HD For Indies

4K camera screened by Sony

Hollywood reporter article on Sony's announced 4K camera. It is estimated it'll take 2 to 3 years to bring to market (camera and recording system). It'll be a good match for their 4K projector, so they can have a camera/recording/projection system akin to a digital 65mm system in terms of resolution.

That's about all we've got on this - just an announced plan to have a camera in 2 to 3 years, with no price point on any of it.

-mike

Conveniently, on the same day as the Red 4K screening in LA, ASC and the Hollywood local SMPTE will be showing some tests of their own in LA as well:

How Many Ways Can You Count Your K's?

7:30 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater, 1313 N. Vine, on November 14th.

"This joint meeting of the ASC and Hollywood section of the SMPTE will project tests on film and 2K comparing images captured on film, Arri D20, Viper, Sony F950, and Dalsa. Speakers include Daryn Okada, ASC President; Howard Lukk, Walt Disney Studios; Richard P. May, Film Technology; and Siegfried Heep, Modern VideoFilm. Film from "The Other Project" will be shown at DCI spec. Cameras will be on display in the lobby during the social hour (6:30-7:30 p.m.) with refreshments sponsored by Kodak. All industry members are invited to attend at no cost. SMPTE membership is encouraged but not required."

...so I'll be there (yeah, I'm flying out now that I have 2 things to check out).

Speaking of which, if you'd like to get together for some one on one consulting, I still have some time free on November 15th while I'm still in LA (I fly out late afternoon).

(found from the Digital Cinema Society newsletter)

Got an email from Jim Jannard last night, they'll be including some new footage shot since IBC at the November 14th event (details here).

Below is a sample frame grab, shot 24fps, 1/48th second shutter. Click on the image for a larger view. Note this was shot outdoors, also. I like the depth of field, the skin tones, but especially the highlight detail on the milk bottle - LOTS of highlight detail (pop it into Photoshop and see for yourself).
















-mike

Time for an update on Silicon Imaging, with two big things going on:

1.) A new partnership with Iridas to use .look files all the way from acquisition through post

2.) There will be a seminar on the camera and its workflow at Abel Cine Tech LA this Friday, Nov. 3rd

(article updated Tuesday mid-day, scroll to bottom if you've already read this when first posted)

OK, so first up, the Iridas partnership. Iridas makes a variety of software tools that deal with non-destructive manipulation of an image's color, for either previewing purposes (LUTs) or color correction purposes (color correction, color grading, call it what you will). Here's the press release, but the gist of it is this:

-when you working on set with the Silicon Imaging camera, you can load a .look file (created in SpeedGrade, for instance) to preview the look of a filmout, or preview a look treatment/color correction that you like. Perhaps even both at the same time if you have it all in a single .look file.

-this means you can previsualize your shots better

-BUT since this is a non-destructive LUT, unlike other workflows where you have to "bake in" the color correciton, here it is just metadata that gets recorded with the shot - essentially you'll be storing your uncorrected shot with the instructions to color correct it side by side in the file.

-even better, since this camera is recording in Bayer pattern RAW, you'll have the maximum amount of information to play with.

-this is a SIGNIFICANT advantage over typical workflows, where in setting white point and other factors you're ditching data that you might want later, THEN applying a destructive LUT, THEN recording to a lossy compression format that may subsample the image and ditch a lot of color resolution (HDCAM, you hearing me on this one?). While the SI camera does record to a lossy format (wavelet based RAW, using Cineform's RAW codec), it is pretty efficient, and does NOT subsample (shrink the image horizontally) and it does record 4:2:2 or even 4:4:4, instead of 3:1:1.

So there is a double advantage here from an image quality standpoint - Cineform RAW recording, and recording color correction metadata with the shot that will ride with it all the way through post to final color grading.

While you can do preview LUTs using the Viper, for instance (I saw a demo of this at the DGA Digital Day), with some setups you need a LUTher box, Cinetal, or other expensive piece of hardware to do this. Not so here.

One challenge of the Silicon Imaging camera is that it is essentially a stripped down WinXP box with a sensor and lens on it. So far this has meant a fairly large package size. BUT...as long as you have a computer right there, why not use it? That kind of flexibility is what allows for this kind of LUT utilization - for them, it isn't a matter of custom silicon, just modifying some code to run on the computer system they already have there. And since the viewfinder is just a computer monitor as far as the computer is concerned, running a LUT is no big deal.

I got an email from Jason Rodriguez of Silicon Imaging telling me about this, and as he describes it "our camera is now a complete "blank slate" for you to make whatever color adjustments you want, load that into the camera, and have complete color management from the camera head through post."

More from Jason:

As of right now I'm not sure if there's any other available camera with technology like this. But basically speaking, our camera systems can now take IRIDAS .look files and use them as the native colorimetry of the camera. Shoot with the IRIDAS .look file, and manage it as non-destructive meta-data all the way through post. As I'm sure you're all aware, with other cameras you're typically either constrained to the confines of the on-board matrix can do and colorimetry of the camera camera, or you can use the color technology using the IRIDAS toolset, but you have to preview the look on a monitor that can use .look files, like a Cinetal, LUTher, or something else of that nature. Now it's like having something like a Cinetal or LUTher in the camera, and the metadata travels using codec-level color management through post using our CineForm RAW technology. And because we're using IRIDAS tools, and 3D LUT technology, we can take that color information, and import it into some very high-end systems during DI and color post.

....

Ever wondered about making the output of the camera look like the ending film-print (or at least approximating it)? Well, you can now . . . separate ViewLUT's allow you to see something different on the monitor (such as what the end print might look like-no CRT/LCD is going to be a film print, but we can get close), while you record something else to disk. So you can have a calibration LUT for the monitor, and a record LUT for the main data going to disk.

Speedgrade On-set has some amazing tools to create stuff like virtual film-stocks, etc. If you don't like the way the camera looks, make it look like *anything* else you want . . . the 3D LUT technology in the camera can model any non-linear color-correction that IRIDAS and Speegrade can deliver.

We're going to be packaging a bunch of generic looks with the camera to-do stuff like bleach bypasses, wide-dyanmic range stuff, low-con looks, etc.


This is an unprecedented level of flexibility at this price point, and with this little amount of gear. You could literally be messing with looks and LUTs on a laptop on set, saving the look, loading it into the camera, and previewing the final look right there - quite the confidence booster. Then that look is recorded as metadata along with the shot (if I'm understanding this correctly), and can be accessed later. I've asked some questions about workflow and I'll update this article as I get them.

But I really like this idea - a lot of time when you're shooting planning on pushing it hard in post (like a bleach bypass or other aggressive color correction), you're kind of winging it - you don't know exactly how it will turn out. The ability to preview and tweak it with the effect applied live is a HUGE advantage. The only possible negative connotation will be the risk of spending too much time tweaking on set with everyone standing around, rather than "OK, that's close enough for us to mess with it in post, let's keep moving." But that's a set management decision, not a problem with the technology.

Early on, they took some guff about being based on a standard (albeit small form factor) WinXP based computer. BUT...because the camera IS based on a computer, it is MUCH easier for them to implement these kinds of advances and changes, as compared to typical cameras that have fixed silicon and it is a major challenge to retrofit these kinds of solutions. There have been grumbles about running WindowsXP in a camera, fear of crashes of blue screens of death; or concerns about the size/weight/form factor/power draw of the camera, but the flip side is this kind of super easy upgradeability.

Questions unanswered in my mind at this time:

-can you run a LUT'd view to a DVI/HDMI flat panel?
-what's the full workflow? Shoot, copy files, Premiere Pro, then how to get it to Speedgrade for final color?
-can you edit the embedded .look files in Speedgrade to tweak it further, or do you have to correct "on top of" that embedded look (I should hope not, that you can tweak the embedded)
-what else can read those looks besides Speedgrade if anything?
-what if you want to edit with Final Cut Pro or Avid?
-what if you want to grade with another tool?
-in either of the two above situations, can that metadata be preserved/translated/used in a meaningful, non-painful way?
-phrased another way - to use this really cool feature/benefit, are you locked into a Premiere Pro and Speedgrade workflow? Does seem that way

Cineform (the partner with the codec technology) has been talking about having a Mac codec due this....fall...hey, that'd be now....I've emailed, will update as I get new info.

OH - and they will also be releasing a camera block only product at a lower price point, around $12,000 or so if I recall correctly. This would enable you to use the tiny, palm sized camera block, with a lens attached, with a gigabit ethernet cable running back to a desktop (or maybe even a laptop with external storage?) for uncompressed or compressed recording. A TINY form factor, with remote control no less!

OK, next up - Abel Cine Silicon Imaging Demo THIS FRIDAY in LA - MUST RSVP

Again, this from Jason, bold my emphasis:

SEMINAR:     The Silicon Imaging - Cineform Workflow.

DATE: Friday November 3, 2006

LOCATION:
ABEL CINE TECH / LA
801 South Main St.
Burbank, CA 91506
(888) 700-4416
(818) 972-9078
(818) 972-2673 fax
Parking on Premises

Refreshments and snacks will be served throughout the afternoon. Admission is free but space is limited.

RSVP: Steve Nordhauser
steve@siliconimaging.com
(518) 279-9098
or Alison Russel
alison@siliconimaging.com
(518)374-3367

David Faires, DP and David Taylor of Cineform will cover the following topics:
Footage
Introduction to Cineform and Cineform RAW
Introduction to SI-2K Cameras
Production and Post Workflow
HANDS ON and Q&A

This material will be covered in two sessions, and you may attend whichever you prefer. First session from 10am - 12pm, second session 1:30pm - 3:30pm. Please indicate your preference when RSVPing. There will be hands-on time between sessions and after 3:30pm.

Please RSVP early, as space will be limited to ensure that everyone has the best experience possible.

The Silicon Imaging camera takes an entirely new approach to camera design.  The workflow from beginning to end has been the foremost design consideration in this new line of cameras.  Cineform RAW® native to the camera and 3D LUTs will change the way you work.   Come see how this makes your artistic creation much easier and more intuitive.

For more information, visit:
http://www.siliconimaging.com/DigitalCinema/
http://cineform.com
and of course our hosts at:
http://abelcine.com

-----

I won't be able to attend, if anybody can attend and take good notes (and pictures!), I'll be happy to post on here.

-mike

UPDATED 11:15am CST Tuesday, Oct 31st


OK, getting some A's back from my Q's from Jason Rodriguez:

Q: Can you edit the embedded .look files in Speedgrade to tweak it further, or do you have to correct "on top of" that embedded look (I should hope not, that you can tweak the embedded)?

A: Yes, you can edit the .look files at any time to change the "look" of the file.  You can also swap-out looks in post using the CineForm tools, so if you don't like the LUT, change it.  Finally, double-correction is a major "no-no", I would never want to-do that, so we are building in ways to avoid that, the easiest being to simply turn-off the LUT and re-appy the LUT in-context of whatever you're using for post-correction/DI (like Speedgrade DI, Discreet, Nucoda, etc., whatever can take a 3D LUT file)

CORRECTION David Newman, CTO of Cineform, wrote in to correct that statement:

A correction, the traditional no-no of double LUTting doesn't apply so much to this workflow. Cascaded integer LUTs, or a LUT then integer color correction would introduce banding. Note so here. The output of the 3D LUT is 32-bit float, that then can be color corrected, or LUT'd again with other floating point operation with no banding issues. This is the flexibility we are after. If you shoot with LUT there are likely to values greater 1.0 (highlight that can be restored through CC) it is great to keep the original LUT and just perform the corrections you need.


