pockets today…

It didn’t take long for Apple to reign an editors’ starving market… but regrettably, also started riding its own momentum… Apple was now becaming untouchable, unreachable, lazy…

So nature took its course…

Avid started paying more attention to the market FCP opened, gradually lowering their prices, increasing their range of non-hardware dependent products and returned to the Mac in full force.

Adobe brought Premiere back to life and included it in their Production Suites, as a support for After Effects, which despite all the turmoil, was an application that seemed unassailable for all this time, protected by a loyal and tenacious user community.

In the mean while, Apple kept getting even lazier… Shake’s development team was all of a sudden shut down… and eventually they killed the software all together… you can no longer buy one of the most brilliant compositing applications ever developed… thanks to Apple…

A few of Shake’s technologies were brought into Motion and Final Cut Pro, but nothing that can justify its disappearing or by no shape or form, remotely replace it…
Rumors of a Final Cut Extreme echoed the web, actually still do, every now and then… a Super Application “a la”  Softimage Digital Studio style (most of you will know this app as Avid DS)… but nothing…

Apple, above no one else could have made an unbeatable application, if they would have combined Shake and FCP together… just like Softimage did, so many years before with Digital Studio, an application, which apart from the mandatory updates, has been pretty much on top of the game for over 10 years, at a hefty price point, unfortunately for all of us…

So it was time for Nuke!
With no other significant rival, Nuke spread throughout what was once Shake’s high-end world…

In the mean while, Adobe’s move of killing Premiere had somewhat weakened the ever mighty After Effects’ development and with some users jumping back and forward into Motion, there seem to be a gap in the lower-high-end compositing world… so it didn’t take long for another giant to step in…

The Discreet family (bought by Autodesk, not long after that), who had been comfortably  watching from a distance, of main stream use, was now also trying to push their software version of Flame, in the form of Combustion… which burned intensively for a while…

Their specialized and not so intuitive user interface (a discussion you should never engage with a Discreet user, by the way), was probably it’s biggest downfall… So with a reborn Adobe team, After Effects stood its ground and with a solid update, never lost ground again, since version 6.

Recently we’ve seen Smoke also hitting the Mac and lowering the bar to the low 5 figure, hardware independent range… so, still playing in whole other league, I think its a sign of times to come…

But things have been feeling pretty stale on the software side, for a while… multi-cam seems to have been the last big breakthrough in NLEs… apart from jog shuttles, and tactile screens, what else has significantly changed the game?!

Then…

The biggest change I’ve felt, was the lack of excitement from Apple’s latest  .O FCP upgrade… was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most disappointing ever…

I shouldn’t forget to mention Plural Eyes and its great contribution offering us the capability of automatically synching audio clips!
But what else rings as a game changing in NLE Land?!

Little 6 months after FCS launch, here we are reaching another tide turn… Adobe announced CS5!

The most modern App suite we have come to know! Full 64 bit! Pure Cocoa! This means its is the very first one to run completely native in the systems we’ve been using for a good 5 years now! Taking advantage of all the cores and all the RAM in your machine! But most importantly, it comes with a smart open attitude, very much in the FCP 3 style (if you compare it with back when it came out)! Supporting as many formats as imaginable, natively! With a ground breaking playback engine, called Mercury! Scalable to any system size! And the smartest part of all; full compatibility with its biggest rival!!!!

That’s right, you can now seamlessly open FCP XMLs, as well as export them back to FCP right from Premiere, without any extra plug-ins involved… in case you don’t know what an XML is, it’s a file format/protocol that allows time-lines to migrate between different Applications. It’s the same protocol FCP uses to send a timeline to Color, for example.

