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 ; )~