Q: The article mentions previewing on the viewfinder - can that LUT'd preview run on the DVI display as well? I recall there is a DVI (or is it HDMI?) output on the camera - can you view LUT'd stuff on that as well?

A: Yes, our interface actually support separate view LUT's in additition to dual independent display interfaces. What this means is that you can have one LUT be used for the record file, and another LUT used for monitoring, say to calibrate the monitor to a 2383 or 2393 Vision Premiere Print stock . . . you wouldn't necessarily want the footage itself to look like the print film, but with this method you can have a separate LUT that allows for different visualizations of what the footage could look like in certain mediums, and compensate for the monitoring system used, but apply a more universal LUT to the recorded footage. The opposite is true as well. You could make a nice, contrasty "finished" LUT for the recording, but monitor with a LUT that allows you to see the entire dynamic range of the footage in a very flat log-curve style.

Q: So this metadata that gets recorded with the shot - you'd then edit in Premiere Pro...what's the workflow to get that into
Speedgrade for color correction then? Would Speedgrade be reading the Cineform RAW shots, with that metadata included? That you could then tweak those .look looks further in Speedgrade?

A: You can, but you're not locked to using Speedgrade for color-correction and conform. We think Speedgrade DI is a great solution for file-based conforming. For instance, David Fincher has chosen it for grading the first all-digital feature film (no tape), Zodiac. But because we do the color-management at the codec level, you have the option of using high-end tools, or using After Effects or Premiere Pro with Color Finesse-it's a pretty open platform. You just turn off the LUT and re-apply the 3D LUT in the program (that's so you don't end up applying the same LUT twice to the footage).

In it's simplest form, the modified "look" of the file is what you see when you open the file and play it back in Windows Media Player, or Final Cut, or Premiere Pro, and it's WYSIWYG with Speedgrade On-Set interface. But because the .look file is metadata in a floating point format, there is information in the over-white values and clipped blacks ( but only if your "look" is higher in contrast and you haven't clipped in the camera). You can reverse a "look" losslessly, or what we term "non-destructive metadata". The RAW information is there all the time and is managed by the codec. The only time the information is "baked" into the file (clipping anything that is over-white and under-black) is when you transcode to another codec.

Q: If not, what is the workflow? And what other systems can read .look files?

A: .look files are just XML files with some settings for the IRIDAS platform and a large 64-point 3D LUT inside. The 3D LUT can be read in a number of different platforms. Currently I know that the CineTal monitors have direct support for IRIDAS .look files. Also Speedgrade On-Set can export a .look file in a variety of formats such as 1D LUT's for Blackmagic, and 3D LUT's for Thomson's LUTher and Truelight (so that means 3D LUT information is transferable to Shake, etc.). So at the same time you create a .look file for the camera, you can then export a couple other 3D LUT formats for your Discreet box, your DI suite, etc. Since the LUTher format is completely open (easy to read), it's got quite a large penetration in the market. Point is, the 3D LUT makes the "look" very mobile between platforms.

Our large 64-point 3D LUT support ensures that you get the maximum color accuracy in the gamut-mapping that the 3D LUT will be doing to the footage. Basically it's like having a live LUTher or other dedicated gamut-mapping device (i.e., high-end expensive) right inside the camera.


UNANSWERED (AS YET) FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS:

-for AE it is just a file import I presume - but how do turn off the LUT though? How do you get access to it?

-you mention FCP - how do you transcode the footage? How do you have the choice to burn in or not that LUT? What tools do you use to access the controls and transcode? Similarly, what's the Avid route?

...but in any case, these are really good answers, this all sounds very good. My biggest question is the transcode stuff - how to move the files to Avid or Final Cut Pro, yet still maintain that metadata. The transferability of the .look files is very promising.

-you mention double LUTing being a no-no, but I could see uses for it, or at least a compound LUT: if I wanted a preview LUT for what the filmout could look like, but then on top of (or underneath) that, I might also want the color grade LUT - so I might want a 3D LUT for filmout previewing, but also the bleach bypass LUT. Just previewing one or the other without both doesn't give a full sense of what you'd be getting. This is getting niggly, but it is important I think.

I'll continue updating this as more info comes in, so keep checking back and scrolling to the bottom.

UPDATE 12:30pm CST same day:

David Newman from Cineform got back to me, said that due to some high profile client requests on the WinXP side, the Mac version of Cineform (specificall Cineform RAW for the SI camera) has been pushed back a month or two but is still coming. No new problems, just other priorities to be addressed first. On top of that, Apple is thin on engineering resources to help 3rd parties, so it is coming, but not here yet. David said they realize Mac support depends on Cineform, so they are workin' it hard.

-mike

Apple - Education - Students - Insomnia Film Festival

On Friday, Nov. 10th at 5pm EST, they'll post a list of 3 elements to include in your story, and you'll have 24 hours to post your entry.

Winning entries get Final Cut Studio, Shake, and an 80 GB video iPod for each team member.

Top 25 rated get judged by panel of experts then winners picked.

-mike

Cinematical Seven: Tips for the Indie Filmmaker - Cinematical

Found via DVGuru.com, Cinematical's seven tips for the DIY crowd:

1.) Keep it simple (I SO agree with this - a simple thing well done far outweighs an overly ambitious thing poorly done)

2.) Write a script - don't just wing it - I like the quote about "plan your work, and work your plan"

3.) Don't be afraid to ask (for stuff)

4.) Get it in writing (Amen to that!)

5.) Consider going SAG

6.) Spend what money you have intelligently (OH, I so could write a book on this one)

7.) Don't forget about post (the 2nd book?)

Anyway, they have lots to say in each category, click 'n read.

There's also the 18 minute film school page, but it is clearly dated ("the brand new dvx100") and has some reality issues but it does have some nice guidelines about budget and format and timing ($X overall budget=Y shooting days) kind of stuff. Roughest guidelines to go by, so don't get too wired into it.


Then there's these storyboard PDF templates in 1.78 (HD) and 1.33 (regular TV) aspect ratios. (found via FresHDV.com.

-mike

DVD Studio Pro updated to 4.1.1 - DV Guru The update isn't terribly unique news, but somebody actually figured out what it MEANT. Read on. And update, esp. if on Intel based Mac.

ProLost: HVX200 M2 Magic Bullet = Good

Stu points out a dvinfo.net posting (with 2 sample QuickTimes) showing what indies can do with an HVX200, Redrock M2 lens adaptor (for shallow depth of field), and Magic Bullet's Look Suite.

...although you'd be surprised what you can do with the built in color correction tools once you start to dig...but Look Suite gives you precanned presets to just pop on and check out.

Stu (writer of ProLost) has long been an advocate of using less expensive tools but be smarter about how you use them when on tight budget projects.

As always, tools are nothing without a bit o' talent behind them.

-mike

Red stops taking reservations on the 31st.

So if you've been thinking of getting in line for one, you only have a few days left. I saw on a bulletin board somebody claiming to have Red reservation #707 or somesuch, I didn't know the numbers were that high.

So that means if you get in line now, there will be 700 cameras shipped and in the field, with likely usability reports, before they get to yours. If you don't like it, get your money back at any point.

Otherwise, hold your peace until they go on sale to the public sometime next year.

Unanswered questions:

So with reservations closing, the logical assumption is that they'll start taking orders again once they start shipping. But how exactly will that work?

1.) Will they start taking new orders once the backorders START shipping?

2.) Or will they fulfill all pre-existing orders and THEN start taking new orders?

It would seem to make sense that at some point shortly after they start shipping cameras they'll start taking new orders and let'em stack up. The question then - will the price still be $17,500 for the body? Jim Jannard, founder of Red, made it clear that the price wouldn't shift before it ships...but I've heard no guarantees that it won't change (nor, I should say, have I heard any hints about the price being raised, either).

In any case, if you think you want one and can afford to let them hold onto $1000 for 6 months or so, get on it.

-mike

UPDATE A couple of folks emailed me to say Jim said on the boards they be opening up reservations again in the Feb/March timeframe. Again, dunno what all that implies.

Sonnet | Downloads

Sonnet now has a Mac Pro driver for their E4P card, their eSATA card with PCIe interface.

It supports:
-Mac Pro ONLY for this driver (other driver for G5s)
-port multiplication on all 4 ports concurrently
-systems with more than 2GB RAM
-enhanced reliability

BUT it is still beta - so use with caution. Progress, but not a final destination.

Also, I just received a G-Speed fiber channel RAID in the mail from the kind folks at G-Tech, time to open it up and play.

-mike

General Specialist - Tips, Tricks and Tinkerings: Greenscreen and Bluescreen Checklist

An extensive list of tips and guidelines for a successful greenscreen shoot - everything from camera settings (turn down/off that sharpening!), the benefits of 4:4:4 over 4:2:2 over 4:1:1, lighting, blue vs. green, standoff distances, masking, tracker markers, etc.

If you have a greenscreen shoot and aren't an expert, a really nice read.

Thanks to Jonas (the writer) for sending in the link.

If you find something on the web that you think I might not know of or find that will be of interest to the readership here, always feel free to drop me an email at mike at hdforindies d0t com.

-mike

UPDATE: MoreDSC "Greenscreen shooting/lighting tips"

Macworld: News: StorNext FX lets IRIX, Red Hat users share Xsan
With StorNext FX client software installed, users of applications running on Linux, UNIX and Windows hosts can access Apple Xserve RAID systems managed using Apple%u2019s Xsan Storage Area Network (SAN) software. StorNext FX provides shared storage space down to the file level


I wonder what kind of sustained streaming perforance is possible? This is definitely a signifcant step - Apple's Xsan has been lauded as a price/performance leader (although I've heard complaints about robustness and administration isssues).

-mike

Sony's BDP-S1 Blu-ray player delayed again...again - Engadget HD

Sony has pushed back the launch date of their $1000 dedicate Blu-ray player to Dec. 4th, which is AFTER the expected launch date of the $600 PS3...which includes a Blu-ray drive and playback capability. Other than the wired vs. non-wired remote factor, and the "professionality" of having a gaming system for playback, WHY would significant portions of the market prefer a device that does less and costs more? Unless Sony is going to hamstring PS3's playback capabilities in some way - no 1080p support perhaps? Dunno.

-mike

AppleInsider | OpenGL 2.1 may double performance under Leopard

Apple will use OpenGL version 2.1, which will be up to TWICE as fast on the same hardware using a variety of time saving tricks.

QuickTime's plumbing will get significant upgrades in Leopard, for capturing video in any app as well as faster H.264 encoding. QT under Leopard will be 64 bit.

Apple - MacBook Pro

Apple as expected has integrated the Core 2 Duo chip into the MacBook Pro laptops (but NOT, at this time, the MacBooks - this to maintain their consumer/pro split?) These are the same industrial design, just speed bump models. I'm guessing/hoping MWSF they'll announce a new case design for the laptops, shipping in Feb/March timeframe. I have no hard data on that, just a guess. Or perhaps that is too optimistic - MacWorld is only 2 1/2 months away, that's a pretty tight upgrade table. So maybe later in the spring then? All pure conjecture.

With the exception of adding FW800 to the 15", this was an easy upgrade for Apple - faster chips, different burners, maybe upgraded graphics.