What a smart move! Knowing that many FCP users, are also very loyal to After Effects, to perform a myriad of tasks, Adobe created a great gateway through Premiere…

If you want to take your FCP sequence to After Effects, you no longer need to spend $500 on Automatic Duck, if you’re willing to import your sequence’s XML via Premiere. We still have to see what are the limitations of the migration, as Automatic Duck keeps increasing it’s translations capabilities…

A Premiere sequence is completely interchangeable between After Effects! And if that wasn’t enough, when you make a change in either software, it immediately updates the project on the other… soon, if you find a little adjustment you’d like to make to your cut (that you declared locked, not long ago), you have to be retarded if you’re going to export another XML, import it to Final Cut, do your adjustment, export it back out to Premiere and then open it in After Effects again… NO, NO, NO! You will find yourself doing it inside of Premiere and have it instantly update in After Effects… Soon, you’ll be spending more and more time inside Premiere… soon you’ll wonder why you started in FCP in the first place?! Especially when you realize you have all that you need right there, in CS5!!!

But what I’m most excited about are the 2 most amazing features announced in CS5!!! Content Aware Fill and Roto Brush!!!! These 2 features are truly ground breaking that bring a breath of fresh air into the game!!! The potential is ginormous!!!! They are definitely game changing!!!! I really can’t wait to play with it!!!! And you bet you’re gong to hear more about it, right here!!!

The other great news is the amount of wonderful plug-ins Adobe has bundled in CS5!!! Like Mocha 2 AE and Mocha Shapes! No more excuses! The SFX epic you always wanted to make is now within reach!!!

Adobe, I take my hat off to you… you earned this tide! It has your name all over it!!! And I’ll be bathing in it, as soon as it hits my shores! I would be riding it right now, if I could, as I’m finishing a new trailer for my film…

Apple still has a the chance of putting a final word on all of this, but as my short history lesson has shown us, unless good old Steve has been looking out for us, which definitely doesn’t seem to be the case, it might take Apple more then a few versions for FCP to catch on to CS5…

So if this really turns out to be Adobe’s tide, we’ll have to see if Avid will ever to take back the lead again, for the circle to be fully completed… (I know some of you will disagree with me in regards to Avid leadership, but this a blog of empirical views and Avid might still be huge with the dinosaurs and although this was a little retrospective, my perspective aims to be current, practical and as futuristic as humanly possible.)

Maybe this is the end of a circle that although completed will never have a completely closed end… because the next big player will be the one that nails which ever branch is going to sprout out from the “Electronic Neanderthal” mentality of timelines and file browsers…

I was about 12, when I started editing linearly, with 2 betamax video recorders. Later on, a video mixer found its way into my life and by the age of 15 I gave up on editing… there was nothing else to keep me motivated, besides 2 video faders and a few buttons to trigger cheesy wipes… Avids were hundreds of thousands of $$$, so I found my expression through surfing, and that became my life…

Roughly 10 years later I owned a beach bar, bought a Macintosh to design flyers for the bar and fell in love with it. So much, I started trading surf sessions in turn of building some surreal scene in Bryce (revolutionary 3D landscaping software, back then). Until one day, someone gave me a cracked copy of Premiere…. That was it!!! I found my path in life!!!

Today I pride myself for using FCP in a non-traditional way, adapting the existing tools to make it work like I feel they should… but nothing will make me happier then the day I can edit the way Tom Cruise did in Minority Report…

Until then, all I can say is; I CAN’T WAIT TO GET MY HANDS ON CS5!!!!!

T ; )~

This isn’t my first NAB and although always excited to go, I never seem well prepared enough to deal with it…
It was however, my first time at NAB since I write a blog and I have to say the feeling was even more overwhelming! I never came back from NAB with such an anguished feeling that I should have done so much more… that I should have been so much better prepared… but that’s life… I can only hope to do better next year… So hopefully you won’t be expecting as intense of a review as I’ve done with other events, or I would still be in Vegas, gathering information…

It’s been a week and the 3 main things that echo in my head are: 3D, HDSLR and CS5.