New stuff:
-2.16 or 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors "up to 39% faster than its predecessor"
-FW800 on BOTH the 15 and 17 inch models
-6x double layer DVD burner - can burn DVD-9s now onboard
-up to 200GB hard drives
-Mobility X1600 Radeon graphics (is this new or not?) with up to 256 MB VRAM

-2.16 or 2.33 GHz for the 15", 17's are all 256 MB VRAM
-2.33 15" comes with 256 MB VRAM
-all come with dual link DVI - can drive an Apple 30" with this laptop

Standard configs:

Base 15" MacBook Pro- $1999
2.16 GHz, 1GB RAM, 120 GB HD, 128 MB VRAM ATI Mobility Radeon X1600

Higher End 15" MacBook Pro- $2499
2.33 GHz, 2GB RAM, 120 GB HD, 128 MB VRAM ATI Mobility Radeon X1600

All 15" have:
-1440x900 pixel screens
-120 GB hard drive
-6x dual layer DVD burner
-FW400 & FW800
-USB 2.0 connectors
-Bluetooth & Wifi standard
-backlit keyboard standard

17" MacBook Pro - $2799
2.33 GHz, 1680x1050 res screen, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, 8x dual layer burner, X1600 w/256 MB VRAM

Mike's Comments
Apple's gotten nicer about a few things - the 1GB config on the MacBook Pro is now a single 1GB stick, so you still have a free slot - cheaper to upgrade. The 2GB configs are 2x1GB - so you'd have to pull one and replace it with a 2GB for the max 3GB RAM. For some reason, 4GB is not an offered config, I have some vague ghostly recollection of there being problems trying to install 4GB in the MacBook Pros.

There is also a new airline power adaptor, but:

Using the MagSafe Airline Power Adapter provides power for your computer but does not charge the battery.
The MagSafe Airline Power Adapter is not compatible with automobile power ports.


So it doesn't charge the battery AND it doesn't work in cars. Bummer. I have a Kensington car charger that does both of those tasks for my 12" Powerbook G4, wish I had the equivalient for my MacBook.

As for buying advice -

If you are on a budget, the 15" base model is a helluva machine for the money. Get some more RAM, be it third party or Apple branded. Apple charges $175 for the bump from 1GB to 2GB, which is more than third party but not wretchedly so considering you don't have to install it yourself, and Apple can never play the "it's the RAM's fault, don't bug us" card if you are having problems with it. 2GB is really enough for a lot of tasks, the financial burden or jumping to 3GB (a $575 bump if you buy Apple's RAM) is of questionable value, depending on what you're doing with it.

If you think you ever might plug into a 30" monitor and want to drive it, either model will do. If you want to do some Motion, Aperture, or other heavy 3D/Open GL kind of stuff, the better model with 256 MB VRAM is worth considering...but I don't have hard stats on whether or how much of a difference that will make.

The 17" is a viable desktop replacement. If you have a dual 2.0 GHz G5, this laptop might well be faster. BUT...the 17" has always been dubbed the cafeteria tray - it is a beast to lug around on a daily basis. As much of a fan as I am for big screens (I've been 1600x1200 or greater resolution for perhaps 15 years on my workstations), I LOVE my little laptops for their lugability - I like the speed of my MacBook, but I like the size and tote-ability of my 12" Powerbook.

If you have a choice, the new 15" models are DEFINITELY preferable to the older 15's, if only because of the addition of FireWire 800 - a HUGE increase in throughput for certain applications.

The new 17" is definitely faster than the older one, but if you can get a stupendous deal on the last gen 17" that would be worth considering.

In general, I've come to the opinion that you either buy the next to fastest (best high bang/buck) or the top end (put off obsolesence as far as possible) depending on your comfort with the price, which is always a personal decision (and also how long this machine will have to last you, whether you can afford the rest of the ecology that goes with it - plenty of RAM, accessories, bags, FW drives, etc.).

It is a far far better thing to have a lesser box better equipped than top-of-the-line box with nothing else...same thing with camera equipment. Accessories and extras COUNT.

Note ALL of these will be JUST FINE for cutting native DV, DVCPRO HD, HDV, etc. Even my MacBook can do those tasks.

What each increase gets you:

$500 bumps you from 2.16 to 2.33 GHz (whoopee), gets you another GB of RAM (Apple charges $175 for this), an extra 128 MB of VRAM, and.....that's it.

$800 gets you the same speed, RAM, and VRAM bump, a slightly faster burner (8x not 6x), a bigger screen, and a bigger hard drive (160 not 120GB)

Starting from the better 15", $300 gets you the bigger screen, bigger hard drive, and the slightly faster burner

-mike

Update: MacinTouch's Amazon page lists out the current cost savings on older models - up to $400 off.

AOL partners with Paramount Pictures - DV Guru
AOL has announced a partnership with Paramount Pictures that will offer consumers downloadable movies and television shows through the AOL Video portal.

GigaOM � DVD Jon Fairplays Apple

The guy that famously broke DVD encryption is attempting to start a company that will let non-Apple companies produce content encryted with FairPlay technology - so others can sell audio/video content that'll play on iPods/iTunes/iTV.

Will Apple sue them? Probably. Will they win? If Apple doesn't, it'll be a MAJOR deal - like when non-Atari companies could start making Atari compatible games.

-mike

Studio Daily | Mixed Bag for NYC Production Industry

...while the number of films shot in New York City is on the rise, the growth rate comes nowhere near keeping pace with the dramatic increase in the total number of films made in the U.S. More television production is taking place, but at least some of that growth is attributable to low-budget cable TV programming. And the gradual exodus of the advertising industry continues "20 years ago, half of all the ad agency headquarters in the world were in New York, compared to just one third of them today."


At least the number of films being shot in NYC is on the rise accoding to the report, and NYC is getting hit less hard than others areas of the country when it comes to production flight.

This reminds of something Frank Reynolds, my NYC editing buddy said several years ago when I asked how the NYC film scene was. "The NYC indie film scene is about what you'd guess Austin would be like...and that is bad news for both cities."

-mike

Apple - Trailers - The Prestige - HD

..and it is way, Way, WAY better than the trailer makes it look.

LOTS of good surprises, just go see it.

Frank and I spent 10 minutes discussing nuances on the drive back home. While I annoyed him by figuring out a twist and whispering it to him before he figured it out, he blew my mind afterwards when he pointed out I'd misconstrued something that made the whole film deeply, deeply creepier.

In any case, go see it, you'll enjoy it.

I found it as rich as Memento.

-mike

Saturday - my two panels went fine, interesting to be on the panel with Harry Lynch, who directed Ride Around the World, an IMAX film (15 perf 65mm, film travels sideways, so HUGE resolution). While I talk a lot on here about inexpensive cameras and what can be done, he's a big advocate of get a real camera and rent it - it'll force you to a schedule that you'll be more disciplined for your entire project. Good idea, solid advice. He said you can rent a camera for what you'd buy the cheapie for, I'd say that depends on your shoot length but in general shoot on the best camera you can get your hands on, properly support (have budget for lights/lenses/audio/etc.), and operate properly. I gabbed on about the SI and Red cameras coming to market, the age of tapeless acquisition, and the new challenges and benefits those bring.

Sunday was a funky day for me - I skipped the late parties (including the closing party) Saturday night, because I had to get up early for a 7:30 am 10 mile footrace (10 miler, 8:30 pace, I'm psyched considering the cold and 20+ mph winds).

I then went home, desalinated in the shower, and went to the Hair of the Dog brunch held at Ranch 616. It was a cool, bright mid-morning when I got here, and what a delightful experience - tables inside and out, people sitting on the steps outside eating breakfast tacos, drinking bloody marys, and just enjoying the day, the setting and the company. We all moseyed back and walked into our panels.

Post race, post breakfast taco, I got very sleepy so didn't hear everything said between Peter Hyams (moderator) and Shane Black (interviewee), but it felt a little to "Inside the Actor's Studio" for my tastes. There was a lot of talk about humility and being true to your craft and story...but it didn't stick in my head. Nappy time.

After that I went to lunch with Frank Reynolds and a couple of screenwriters (Russell & Robert Summers, won a screenplay award at AFF) and we geeked out on movie stuff for a while. We were talking about girlfriends who didn't get it when Frank topped us all - he got a call from woman he was "sort of seeing" while he was at Sundance the year he edited the Oscar nominated In the Bedroom played there, and she said "Are you having fun at Film Camp?"

Afterwards I came back and slid into one of the smaller rooms - just a bunch of couches and comfy chairs set up, and Christopher McQuarrie in comfy chair at one end of the room. He was originally supposed to talk for about an hour fifteen, but since it was the last panel of the day in the room we all just kept going...for over two hours.

This was BY FAR the best panel experience I think I've ever had at AFF - a small group (twenty, maybe thirty people in the room), and a speaker who was relaxed and into what he was talking about. We all got a chance to ask questions (I got a 10+ minute answer to my question about Way of the Gun, which you should go watch right now if you haven't seen it).

I think about the last few weeks in Austin - for all my internal grumbling at "this isn't a film town, I need more work from elesewhere" - in the last few weeks, I sat at one movie behind Tarantino, Rodriguez, Linklater and Kurt Russell (and got to chat with Rodriguez about the Red camera a bit). Then I got to hang with Shane Black, Christopher McQuarrie, John August, and a bunch of others in a totally relaxed, low pressure, pleasant environment of approachability. Austin rocks that way.

OK, anyway, McQuarrie talked for over two hours with us, and it was entirely engrossing. I coulda, I maybe shoulda, live blogged it and taken notes, but I was tired and wanted that one Just For Myself, ya know? So off the top of my head, the next day, some of what he discussed is below, but I mangle the eloquence, verve, energy and panache he presented it with:

How "The Usual Suspects" came to be:

-started with the title - he read it in the news somewhere, thought it'd be a good title
-from there he thought that could be a cool movie, and started thinking about the poster for it
-have about 5 guys (7 would be too many), and each one had their own attitude - this guy is like "fuck off", this guys is like "Hey - whaddaya want from me?", this other guy is like "You can all go to hell"
-he thought that last would be a good tagline - "You can all go to hell."
-from there, how could he make THEM all go to hell, to play on that? the guy says the line, but in truth he and his co-conspirators are all the ones destined for hell
-Brian Singer, in the meantime, had made a movie with some Japanese investors, and now had a chance to get funded for a second film - the first round was 6 $250K movies, this was 6 $500K movies - Singer, ballsy guy that he is, said "Why don't you just give me all the money for this round?"
-in the meantime, he tells McQuarrie he has a very short time to crank it out
-McQuarrie was sitting in the break room of the law firm where he worked, which looked sorta like an interrogation room
-as an exercise, he's looking around the room trying to come up with stuff.
-there is a blank whiteboard, with a "made in Skokie Illinois" label at the bottom
-....and you see where this is going - after 10 minutes, he felt dumb, but then realized the guy getting interviewed had to be making all this up onthe fly, and the interrogator was so busy he didn't notice all this stuff
-somewhere in there he figured out the guy being interviewed had to seem small and innocuous, and the interrogator was trying to find this Lengendary Criminal, not realizing he had him right there
-a problem in doing that - if your audience is smart, they'll figure it out quickly - how to avoid that problem? The guy playing that role has to NOT be a star, you need a McGuffin - the interrogator is looking for Gabriel Byrne's character, and only later in the movie thinks he MIGHT be Kayser Soze
-when trying to get funded, studios wanted to put a star in the Verbal Kent role - but that would blow it - if it were Dustin Hoffman in that chair, you'd KNOW he'd have to turn out to be The Bad Guy....and every actor who read the script ONLY wanted to be Verbal Kent, not anyone else
-they wanted Kevin Spacey BECAUSE he hadn't done anything big

On Kaiser Soze's name

-while working at a lawfirm, he met Kaiser Sume, and told him - you have a cool name - it'll be in a movie someday
-Kaiser said "Yeah right, sure."
-they use that name for the bad guy in Usual Suspects
-during the clearances phase, the studio contacts McQuarrie and says "There is only one Kaiser Sume in the US, and he's in LA, and he's a practicing lawyer. One, we don't think it's chance, and two, we think it likely that he might sue if he doesn't like it."
-so Brian Singer is telling him he'll have to get it changed, and pronto, since the clock is ticking
-McQuarrie is thinking "I can get him to sign off on this, he's a nice guy." so he calls him, and reminds him who he is (they worked in the same lawf irm, but McQuarrie at a low level job at the time). Sume is polite and says sure, he remembers who he is, he's open to the idea, but he needs to read the script to make sure it isn't anything that would prevent him from getting future clients. McQuarrie sits down, and the first place he flips open to in the script is the scene where Kaiser kills his entire family. So he closed the script and changed the name.

Incidentally, when looking to change the name, they knew the character was turking, so started looking into the Turkish versions of devil, or evil, or liar, etc., but they were all 16 syllables long with 12 umlauts, so no way. Then he asked his friend with the Turkish to English dictionary (don't you have one?) to look up "verbal" as in Verbal Kent. Soze. Done.

-Brian is ambivalent about the name Soze until Christopher tells him it is Turkish for verbal then he likes it.

-incidentally, the movie didn't do so well in Turkey (a bit like "Darth Vader" is "dark father" in some northern European dialect)

On Benicio del Toro

-Benicio del Toro's accent and character is entirely Benicio's own creation - he wanted to ditch the script and do his own thing - on set the other actors were like "WTF?" the first time he did that accent...that no one could understand
-McQuarrie wasn't allowed to talk to the actors after they were cast - Singer thought he'd talk to much and confuse them
-del Toro calls McQuarie one night and they meet - del Toro has a tiny apartment - one huge wall of laserdiscs, and a giant TV on the opposite wall...and those are only about 8 feet apart
-del Toro had a photo on the wall - it is a Mexican guy in a hat, standing on a rock, his head cocked back, a cigarette on his lips, and a cocky smile. McQuarrie says "that's a cool picture" and del Toro says "That's only half the picture." - "What's the other half" sas McQuarrie. del Toro smiles and says "He's in front of a firing squad."

-THAT'S del Toro for you.

-so anyway, they make the movie, yadda yadda yadda. At the premiere, McQuarrie is outside talking to the 6 guys who want to talk to the writer, and del Toro is swarmed, surrounded. McQuarrie realizes that right there, at that instant, del Toro has just become a star.
-he continues talking to his little group, and suddenly he hears in his ear "All glory is fleeting" and it is del Toro, booking out there, a little freaked out by all the attention. On the way out, a papparazzi is trying to take his picture, and del Toro shields his eyes, looks the other way, and sticks his little camera out to snap a picture of the guy taking his picture, and he got it, he nailed the photographer, and he still has that picture framed on his wall. So he has a picture of the first instant where he started to get famous

On deleted stuff from The Usual Suspects

-Much like the "hit the girls first" story which you can hear on the commentary track during the opening scene of Way of the Gun, about being in a bar in the Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Context - McQuarrie and a friend in a bar where they didn't belong, and the friend saying "if you thought we were about to get our asses kicked, what would you do?" And McQuarrie says "I'd shit in my hand and rub it all over myself. Nobody would touch me after that." And the friend says "I don't think I could do that." And McQuarrie responds "That's why I'd get out of here and you wouldn't." (At that point, I leaned over and whispered to a friend "That's his version of the "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun YOU." story)

- So at another point in script development, the script was enormous, like 140 or 160 pages. There was a 20 page section on how they team came to LA after the jewelry heist - the supposition was that crime was like Hollywood - you had to "be somebody" to get connected to a big project. And since the usual suspects had no LA cred, they had to work their way up the food chain. So they find a street dealer and beat the crap out of him to find out his source, and beat the crap out of that guy, etc. etc. etc. At one point they get in over their heads - they are in a bar, and Gabriel Byrne's character is playing pool with a guy who says "You're not getting out of here alive." Byrne's character says "You wanna go...let's go. I'LL go" and starts unbuckling his belt, pushes his pants down, puts his hand down behind his ass, grunts, shits in his hand, and starts to put it on his face like war paint.

-McQuarrie shows this scene to Brian Singer and says "This will be the funniest scene, it'll be great." Brian says yes it is funny, but there is no way in hell he's going to shoot that as a scene in his own movie. Instead, for the whole 20 page bit about how they got their rep in LA and how they connected up with the criminal element to get that high paying job - "OK. Well how about McManus just knows Redfoot?"

-speaking of Redfoot, that actor came to the set and everyone was scared of him - he'd done a movie where his character had peeled fingernails off people or something like that. And when they were doing takes of the scene where Redfoot meets up with the crew after that first diamond job goes bad, he flicked that cigarette a zillion times and it was fine. But on that one take, it hit Stephen Baldwin (McManus) RIGHT IN HIS OPEN EYE. For real, no CG, just by accident. And Mr. Tough Guy Redfoot actor on the dailies is hilarious because he switches midstream - "Why don't you go fuck yourse -- OH MY GOD ARE YOU OK?" and just LEAPS out of character to the nice guy he actually is since he just nailed a co-worker right in the eyeball with a lit cigarette. And Baldwin, to his credit, gets nailed with the cigarette and his first response is along the lines of "Don't stop - did you get that? We are so using that! If I take a lit cigarette in the eye, WE ARE USING THAT IN THE FILM!"

-Baldwin was originally not not on McQuarrie's want list for actors, (McQuarrie got to help on the casting), but when he met the guy, Baldwin had gone through and added notes to the entire script for his stuff. At first the writer thought "Groan..what's this guy done?" but it turned out he hadn't changed the essence of what was just being said, just how it was being said to better fit the character the way he saw it....and it was good, and it worked. McManus was originally written to be this very caustic, sarcastic guy, and Baldwin tweaked that a bit to be the performance he gave. Also was a completely professional, prepared trooper. If Singer wanted the line as written, Baldwin always had it - he memorized not only his spin on the script, but also the original as a perennial fallback. He also fell about 15 times faceplanting for that death scene with the knife onto a roughly 1/4" pad. Dedicated professional.

McQuarrie on future projects

McQuarrie then talked about if you have an impossible movie, he's the guy for that. He spent no less than half an hour if not an hour talking about the John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln's assasin) movie he's been working on. He had Leonardo di Caprio and Martin Scorsese lined up to make it, but they were about to do The Departed, and there were two other Lincoln assasination movies in pre-pro. Since The Departed was next, McQuarrie pulled the plug.

McQuarrie on screenwriting

he talked at length about the Alexander movie he wanted to make and the challenges with the studio over that, including notes like "People like elephants and don't want to see them get hurt" and "Can we have a scene where the horse saves his life?"


he gave some GREAT advice about writing screenplays -

Scripts are read, but not read into. People doing coverage has so many screenplays to read that they don't take the time to ponder what it MEANS

For example -

-there's a scene in the Booth movie where Booth spends three years during the war doing Shakespeare performances, and is, unknown to himself, developing a political sensibility. By cutting together Booth performing different bits of different plays at different times, and cutting in great Shaekespeare lines about the nature of man, power, and the struggles and challenges of power, and that would be played against scenes from the civil war. In the script, it was 10 pages describing what you would see. But it was so complicated to set up and explain, that everyone felt that this was some disproportionately big part of the story. On film, it'd take a minute or two. But it took so long to describe it, in a verbatim fashion, that it was out of balance. He replaced those 10 pages of LITERAL description with a summary - something like what a just wrote above. And then no one complained about too much Shaekespeare, and people started saying how much they loved that montage in the middle.

Similarly, he had a scene in another project (Valkyrie, about Nazis plotting to kill Hitler), where the husband has been away for months, and the wife is pregnant. He had a long description of each thing that happened (the husband and wife dance on being reunited for the benefit of the kids, and he gives her a look about her body and she nods to let him know that yes she is pregnant, and she smiles...then she gives him a look and he nods gravely, just enough for her to catch, so she knows he's going to try to kill Hitler. And her smile fades). In his step-by-step, the essence gets lost in the description. So he cut out all the literal and summarized, and those reading the script got the idea sufficiently. Keep notes on all the details of how you want it to happen, or put the summary in with the script details, but the readers need that help to understand what is going on.

Similarly, he talked about how as a writer/director, there is a point in the process where you switch gears - the writer gets switched off, or seems to die, and the director takes over. There is no time to be a writer when you are actively directing. And even though he was as intimately familiar with the material since HE HIMSELF WROTE IT, there were moments where he as a director would make choices. And later in post, when the writer hat was back on, the writer wanted to wring the director's neck and say "HEY! I wrote those things for a reason, see why it is hurting you now?" He wishes he had notes from the writer "from Dead Me" as he put it - while directing. Keep that in mind.


Notes are given motivated by an emotion. The horse example above - wasn't as dumb as it sounds - the horse was actually Beucephalus (sp?), a horse Alexander had from the time he was 12. The note was about building an emotional note around the horse. So try to respond to the emotion behind the note, not just the literal note. At first, they made up stories amongst themself parodying the Lassie comes up and barks and "What? Jimmy fell down a well? Where is he?" scene. But then they actually came up with some good stuff when they took it seriously.

it is interesting that he wrote Way of the Gun when frustrated and bitter at Hollywood while doing an uncredited pass on the script of X Men. All his vitriol and anger at Hollywood went into the script. He made a comment that I can't recall about trying to do something with the audience, not manipulating their emotions, and feeling he didn't succeed.

I LOVE that movie, violent and angry as it is, because the pacing of the reveals is great, the gunplay is the most realistic I've ever seen in a film, and it is very pure in its effort to portray these guys as criminals, and nothing else.

On directing

On directing - at one point, when filming the scene in Way of the Gun that has James Caan and Benicio del Toro in a parking lot in Mexico, del Toro kept holding up the gun throughout the scene saying "my character doesn't know this guy, he wouldn't lower his gun." ...but that doesn't work to film it all that way. Benicio wouldn't budge on this point. They were running late, it was Friday, and if they didn't wrap this set and make their move over the weekend, that'd put them 3 days behind.

James Caan comes up, squeezes his arm firmly (which he does a lot, almost as a "see how strong I am? Aren't a virile for an old guy?" thing), and says to McQuarrie "ALL actors are like children, even me, and need to be told what to do." Caan can get it in one, but likes to do several takes to feel good about it and sure that it is right.

So McQuarrie gets the AD and tells him to set up, and gets the actors and says "OK. We're going to do this again. And Benicio, you're going to put that fucking gun away and I'm never going to see it again, ALRIGHT? And since we're already running late, we're going to get it in one." (meaning one take) Benicio starts to get upset, bunches up his jaw, but says nothing. Caan starts to open his mouth and McQuarrie says firmly "Is there a problem?" and Caan shuts up.

And it worked, and it happened, but McQuarrie internally was thinking "these guys must think I'm an asshole and hate me now"

In summary

OK, that's enough for now - it was 2 hours it was great, come back next year to Austin Film Festival and you too can sit down with these guys. OK, over 3000 words so far - imagine if I'd live blogged it?

: )

In short, this guy is a MAJOR talent. If you heard a former beer drinkin' security guy was writing a story about a tough cop interviewing a guy looking for the world's most legendary criminal, you can just imagine what kind of horribe, overacted, doomed for Cinemax at best movie that might have been...and it was The Usual Suspects. Knowing that he started with a beginning and an ending (he had a 10 page thing set on a boat with a guy with not working legs, the gas, the lighter, someone pisses on it to put it out - he just lifted that so he wouldn't have to write 5 or 10 pages) - look where he went with that, what he added to it.

If I could hire anyone to pitch my project, I'd get this guy. He was quietly riveting for over two hours.