The momentum building up towards 3D is scary! My gut tells me we will all have to deal with it sooner or later, in one form or another, while my soul cries; why?!
No 3D technology I’ve seen, seems to be completely ready for mainstream consumption! Looking at the camera rigs, is like looking at the past, but the problem is that it’s a reality of the future… Huge, clunky, heavy, dysfunctional, impractical… and all for the sake of straining your eyes, in a visual experience filled with problems…
I wonder why there was (and there’s still) so much resistance with HDSLRs and now someone else can say this is the way to go, after looking at these monstrous things…
Believe me, I’ve been  trying really hard! So many films are only being green lit, only if they are shot in 3D… It seems like I have to be ready, if I wanna be a part of the game…
They keep comparing it to the “talkies”… but no one was coming out of theaters with their ears feeling funny, back then…

I met a few stereographers that opened my mind a bit more… even got me motivated to start doing some tests on my own. But the reality is that having to wear glasses to watch a film or TV, only feels unnatural and like going backwards, instead of moving forward…

The industry (dark) forces have never put such an obvious and biased effort to push a technology. You gotta be blind if you can’t see past what is put in front of your eyes… enough with 3D! For now at least…

HDSLRs! Like I said on one of my NAP POV Tour videos: “The world might be going 3d, but it has already gone HDSLR!”

There was almost no single booth without at least one HDSLR!!!!!!!!!!!!
So many vendors showcasing HDSLR products, accessories, necessary and superfluous add ons, it was simply mind spinningly blowing! But when I say HDSLRs here, I should really be saying Canon HD capable SLRs… you would spot an occasional GH1 to confirm the rule! The truth is that Canon is the only real player in this market (at least for now)! And the flaws of their magnificent products, have created a commercial paradise for all the smart developers that happened to be at the right place and time to jump on the first carriage. Proof is the amount of new vendors that are trying to follow! Trying to run fast enough, to be able to jump on the train that has already released the second steam horn and is about to reach the end of the platform… getting ready to build up to its cruising speed!
Don’t get me wrong, many more trains will depart from that same station and many more people will get aboard… but the first one isn’t stopping for anyone!!!

Redrock Micro and Zacuto have definitely taken half of the first carriage on their own! And doubtfully anyone will take their place in a near future, especially if they keep as active as they’ve been!

This brings me to one of the most exciting products I encountered! So exciting, it almost made it to my top 3 list of NAB. But since I already had HDSLR in there, it would feel kind of redundant… so here it is as my TOP HDSLR NAB product! The Redrock Micro Follow Focus system! And who better then Brian Valente himself to present it to you!

Definitely making it to my “me wantssss” list, but most importantly to my “me needzzzz” list!!!!

Not surprisingly, Zacuto’s presence was equally strong, displaying their new generation of view finders, showcasing a much more solid supporting system and a much needed anti-fogging lens coating!!!
The first big advantage I immediately see in these new supporting systems, is the opportunity to put a protective glass on my LCD, which I couldn’t before, because of the adhesive plastic frame. The upgrade is fairly priced and I couldn’t resist to return home without one!!!
They now come in several flavors and price points and you can expect an in-depth review here, soon!
The other exciting thing is seeing their rigs evolving! There was a new system that almost resembles the principles of a cage, but with so much more ergonomic functionality added.

Also very cool, was to see Jag35 right next to them, showing off their 35mm adapter line, but getting a lot of attention on their new lightweight cage and the only affordable HDSLR compatible LCD monitor in the market today!

By offering the only alternative in the market to the approximately $1000 HDSLRs monitors, Jag35′s $300 monitor comes at less then half the price point of other competing products. Sure you’re not expecting the same quality and feature set of a $1000 Marshal, but I’m sure it will fill the needs of many users and at least give them a chance of having a purchasable option.

The DFocus version 2 is also looking very interesting as a more portable, rod-less solution! Definitely products I want to look into in a near future!

Cinevate’s booth also caught my attention, not just for their already well known cool dolly rail system, but especially for a new view-finder prototype I spotted laying around on their counter!

Despite being only a prototype, the viewing experience was already pretty amazing!!!

Definitely not designed to be your most portable rig, I think it might be a great addition for bigger cinematography rigs!

The way you can use both your eyes to look into your LCD is pretty unique and very comfortable! Especially on long shoots!

Love to get my hands on one of these!!!

Another unexpected thing that really caught my eye, was the O’Grips, from O’connors. I was told their engineer has had them for a while and the idea of bringing them to the show spawned over night! They look very light, sturdy and incredibly versatile! If well priced I can see a big use and market for these!