I heard the panel with Shane Black, McQuarrie, Sydney Pollack was purportedly AMAZING, Maya Perez (who runs/books the panel stuff) said it was their best panel ever, and I heard other gushing commentary about it elsewhere. Maya mentioned they video'd many things and want to put out a DVD, but getting the editing done is a problem. Email the festival and let them know if you want a DVD of this stuff - I'll bet you do if you're a screenwriter! Anybody wants to volunteer/work cheap to edit this stuff, get in touch with Maya (or email me and I'll get you in touch).

-mike

Austin Film Festival: The Business of Film Panel

As usual, walked in late, this time because they'd moved the panel and not documented it in the guide book (always verify online in the morning where all your stuff is for the day - I ended up attending a "wrong" panel earlier today and missed Christopher McQuarrie, dammit!).

Anyway, here's my raw notes typed realtime as best I could:

Red Garrett, write & teaches @ Baylor is Moderator

Non-traditional ways of doing the film business

Richard Beamer (Beaver?) - president of Roughouse Productions, did Squid & the Whale

Chris Hyams - CEO of Bride Entertainment - working on new market research and distribution

Sean Cobell - worked on Napoleon Dynamte, and two others

Peter Hyams has had 35 year career in Hollywood, always dealt with studio system

Over last 10 years, can make films w/out big name stars or studios involved, or new ways of distributing films

Q: In what ways have indie films opened things up for other indies? How will it be differrent going forward?

A: Richard - it has opened up, costs have come down to digital age, general audience more open to indie fare (for the most part), downloadable content is a big new deal, but also creates competition and increases costs, downloadable content is a big new thing, how to compete with those doing it; most are trying to second guess what size of content and how to access it; for indie productions, don't want to take a whole lot of risks; what's the ideal size? Smaller/shorter programming for online viewing, tech is changing and decreasing the time to download, focusing on smaller content may not be good if 5 years from now might be obsolete; larger companies can more safely invest in new tech. As far as distribution is concerned, print costs will go down as digital projection comes along, less need for certain types of advertising as things slide to viral marketing; people will still need to produce the content that they can tell best - know who your market is, when you know who your market is, opportunities are more apparent to hone in on who wants to see your film and market it to them. Who wants to see your film? Make sure you are creating something for them.

Chris Hyams - tech has affected production hugely in last 10 years. His brother's first feature ws $60K for 16mm stock, $350K for Avid . Last film was cut w/$7K FCP that does more than the Avid did back then. 1500% increase in # of films made, 1000% more film festivals in the last 10 years

box office has been dropping over the last 3 years, a 40% growth in film festivals and attendance over the last 5 years - people are hungry for new stuff. DVD economics have changed the industry - distribs and studios get profits from a place that didn't really exist 10 years ago. Internet will change way films are distributed, but not now. Myspace wasn't around before, THIS GUY DOES B-SIDE. As a distrib, what films you pick up is vital to success. he wants to pick up the films that audiences like rather than the ones with the big stars. Technology is the answer for them - they'll have been in 20 film festivals over the last year. Every time somebody clicks 2 stars or 5 stars it is good info for them. Their approach to exhibition is non-traditional - they show in music clubs or universities or outdoors etc. Digital projection is a great thing. They use a $600 projector to watch Finding Nemo 20 feet across on side of the house. When his brother started making films. It used to be $100K to make anything. Not so now. Then you couldn't show anything. Car based drive - ins - projector in a car w/an FM transmitter, email out on Thursday to say showing Friday night in a parking lot type of stuff (cool!).

Sean Cobell - as filmmakers, there are zillions of films out there, not all will be good. Maybe 10% will be good; when you look for content, super low budget stuff you see problems exist in structure, acting, etc. While there is a market for that; your job is to find something so specific that it'll resonate in your market, so you can overcome the sucky editing/acting/lighting/whatever.

THERE WILL BE lots of competition. There will be more acquisitions now as well. Significant capital is being spent to acquire small featurs. Small distribs are getting into it, online plays will take time - broadband is the limit.

Q: Is selling on the internet a good idea?

A: Just because you can do it doesn't mean you can do it well, or that you ought to. As filmmakers, make something good rather than just make something because you CAN.

Q: self-distributing - Sean on new exhibition and distribution

A: Sean - what property do you have to begin with - film Think Tank was prepped before Napoleon. Made mistakes in that one. Made something more broadly marketable as compared to Napoleon...was too generic. Can't break through the clutter with generic distribution. Family Friendly distribs are coming out - Mormons are prolific (mormon entertainment through Hailstorm or other distribs). Family freindly is a market and is growing - but gotta be careful to keep it appealing to that demographic.

Richard - tell the best story you can - as filmmakers - the importance is to get the films made and seen by as many as possible and make enough to keep making fiilms. Don't look too far into the future. What's available? Trying to call it in the future is too big of a crap shoot. Look at what is out there right now - you'll have to make those decisions in a short period, in a few months. As fillmakers make mistakes going through festivals, overfocusing on theatrical, but that creates some problems. There isn't much money to be made for them through that effort. For your first film, what you want is a reputation so you can continue as a filmmaker. Put your movie out there best foot forward - putting indies onto a lot of screens with very little advertising. 20-200 screens releases. They played on Monday morning...you never heard of it...it only did $84/screen. Don't get yoour film out there JUST to get it out there. You want people to see it and come away with a positive experience.

People do dumb stuff - skip print for a CSI commerical...which does you no good, since you need 3 viewings for it to stick. Or to say we're hitting top ten markets...but $300K barely gets you into NYC & LA advertising markets.

18 year old boys HATED it...45 yr old women and men loved it...but since a rapper starred, they missed their marketing

be very aware of who does your film ACTUALLY appeal to based on test screenings, and THEN market to that demographic

-there is no trick coming along that'll affect everything

-Chris - knowing your audience and how to reach them is a huge thing. On a film they're doing, spending no $$$ on traditional P&A - Before the Music Dies was the doc they did that screened at SXSW. It resonates with indie musicians and creative folks - they drag their cousins and kids etc. to this movie. They are screening in music venues instead. XM Radio came to them and wanted to push it since the topic CREATED sattelite radio. The premiered the film on the XM Radio, XM wanted to get behind them so they invited them to use it. Emails to 3M people, running a channel for a day as the audio for the show. CSI ad would only appeal to 2% of the viewership of CSI...but XM radio listeners already think regular radio sucks, and are an able audience for this show.

Understanding who cares about it and how many of them there are is CRUCIAL research to do to know

As you're planning distribution, there's a lot of money you can spend on postcards, posters etc. - how good are those are getting YOU to see a film?

Some folks are adamant about things that may not be useful or necessary. They wanted bus advertising and billboards....for NYC fine, but for Norfolk Virginia that doesn't necessarily make sense.

Money spent on a PR firm that knows how to get to you demographic will do more than spending your money for posters/postcards etc - it is smarter money spent. Focus on those things instead of traditional advertising.

You typially only see a movie poster when you're already there - so why spend money on posters etc.?

Spend money that gets asses in chairs. If you are going for theatrical, per screen average is a metric that is paid attention to. So getting on a lot of screens may not be to your advantage. If you're big in LA, for instance, get on a few screens in hometown not in a lot of screens in NYC where you're not known.

In NYC, they got about $17K/screen...in LA they did about $2K/screen. The $17K got trade press..the $2K did not.

Film critics MATTER. Napoleon dynamite was on 6 screens to start with. Bad reviews in Boston meant like 3 people saw it. Good reviews in NY meant good box office.

When you have critical support, and leverage that via marketing, you're in a much better position.

boxofficemojo.com - look at napoleon dynamite per screen averages

Big studios can be described in 6 words or less. Indie films can't be done that way. Small films that have to be explained and word of mouthed, so opening on a lot of screens is a BAD idea.

In Salt Lake City - Mormon $200K stuff - grossing $1.1-$1.2M. Distro channels for that? Mobilizing a marketplace is a very geographic effort. The lay out a map of the US and say here's how box office will play across the country by state by night. Utah is off the map - WTF is up with Utah - Monday night is the big night out. Mormonsploitation films is what he's called - if they pull a story out of the bible, then the congregation goes to see it. Excel is a distro company with a funding arm. Hailstorm is another. $200-$300K done usually not on film, goes out roadshow 3 prints, stays on market for a long time with no P&A behind it. DVD backup? YES. Theatrical drives the DVD sales which is where the money really comes from.

Q: Guerilla marketing - since festival competition is so strong?

A: be careful - if you premiere at a non-buyer's festival, diminishes your odds of getting into a buyer's thing like Sundance etc.

short films are to get awards or get future work - no reason to back those whatsoever - you're on your own

shorts are honestly done, but features are shadier and more political etc.

Synetic Media - gets 10% of your movie, they can push to get into a better category, they have advice and rolodex

At Sundance they'd made it locally, the recommended top half didn't include Napoleon. Until yo go to market, don't show it ot anyone - gotta keep it locked up - do NOT show to buyers yet! You want to create a feeding frenzy amongst buyers. They wanted to hype it up at Sundance, John Schloss said to sit back and be what you are - a grass roots thing

Director's careers can launch faster than producer's careers

Festival circuit - there's about 1000 festivals around the world. Everybody likes the feeling of being accepted into a lot of festivals....bear your audience in mind and that you're giving it to festivals and then your audience has seen it. If you hit every market that you're into...your market has seen it! You've lost your word of mouth from the Leading Opinion Folks.

Getting people to see your film at a smaller festival...isn't always your best play. Don't overdo the festival circuit - it costs the same to go to a festival big or small.

John Sloss is a HUGE assett - you're in a different situation at that point. John helps pick the right festivals to go to. Austin had 1500 submissions, Philadelphica had 250 screened, they had 3000-4000 submissions and had to STOP using Without A Box. The title of your film and the one image you choose are the most important thing you have - it is all you have to go by. If there's a 160 other things you've never heard of, you need something to pull people in. It is CRUCIAL.

Rank was the title for a bullriding film...if you know what it is it is great, but if you don't know what it is about it is a scary title. The 4 minute short won over the 30 minute short. It was smart, incisive one note thing. If you're watching 500 shorts....a 30 minute short better be pretty amazing to get'em to watch it all.

Knowing your audience and the right festival is key. Before the Music Dies were focused on Sundance. It was the wrong place to even think about. They got into SXSW instead which is more music oriented, and applying to the right festivals, knowing who in the business attends, and what the audience is like, is KEY.

Part of your distro is publicity stills - do it right! And make sure it doesn't lead you down the right path

Q: new distro company - what to do, where to start?

A: Get a PR firm first thing! Esp. if working with limited funds, that is used to distributing films and distributing YOUR kind of film - and it might not be a movie publicist - it might be a PR film that does other kinds of marketing - if yo have a specific audience - find a publicist that works in that space

Q: What about Day & Date releases? (DVD and theatrical)

A: there is no definitive ansewr yet - Bubble was not the answer for that one. Chris' philosophy is that at the end of the day, the money comes from DVD sales. You try to NOT lose money on exhibition. At some point somebody may make money digitally distribution. TV or foreign distro is free money at that point. For certain smaller films is to get them to buy the DVD. Exhibitors are paranoid that having DVD suck away theatrical ticket sales.

People that haven't seen your film yet - if it is on DVD, they are NOT going to go see it in the theaters.

In 5 years we'll find out the truth.

For big Hollywood stuff - piracy is a problem for big films, isn't for smaller films. "People like stealing stuff." - if there's some way to let'em pirate it and make money another way somewhere else, that'd be good by me

-the music that is on P2P is the stuff people really like, there are companies that advise labels and radio stations by sniffing all the P2p traffic

-Behind the Music is doing house screenings -

- AMC and a "real" DVD distributor - DON'T sell your DVD or they won't pick you up

Q: HD or 35?

A: depends on your project...16 vs HD? depends on the projects, and the budget difference is pretty minimal - it is an artistic choice.

But for DOCS it is a different choice.

Red Update: 4K screenings of footage in NYC & LA

Got an update from the Red team - there will be 4K screenings of Mysterium sensor footage in NYC & LA over the next few weeks.

NYC Screening

Wednesday, October 25th @ 2pm & 3pm
In NAB NY shot in Javitz Convention Center
Room #1E14

This sounds like it'll be exactly what was shown at IBC. But it WILL be on a 4K projector, so you'll get to see firsthand what the Red One will be capable of.

But the better deal will be on the West Coast:

LA VIP & Press Screening

Tuesday, November 14th, 1:30pm
Nuart Theatre
11272 Santa Monica Blvd
West Los Angeles, CA 90025

VIPs (which includes reservation holders) & Press only for this 4K event. The good news is that they've been shooting some more footage and HOPE (typical "no promises" Red approach) to incorporate that into the LA screening.

Map link on this page, and parking is tough, bring quarters for street meters and be prepared to hike.

-mike

John August panel at Austin Film Festival

Sat in on John August's panel, we actually had a chance to sit and talk a bit beforehand (we've emailed a few times back and forth between our blogs) and chat about his progress on what he's calling The Movie.

Here's my raw notes taken as I could type'em, typos, mental flow mistranscriptions and all:


How became a screenwriter: grew up in Boulder, liked movies but didn't think about it too much, watched War of the Roses as a kid, brother and he watched it and wrote down the dialog, realized as a kid that "Oh, somebody had to write this down!"

"Naive but hey, that's how it's done."

There's media about screenwriting now, but

Got into a producer's program in LA, 25 people in his class group, learned it all there

read first copy of Variety - couldn't understand it, read every issue twice, figure out where the studios are

-had a great script library

-started reading bad scripts - worked as a reader for a tiny company, doing coverage

-at that point started figuring out he could do it

-Hollywood was this thing in the distance, as he got closer, he realized there isn't a line or barrier, it is just a lot of little steps

-once you're writing you're in the industry, it doesn't feel like that

-met Spielberg, like a mythical firgure, talking to him realized he's not magical, just working really hard. Kind of dissapointing, but realized that while tallented, he just works really hard

-been a lot of work to get to where he is

-perception that it is a lottery attitude - only time you read about it is because somebody gets $2M for a screenplay...only read about it because so rare

-usually doing 8th draft of a revision for something you don't really care aboutanymore - that is the reality

-either writing by yourslef, or in a mtg w/a jnr exec who might not know who you are

-"if I can deflate your dreams at all I'll be happy to do that"

opens it up for Q&A
===================

Q: Willy Wonka - once in factory, focus shifts from Charlie's movie to Willy's movie, assumed Burton's move, but actually John likes the shift

A: done 3 movies with him, he's maybe spent 24 hours aggregately with him, usually 20 minutes at a time, been to his house one or two times.

He loved the book, had never seen the original movie. The story is about Charlie gets the ticket to go to factory and win it, but it isn't rewarding as a movie experience. A lot of stuff just happens, nothing changes over the course. Charlie the kid is perfect, never does anything wrong. Classically the protagonist who changes and antagonist motivates change.

Wonka closes down factory - what's his damaage? Why is he this way?

Let's build in a greater backstory for Wonka's damage and how Charlie helps him overcome that.

If he gave Charlie the factory at the end, nothing would change.

Charlie gets the factory, Willy gets a family.

Q: Samples - how much?

A: full scripts, but classically over-written - all over the gamut, everything shoved in there that didn't have to be there. Comedy samples was from Natural Born Killers the book.

Q: when did he decide to have a blog?

A: about 5 years ago, imdb.com asked about a weekly advice column, said great, answered one a week, enjoyed it, but it was one way, and couldn't go back through old stuff, odd that a popular site still feels like 1994 design. Took all the imdb type stuff and made his own blog.

(John mentions me about blogging)

Figuring out the limit between public and private, mentioning his partner and daughter but not by name, where to find the line. Josh Friedman talks about everythign in his life, but John wanted to draw a line there.

He spends more time on it that he planned (yeah, I think it is fun too)

After a certain amount of established work behind you, the freedom of what you say becomes different. Some tiptoe around some issues (don't badmouth a producer or whatever).

At this point, on the site he's pretty upfront about not publicly dissing, since it is PERMANENT. He has his own list of people he'll never work with, but he won't say it "because it ends up being this whole tangle of everything."

There are projects he wants to have happen, but the wrong guy is attached, or he won't work on it until he gets it in writing that so and so won't be involved. Limits to what you get control over in a film.

Q: how'd he get from short film to feature (Go)

A: friend asked him to write something smallish, but containable and shootable.

Wanted to do a story about cahsier girls in a grocery store and something goes awry. The Ronna storyline from Go is this part.

Wrote it and friends dug it.

Later, he went back and knew what their other stories were for the other storylines. Reservoir Dogs came out and he saw that structure and saw it could be done. Wrote full feature version of it, had a new agency, took it out as a spec sale situation.

The friend Jim read it, everybody liked it, but was told "we can't make this" they wanted a feel good movie where the girl takes her glasses off (She's All That). It's not that movie.

The agent got it to Banner entertainment, paid the least they possibly could, and he got co-producer status, they figured he'd go away, but he STAYED. For all casting session, everything, it was his film school. The first day "Crap there's a ton of trucks here...oh wait, they're here for the movie!" 5 days in they were 3 days behind, started directing 2nd unit.

The plan was to sell off foreign rights, 3 weeks before production, got a call from producer saying foreign money fell out. "We need a white male star in this age range to star in this movie" Michael Douglas was not going to be in this movie.

By that time, they had a good cast together for an American studio picked them up as a marketable cast. This was his film school.

What would he do different - he wrote features to start, should've written spec episodes of TV show he loved, should've written for videogames, would now do a movie for Youtube, there's a more open world now - those walls are different.

Q: How to you take a concept and make it go

A: He's not an index card guy - he wrote a pilot with another guy, there he did cards out of necessity. He'll outline certain products. A loose outline in his head is how he does it, once has that, has to start writing.

He writes out of sequence, he writes whatever he feels like writing that day. You're going to go back to it anyway, write the other bit and come back to that piece he's avoiding. Sometimes do both ends of script and then come back for the middle. Write the ending where you still love it and don't hate it. Some movies seem to get sloppier towards the end - perhaps because they were unhappy with it and wanted to get done.

Friends that he shows stuff too - that was important early on, but now he trusts himself. Now he knows about the craft of it, and gets paid on a weekly basis, and can tell people "that'll take me 3 days". Some things are inspiration and some things are muscle, and he's better at the muscle stuff now.

Pilots for TV - it moves so quickly, you can't be precious about it, GIT'R DONE.

Q: how many did he write before he thought he knew what he was doing. How many drafts do you go through?

A: After Go, wasn't sure that he knew what he was doing it right, first time it felt naturally. Blue Streak was written for Nicholas Cage, rewrite for Martin Lawrence, rewarding to see that he could actually do that. Be able to do it on demand. That was about 4 feature scripts before he felt he knew what he was doing. He'll hand in a first draft sometimes now, but only with craft and experience can he do that now - the same way a DoP can know how to light a scene.

When he was first handing in, he'd do 3 or 4 drafts before calling something a first draft.

Tough to write at all, but if he's early for a Dr. appt., he'll scribble something down, and isn't precious about This Paper or That Pen. He'll hand write 50 pages, does by hand so he CAN'T edit and shoot out a draft fax it out so it is GONE. In 2 weeks he's going to Chicago to start on something and looking forward to just barricading himself in to work on it.

Q: Research and time to do drafts?

A: depends on project, sometimes gotta research, the PROCESS of researching is more useful than the research - finding the interesing questions to ask. Sometimes helpful, sometimes not, just go in and do it. 6 weeks is typical to do a draft, had to in 3 weeks and that kills you. 9am to 6pm is his workday. Not writing that whole time. Blog is something else to do to stay productive. 3 or 4 hours actual writing in a day is a good day's work, 5 pages is a good day. Some days require 17 pages in a day. TV is a monster that needs scripts, is good practice.

Q: If left feeatures to do TV, would you?

A: life of television is worse than features as a writer - "here's what's wrong with TV" -

-one hour drama is better than it has ever been, amazing things
-but people have foresaken their lives to do it
-he wrote a script for a film, cast it, figured out how to produce it, found locations, found sets, shot, edited, in sound now, sell it and market and promote it later is going on, took a year
-in TV you're writing next week's, casting something, rewriting this weeks, dealing with the network, etc....and it is all going through the showrunner person who has to do it all

-in The Movie, he found he was floating outside his body - he found it not healthy or good or anything, for all the good shows out there, wouldn't trade places with anybody in that role - it is busy and their lives aren't as happy, due to schedule

Q; as the Go To Guy, what about own stuff?

A: The Movie is his own thing, studios have no idea what it is, he's been Go To Guy for rewrites, is rewarding and frustrating, people are happy to pay him to rewrite, but won't pay more than X to do his own thing. If he originates something, it isn't as worth as much to studios is a frustration. A conservatism from a big corporation, sense of must make $200M every movie, a creative conservative contraction. At his age in his career, having lunch w/a producer, tells about the product, producer says "looking for a younger writer" he's 30 at the time, but they really wanted a cheaper, younger, less experienced writer.

He wants to be the creator and oversee the life of something

Q: Art direction type stuff: very visually vivid and pop - how to imply that on the page w/out providing stuff

A: Rarely meets the art director, the Art Director on Wonka was kind enough to include him but that's RARE

Screenwriting is about the art of economy - with one sentence create a world

spends time on scene description because it is crucial - many people read it before it becomes a movie, if can give a sense of the texture/feel/etc. of it, is his job. Gave the Art Director the sense of how the scenes will be, and art director can execute from that feel

Q: What's up with Prince of Persia? Were approached or what?

A: is a video game, created in 88 or so, but different iterations have come out over the years. Doesn't say much on blog because too many dorks want to be Prince of Persia, or people want more info. Current status - he likes the underlying story of Jordan (creator's) ideas, he's supervised and worked with Jordan to help shape it to hire him to write the screenplay. Hit all studios in one day, hired a Town Car (that was a mistake).

It is essentially a Pirates/Raiders in 9th centry Persia, he's 3rd or 4th in line, king's favorite, can stop time with a magic dagger, in this world, the cool thing is the universe they're making - on edge of East/West/China cultures, ended up Bruckheimer for a bit, their process is maddening, Jordan had a good script, a zillion drafts, their process is "let's bring in this writer to do that" - the idea was John was to be the Fixer writer, but hasn't shaped up that way. The talk is that they may shoot next summer after Pirates 3, and it'll be absurdly expensive no matter what they do.

Q: the game has a turban on the lead - the ethnicity is an issue - is a flash point for Persian identity - what to do? LIke Hannibal movie - black or white person. Hopes Bruckheimer will find a great Persian actor, but whatever happens is beyond his control if they cast Orlando Bloom or somebody.

Ethnicity and cultural identity is one of those frustrating things. A Fox pilot for Ops that didn't happen - one character a former SEAL, lots of blog comments about "SEALs suck SEALS rule" - doesn't want to get tangled into that world. He doesn't want identity to get to be the big thing about it

Q: to break into industry today -

A: be flexible - realize that what you think is gonna be it isn't it, just follow whatever work pops up. If want to write the quirky indie, find the people that will make that movie, don't go knocking on Columbia's door is they aren't going to make that movie.