Jumping to the world of software; CS5 was definitely stealing the show! It was virtually impossible to get a seat for one of their demos! Unless you were willing to wait for hours! Many people were just not leaving their seats, from presentation to presentation… the aisles got clogged whenever a presentation started, with so many people trying to get a glimpse of it…
If it wasn’t for the amazing and legendary Supermeet, I would have been completely left out of the loop…
Jason Levine graced us with another one of his high kicking presentations. Adobe is definitely thinking smartly!!! There’s so much cool and game changing stuff, I’ll probably have to do a few more posts about it… Just to give you a rough idea, I’m rethinking the whole post workflow of my feature, if CS5 delivers what they are promising!!! I’m anxiously waiting to get my hands on it!!!

The only other thing that stood out above Adobe’s buzz, was Davinci’s software version on the Mac for $995!!!
I have to confess this was one of the things I was most anxious to check out, on the show! This is a historical moment!
As I jungled my way through the endless booths, until I reached Blackmagic’s, I kept asking myself, what’s the catch??? There has to be one!!!! Well, and there is… Davinci does not support XML… so although priced to be in our world, it is just like a foreigner who doesn’t speak the language… a nightmare to import a project in… it supports EDLs… but that’s like saying, I speak speak Chinese, so I should be OK in Africa… But the great news is XML is on their minds and should be implemented sometime in the future… I’ll definitely be embarking on this boat… but until then…

Avid was also announcing a new version of their flagship editor, pushing their AMA technology, which also claims native support for all the new formats, like the infamous H.264 that our beloved cameras output… and finally unleashing their timelines with directly manipulatable clips, using your mouse or tablet… about F#$%! time!!! Maybe I’ll give it a go, now that they have finally accepted the “wheel”…

So much more to talk about I could keep writing ’til summer knocks… luckily for all of you, almost everyone and their aunt covered NAB, so you’ll have to keep piecing it together from here and there.

I recommend checking out Planet 5D, where you’ll find not only Mitch’s videos but links to many more and I also really enjoyed Tom Guilmette’s NAB Highlights.

Hope you enjoyed the RadRaven’s empirical perspective on NAB 2010!

T ; )~

Since our cave man times, we’ve been trying to graphically represent what our eyes see. Attempts to reproduce depth go as far back as old Egypt where very simply, closer elements were drawn bigger then background counterparts. The Greeks took it a little further but it was only in the 14th century, during the Renaissance that we started producing 3 dimensional images. Amazing that it took 4 centuries for the rest of the most brilliant minds of the time, to get it… That’s right, 400 years earlier, an Iraqi physicist and mathematician wrote about how light projected conically into our eyes, explaining how we perceived depth.

After the event of photography, creating 3 dimensional images was at the push of a button. Nowadays, we use depth of field and composition to enhance that feeling. It takes artistry and skill, sometimes luck, to masterfully reproduce it and that’s why just buying the latest camera suffices… not!

So what is 3D really!? If the 3rd dimension already lives in so many of our paintings and pictures, maybe what we should be asking is: what are we calling 3D these days?! Shouldn’t it be called 4th dimension, because what the world is all hyped about, is a dimension that lives outside of the plane where the image is originated. But for some reason someone decided they were re-inventing the wheel… a good 12o years ago or so…

The first reason that comes to mind why we shouldn’t go 3D yet; the technology isn’t really there yet! We should be worrying about bigger problems that persist in the way we reproduce images (still or motion) today.

We’re still limited by handicapped color modules like RGB and CMYK, which both present their own set of virtues and limitations.

Try looking at a picture of your son while he’s away in college and you miss him to death… your heart fills with emotions, because you’re able to interpret the conglomerate of CMYK dots (RGB in this case, since you’re looking at a screen) and interpret that it represents the image of your son.