If you like TV, write TV -there's more opportunities there

-write whenever there is an opportunity to write, even if isn't somebody that you think won't be big isn't the case. Don't assume you know how things are going to turn out (good advice for ME to take - roll the dice more to increase your odds)

Q: move to LA?

A: if the movie syou like to write are valid for New York, be there. If you want to write Lord of the Rings, it is an LA kind of thing, or if a sitcom, gotta do LA

Q: Big Fish - how does he feel about it?

A: he loves it, was a book that he worked w/writer for a long time on, most autobiographical of the things he'd done, his father had died not too long before, knew how to write that experience without being cloying, that walking on eggshells quality about being around someone who dies; in the book he kept reading it and adding other things in that he connected to it. People who like it REALLY like it. If Burton hadn't signed on, wouldn't have been made. Was an expensive small movie. The bigness of the circus, location, cast and crew made it big. Shot in Alabama, for the Aisan sequence, finding 500 Asian people in Alabama to shoot was a challenge - found 50 and cloned them digitally in post.

He optined Big Fish from the author, Sony did it for him but he initiated it

Q: Charlie and Chocolate Factory - how to be original but be faithful to book AND the movie, but cover new ground w/out a scene by scene remake.

A: Having not seen the orginial, he didn't see the film until after submitted script, Tim and John didn't like the original, but had to be respectful during press tour. So they went back to the book source for the movie. He doesn't know Tim all that well, but knows what Tim likes, so did the orthodontic headgear, and knew he'd like the squirrels. Knows Tim has things about how he deals with parent stuff, so he tried to write (like volleyball) to set for Tim to spike it in.

One of his non-credits was a re-write on The Rundown to write for Christopher Walken...but there's no top with Christopher Walken. Got to use "cooch" for the first time.

Talking about parents and Big Fish - parents are like a lottery - you get stuck with them, but everywhere else in life you get to pick who you hang out with. "We were like strangers who knew each other very well" He could predict their behaviors very well, but you don't understand them. Can predict what happens next, but can't explain it.

Q: Challenges of directing?

A: producers on The Movie did American Beuaty and Big Fish, were friends of his independently. They did Big Fish with him before, and set producer on Veronica Mars was the third producer.

In terms of money and stuff, they were tiny, and enough folks who "hey if you ever do a movie" - they'll try to get into Sundance, try to get into other festivals, not gonna make a ton of money, but it is the movie he wants to make. His job is often to keep the studios happy, but for this one he didn't want to have to do that - he wanted to make the movie he wanted to make, and not have to bend to another's requests.

Q: do drills to keep up?

A: does writing off the page often - spend an hour writing about how this character feels about something, that won't go in script but helps him understand the character; or in a place and write about an interesting place describing it;

Q: For the stuff he wasn't excited about (Martin Lawrence movie) - does it help you on other stuff?

A: he does some of those bandaids as favors - hopefully will be able to call in those favors later for his own stuff (Jurassic Park 3, Minority Report he did emergency work on). While shooting JP3, he got on a plane to Hawaii in a HOliday Inn, didn't meet w/director, slide pages under director's door, only met director on last day (a dick). Kept relationship going since Spielberg was supposed to do Big Fish at that time.

He couldn't make any reshoots get done, but work from what was already shot. Like parkingin a really small place? How are you going to fit this in here?

Q: At this stage, does he still get notes? Is it a pain?

A: You get spoken notes, and can have a conversation about, teh written notes make you want to kill yourself. He did for Warners, Tarzan. Doesn't usually do the big hero stuff, but this was the time to do it, he said he wanted to do it in modern civil unrest Africa, they were good with it. Spent a year on various drafts, gets a set of notes, says to put it back in 18th century, and nothing could be used from what he'd done, so he walked after that.

He had to learn how to write those notes, if done write can steer in a good way.

Q: Aside from biz and writing, what inspires/feeds you?

A: gets internal validation when he knows he's written somehing good, test screenings with an audience that goes well and they laugh if your joke is good. He reads the geeky/gadgetry stuff, he likes the computer of it all, his peers are the new tech guys blogwise, he loves TV and his TiVO is full.

Q: Was the airduct in Blue Streak his idea?

A: he revised the air duct (he hates jewel thief movies) premise...there's a reason why he's in the air duct. Air ducts are a horible cliche, hates it.

Q: The Movie: while writing, when did he decide to keep it for himself and decide to direct

A: called that for title clearance right now, wrote it from conception for himself. One part of the movie (3 different parts to this movie, one section is directly autobiographical). Isn't Charlie Kaufmann like in terms of tumbling in on itself...he shot in his house, wouldn't let anybody shoot there. He mentions talking to me (MIke Curtis) about figuring out what to shoot each portion on.

Q: screenwriters typically don't get much attention

A: there's more popular media press about screenwriters - greatest frustration is that the director gets credit if good, screenwriter blamed if a bad film. Typically he's only mentioned if a move turns out bad. Best screenplay should go to director who f*cked up screenplay least. "That movie was good...probably it was well written?"

: )

Next year the screenplay awards will be done with them posted online.

There's a higher profile for writers these days - the success of 1 hour dramas is higher than before.

Ten reasons you should go to film school - DV Guru

This is to balance out against last week's 10 Reasons NOT to go to film school piece.

His reasons are: peer connections, industry connections, technical know how, intelligent feedback, mentors to push you, history & theory, credibility, time your projects, stay the course, and you either have it or you don't.

The rationale for each is explained in detail. Go read both if you're contemplating film school. Then whichever you pick, blame me for guiding you wrong, move to Seattle and sulk with your coffee and cigarettes.

; p

-mike

CinemaTech: A few links: Web video impact on star salaries... Residuals debate... Labels cash in on YouTube/Google deal... Lucas and Colbert duel

Read the thing about economic rents - interesting about what drives movie budgets. If Tom Cruise or other star is $10 to $20 million, and we spend $30 million on prints and advertising, why NOT spend that much on the production itself? Helps escalate the whole Big Movie Thing. But if people are spending more time watching other stuff, playing videogames, etc., that pulls down the time they can watch Tom Cruise, therefore he's less valuable. A star's value is not endemic, it is what they bring to the project in terms of marketing appeal to get people to go see the film (oh yeah, and maybe are they good - but see Lindsay Lohan counter example).

If a star's drawing power drops, then they bring less to the table, therefore can be paid less, etc. Most big budget producers don't care that the cost of acquisition and post is going down, because that is negligible to their total budget. But for indies, it is a much bigger percentage of their budget, so it DOES matter, and helps them get their content out there for less...so then the big budget stuff is competing with that for eyeballs and attention. You can go bigger to try to hold your audience, but I see that either exhausting itself at some point, or reaching a point of vastly diminishing returns.

-mike

Quickie, is nearly 3am:

Opening day & night of Austin Film Festival, I worked until time to go to opening party. Ran into Cathy from the Texas Film Commission and talked about Proposition 4 (trying to get funds to upgrade Austin Studios), talked about TMPA (Texas Motion Picture Alliance, trying to get incentive package going to lure production back to Texas). Ran into Annika that I know from Austin and caught up with her, we walked over to see...

The TV Set - made by Kasdan the younger, the edler exec produced. The film stars David Duchovny as a writer trying to shepherd his script for a TV pilot into getting made and picked up, without completely sacrificing his and its integrity along the way Good luck with that. LOTS of great other cast members, especially Sigourney Weaver as the network exec from hell. "Does the brother HAVE to die? 82% of people think death is such a bummer." That isn't an exact quote, but captures the experience of her character. This will play well to this creative industry crowd, dunno if it'll work on the general audiences, but critics will love it.

Then headed over to catch The Queen, about the current Queen of England during the time of Diana's death. Helen Mirren has an amazing performance of grace, and control, and repressed emotions, under the pressure of the structure and discipline of the monarchy. My Mom (who has worked a great deal for Lady Bird Johnson, a Texas version of British royalty), will cry when she sees this film, I'm sure. The scene with the stag, a magnificent rare 14 point buck that has eluded the hunters, is really a centerpiece of the film for me. The Queen is an interesting mix of self sufficiency (drives her own Range Rover around the country estate, and knows when she's broken a driveshaft) and monarchic isolation (the lack of background music, the static camera setups, the muted lighting of elaborate rooms) creates a sense of isolation, desolation, and formalist loneliness that is almost unbearable at times.

As everyone else is likely to say, total Oscar bait for Helen Mirren - she earns it. A very narrow emotional range, but deftly done. I said to Annika (my friend next to me in the movie) about her performance - "A very narrow and specific range of greys....but devastatingly delivered."

OK, I wasn't that concise, but said something about range of grays (liberty of writing post facto et all).

Then I went with Frank Reynolds (my editor buddy) to the opening night party at a new place called Rio Grande, which is 3 blocks over from the street called Rio Grande. There I met Domenica (went to prep school 30 miles from where she did in Boston), Natasha (grad student here in town), and Cacki Poarch (pronounced like khaki, spelled wrong here I'm sure, have her card in jacket in Frank's car, but in any case runs an Oklahoma film festival). EDIT: I made a comment about the younger generation here written at 3am, and it's being misinterpreted - wasn't meant to imply "Gee, they're so young and I've done so much more!" - quite the opposite - what I meant to imply was there are a lot of people out there working hard and achieving a lot early in their careers, makes me feel lame and old and time to get on the ball and, like, you know - ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING.

Rather than just write about it.

Plus, on a personal note, I'm feeling ooolllllllllllld at those moments around the young/hip/talented/attractive crowd. Time to get into shape, and get my denial of mortality back into form.

: )

-mike

One meeeeeeellion pageviews!

...since last September 5th.

OK, Off to an Austin Film Festival party, tonight I'll see The TV Set and The Queen at the lovely Paramount theater.

-mike

Adobe - Adobe Press Room: For immediate release

Quickie - Adobe's bought Serious Magic, makers of DV Rack and other good stuff. Fortunately, unlike some other companies that buy other companies, they are reassuring existing customers -

Adobe plans to continue to sell Serious Magic's products and future versions of Adobe's video solutions will include Serious Magic technologies and software.


On a completely unrelated topic, today is the day the hit counter I started last September 5th will roll over 1 million daily unique visitors. Other than a fun large round number, that doesn't mean anything, but it is a fun statistic. Who will be the 1 millionth viewer in that year? You? Scroll to bottom of page and see...

OK, that's it for now, I'm out the door...

Got an email from a friend pointing this one out:

Take a captured DVCPRO HD clip in Final Cut Pro, and export it in the following ways:

(from his email):

(1) Final Cut Pro Timeline using Quicktime Conversion
(2) Open clip in the viewer - then export - changing codec to 8 bit uncompressed
(3) Open clip in Quicktime, Export to 8 bit uncompressed
(4) put clip in Compressor, and export to 8-bit uncompressed

Now, run these all out to a hardware scope, or use the Difference filter to compare them in FCP.

They are ALL DIFFERENT. Different from each other even.

And my friend didn't even try what I usually do - run it through Media Manager's Recompress To function.

And yes, he was using Final Cut Pro 5.1.2, and yes, he's someone I trust to know what they are doing and not make dumb mistakes.