Yeah, that’s my gorgeous older son! ; )~

Now try showing it to his dog, who has no idea what college is and why his beloved master left him for no good reason… he might just ignore it, or maybe chew it… no, not because he’s mad… because he just sees what’s really there; a conglomerate of dots! Nothing more… so, wouldn’t you think that’s what we should be addressing before we want to add a 4th dimension to what now will be 2 layers of conglomerated dots, that somehow are supposed to represent 2 images, each intended for one eye and with that create “3D”?!

The first lecture on moving beyond RGB and into Spectral Color (the way our eyes see) happened in the past decade, at Siggraph 2007… So why haven’t we heard anything else about it, you may ask?! Because no one found an angle to cash on it, fast enough… and maybe we need another 40 years or so, for our “most brilliant minds” to get it… it took 4 centuries before the Renaissance… but things move a little faster today… so lets be hopeful I can enjoy a spectral 4D movie when I’m 80…

So after the monumental failure of Blue Ray, where some genius thought we would all go and buy all the films we already own for double the price, so we could watch them in HD… a 120 year old technology seemed like the only rope of salvation…?!

Marketing is the driving force of the world we live in. Whether it is done intentionally, unintentionally, by the producers themselves or anyone else for them… a good example is the whole HDSLR phenomenon! All it took was one brilliant mistake and lack of vision of one producer and we all offered them, what has probably been the world’s largest best free marketing campaign in human history…

3D is no exception. Great marketing, turned into hype. A generation that has no better excuse to get their asses off computer and voila! 3D is in! 3D is the future!

“Do we need it? NO!
Do we want it? YEAH!
This is the new shit
Stand up and admit!”

Wise words of Marilyn Manson

-Does it cause tremendous stress to your eyes? Yeah!

-Can it give you head aches?! Yeah!

-Does it enhance story telling?! Debatable… but so far, having sh!t flying at me from the screen hasn’t felt much like a storytelling enhancement… but maybe that’s just that old square side of me?!

-Did it work for Avatar? I agree it did! But it was a 90% CG movie… and that’s where I see it working well! Animation. CG animation! You can bend any optical rules in a CG world! Just write the code for it! But in real life… unless you have a direct line to the only One who can change the code… good luck!

But now think about this; my younger kid, who I usually have to threaten to send off to bed, came back home after watching Alice in Wonderland, had a glass of milk and went to bed by his own free will, because he “thought” he had a headache…

That’s my younger son on a day he hasn’t watched a 3D movie…

Great… brilliant, actually! The studios will make a ton more money! The share holders will be happy and because they also have shares in some optical franchise, they will have a happy surprise when their corrective glasses company shows an unexpected raise! Oh! and my son will start going early to bed! So everyone wins!!! Right?!

WRONG!
Our kids are, unfortunately, already burning their eyes on Playstations, Xboxes and any other form of video game they play for way too long. We… we shouldn’t even have to mention ourselves, who spend hours on end either looking at our computer screens, or through viewfinders… worst, when trying to focus HDSLRs with some adapted view finder that never really gets 100% sharp… our eyes are definitely heading to a bright future (pun intended)…

So, where am I going with all this, you should be asking by now?! It’s us! independent filmmakers! We’re the ones who will suffer the biggest impact! Because with the world going 3D, the studios will have the silverscreen monopoly, once again! At least for another good decade, give or take…

The cutoff buzz number of the moment is 7 million, to make a decent 3D feature… true? false? Only time will tell, but your dream HVX 200 camera that allowed thousands of filmmakers to achieve their dream of making a feature film (Such as myself) has more then quadrupled its price, in the form of an AG3D-A1. And post… how much will 3D impact desktop filmmaking?! How long is going to take Apple to launch Final Cut Studio 3D?!

And if by now you have your evil smirk on, because you only work for TV… look at the effort they are making to take TV to the 3D route… and if you haven’t put 2 and 2 together… it’s the same people, because all the major studios have been bought by them…

All in all we have to recognize that there are some brilliant minds behind 3D. Too bad they don’t focus in good storytelling…

In the mean while, I guess we’ll be biting our nails, until Phillip posts the results of his first HDSLR 3D tests… Go Phillip!

T ; )~

What are you waiting for??? It’s here!!!

Go get it! Install it!! Rejoyce!!!

T ; )~