Recent discussions indicate that QuickTime will truncate to broadcast safe (clip off sub black and superwhite), but the gamma shifts were supposed to have been addressed (at least for uncompressed codec going to AE and back). More issues clearly remain, and assumed gamma seems to be an issue as well. This article gives some clues:

Final Cut Pro, on the other hand, makes some assumptions about the gamma of QuickTime and RGB image files that are imported into a project. The gamma of imported QuickTime and RBG image files is treated differently in sequences set to render in 8-bit or 10-bit YUV.
...
users should leave the gamma of their monitors to the 1.8 Standard Gamma setting when working in Final Cut Pro
...
Final Cut Pro automatically lowers the gamma of sequences playing in the Canvas on your computer's display. The gamma of QuickTime images remains untouched when the sequence is output to video or rendered as a QuickTime movie.
...
Final Cut Pro assumes that QuickTime movies for codecs that support the YUV color space (including DV, DVCPRO 50, and the 8- and 10-bit Uncompressed 4:2:2 codecs) are created with a gamma of 2.2. This is generally true of movies captured from both NTSC and PAL sources. When you eventually output the sequence to video, or render it as a QuickTime movie, the gamma of the output is identical to that of the original, unless you've added color correction filters of your own.

However, during playback on your computer's monitor, Final Cut Pro automatically lowers the gamma of a sequence playing in the Canvas to 1.8 for display purposes. This is to approximate the way it will look when displayed on a broadcast monitor. This onscreen compensation does not change the actual gamma of the clips in your sequence
...
and this is good to know too:

Final Cut Pro assumes that all RGB image files are created with a gamma of 1.8. When RGB image files are imported into Final Cut Pro and edited into a sequence set to 8- or 10-bit YUV rendering, the gamma is automatically boosted to 2.2 in an attempt to match the other video files in your project. This boosted gamma is then used when the sequence is output to video or rendered as a QuickTime movie


OK, all together now....GROAN...

What say you all to this one?

I'm going to dig into this some more when I get time, but I don't have time right now, gotta go fetch my badge for Austin Film Festival (don't forget if attending I'm on panels Saturday at 9am and 2pm).

In the meantime, if you feel you have some technical huevos (and yes, I'm throwing down the gauntlet in challenge), post in the Comments section, starting with which workflow comes closest to the original.

Graeme, Stu, other Stu, Bruce, etc....bring it on!

-mike

I try not to regurgitate press releases, but for the digital cinema crowd I thought this was interesting and I don't have time to summarize as the Austin Film Festival starts today and I need to boogie on out of here. So without further ado, the unfiltered output of S.two's marketing department:

S.two Corporation Introduces i.DOCK™ Docking Station

Faster, Lower-Cost, Real Time Ingest of Material to Off-line and Digital Dailies Systems – without disruption to the Production process.

Reno, NV – (October 18, 2006) – S.two Corp., has announced the introduction of its i.DOCK docking station; a critical tool for streamlining the filmmaker’s off-line and digital dailies delivery process.

Automated Editorial Process
The i.DOCK provides an inexpensive and real time solution to accomplish the ingest task, for both image and audio, using the D.MAGs recorded on set. i.DOCK is a studio edit player with advanced real-time functions for all post production applications where data meets video. The i.DOCK mounts D.MAG uncompressed magazines and allows play out in real time at any HD or SD resolution, with audio and timecode, analog or digital, for a complete solution. i.DOCK also has virtual pre and post rolls for those edit systems that can't handle timecode breaks, i.DOCK automatically handles breaks so that the ingest to offline is smooth and fast.
For those using XML capable edit systems such as Final Cut Pro™, the i.DOCK can export a full XML edit file including all metadata and handles for a one touch auto batch capture including names, timecodes, audio and even on set take and scene notes.

Post Production
The i.DOCK acts as a fully featured edit player in any edit suite or color correction system including online and offline with full extended RS422 control, but it goes farther than tape ever can! Chris Romine, S.two president, comments: “The i.DOCK completes a vital part of the workflow process that’s been missing. With i.DOCK’s introduction, it’s possible to move the D.MAG containing the video, audio and metadata files to the i.DOCK and start creating digital dailies or ingest to an off line system, without disrupting the production process at all.”.
i.DOCK provides data-centric interfaces and HD-SDI or SDI, Analog Component, RGB, AES and Analog audio outputs derived from the DPX files contained on the D.MAG. i.DOCK is available now from S.two Corporation.

For more technical information please contact Steve Roach Telephone +1 775 853-9999 or email stever@stwo-corp.com
For sales and delivery information please contact Ted White Telephone +1 949 219 9990 or email tedw@stwo-corp.com


-mike

ProLost: log is the new lin

This one's really for the compositors and color correctors who want to get their geek on.

Stu continues to get folks to understand log, lin, and vid gamma encoded viewings.

Be sure to read the linked stuff as well.

Digimart is a conference about technology and entertainment, and Scott Kirsner attended and panelled.

CinemaTech: Variety (and a Frog) on Just-Wrapped Digimart conference

Good coverage (like I do @ SXSW) from this other guy:

A Frog in the Valley

discussions on the difficulties for indies of preparing for the DCI spec for digital projection, future theaters, indie DIY stuff (one guy lugged his own video server around to plug into projectors), tons of other stuff that if you're an indie moviemaker worrying about the best way to get your movie out there you should read.

If it's been a while, search for Digimart on A Frog in the Valley's page, right now it is the top content.

-mike

Studio Daily | How Warren Miller Films Stays 'Totally Mobile' on the Mountainside

These guys are shooting action sports footage and have to be very quick about it, yet also get high speed footage. This is all film being shot, but lessons can be learned about staying quick and light.

-mike

Studio Daily | Digital Anarchy Releases Microcosm Codec 1.2 for Universal Mac Support

It is a lossless codec that makes the files smaller (like the Sheer codec) except this achieves compression of about 6:1 and they claim it is completely lossless.
-16 and 8 bit codecs (but no 10 bit)
-alpha channel support
-variable compression
-free decoder
-encoder is $99/seat, but $79 through Nov. 15th
-Universal Binary for Macs

Mike's Notes: I used Microcosm several years ago, and it was sllllloooooooooowwwwwwww..........dunno if they've sped it up. I've been very happy with Sheer, since it does make files smaller (not nearly this small though) but was realtime.

OK, it's up, and even as a 720p H.264 QuickTime! (Use the download button for that res.)

622 paint bombs in action, all shot with high speed film.

It's fun, but doesn't have the magic of the balls. Ah... the balls....

-mike

PS-play it backwards, it looks like Retreat of the Paint Monster.

UPDATE - my editor friend Frank Reynolds is in town, and we're talking about how this one doesn't measure up to the balls ad - is it not Big Enough? The paint disperses so fast, and the sense of scale doesn't hold up -they'd need 5 times as much paint to have the visual presence. The paint disperses so fast, but the balls have an ongoing life, bouncing faster down the hill. Plus, the delicious whimsy of the balls - you could almost picture yourself dumping a big box of them down a hill and shooting it. And the paint is messy - you wouldn't want to be under it. As well as the tone of the two pieces is entirely different - so smooth and slow and languid and childishly wonderful in the first, and this new one so realtime and aggressive and TRYING to be high energy, but not quite getting there.

So what would be better?

Frank suggested a zillion brightly colored construction paper airplanes - that's better than anything I've come up with so far.

He specifically said some Apocalypse Now type shots - helicopter view with them all flying in waves underneath.

We talked about getting several schools' worth of kids up on rooftops, all with several to throw in color coordinated waves, and I'm thinking one of those camera on a wire type things to swoop by....

So, a contest - come up with something better, and maybe I'll shoot it on my Red next year if it is possible to pull off...

...Frank said if he wins, he's not making the planes...

-mike

Macworld: News: Flip4Mac enables FCP exchange with Grass Valley, K2

Telestream on Wednesday introduced Flip4Mac Profile|K2 Component v2.1. The software enables Mac users with Final Cut Pro-based video editing systems to exchange files with Grass Valley media servers. The Flip4Mac software costs $995.


Not exactly indie, but I figure some consulting client will ask me about a way to do this someday, and I want a way to find it...this blog is my notebook, too...

-mike

Final Cut Pro 5: May drop frames of 1080pA24 media on 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 models

While the PowerBook models that operate at 1.67GHz are qualified to run Final Cut Pro 5, testing has shown that there may be dropped frames if you are working with DVCPRO HD 1080pA24 media.

Because the 1080pA24 media on tape is actually recorded at 29.97 interlaced frames per second (fps), Final Cut Pro has to remove the redundant fields, resulting in a 23.98 fps movie on your scratch disk. Performing the on-the-fly removal of redundant frames is a very performance-intensive operation, and the 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4 models may drop frames when attempting to Print to Video in the 1080pA24 format.


This would SEEM to imply that ANY G4 Powerbook would have this issue...such as my 1.33GHz 12" Powerbook. If the bigger/badder/faster 1.67 can't, why could mine?

-mike

No reason for you folks to notice, so I'll point out the fact that I go back and keep updating some articles rather than posting new ones, so I can keep all the relevant stuff in one place.

I've updated the new features and issues with Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 article a bunch of times, so if you are looking to update, or are having troubles, or want to know what all the new stuff is (and there's a LOT), go back and read it and check back every once in a while. The last/bottom link (at present) links to a loooooong article detailing new features, keyboard shortcuts, filters, application behaviors, etc. Glden stuff. Don't forget this one too on how to optimize your performance under Final Cut Studio 5.1.2.

I've also kept updating the Apple acquisition of Silicon Color story - that turns out to be one of the most popular articles I've done that is NOT about the Red camera (over 1200 direct article links since Monday when I checked last night). Lots of conjecture on that one two - about 40 Comments and I'm sure more to follow.

I expect I'll keep adding to these articles over the next week or so, so keep checking back at those links.

-mike

The noise of the Viper - 10 Bit Log - The blogging factor

Jean-Luc Gason is a colorist who's been commenting on my blog, I followed some links from his comments and found his site and his blog, and he has a golden nugget of an entry on color grading done on Viper footage that was shot on S.two recorders.

Some comments he had:

-Viper is HD, and even 4:4:4 isn't going to change that. It is HD, and "HD is at its VERY BEST 16mm" in terms of resolution and detail. Uncompressed, or 4:4:4 only help in terms of no compression artifacts and being able to push things further in post (lift/gamma/gain/keying type stuff)

-night shots are really, REALLY good on the Viper - details not visible on monitor DID show up on filmout, so don't clip your blacks according to scope!

This was especially interesting:

10 bit log isn't a standard. I mean, it's not because Thomson tells people that their camera is shooting in 10 bit log that you'll get the same image as if your were scanning 16mm in 10 bit log. Most important, you CANNOT send Viper files in their 10 bit log state to the shoot, you HAVE to linearize them, even if you want to shoot in cineon 10 bit log. You'll have to then logarithmize them into the Cineon 10 bit log's log. I had to fight with this film director to make him understand that, and I'm sure his still think I'm a liar or an incompetent that destroyed his image by linearizing it... YOU CAN'T SHOOT VIPER'S LOG TO FILM. Simple, stated, point.

Problems encountered in the project:

-because the sound guys insisted on shutting off the onboard fans, they got pixel noisy, veiled looking output in their picture....and camera crashes and other issues. Don't let one department hose another is the lesson here.

-recorder crashes were a problem (due to overheating, fan disabled camera perhaps?) EDIT FROM EMAIL CONVERSATION WITH JEAN-LUC: nope, turns out the guy entering the shot metadata was using a shot naming system of "shot3/take5" ...and the groaning Unix guys are right - putting a "/" in the filename tricks the system into thinking that is a change into a subdirectory called "take5" that doesn't exist, so of course it crashed. A "competent" computer user (or any web designer) would know not to do that, but in the meantime, the guy running the S.two was calling it a piece of crap..because he didn't know he was making a mistake. In truth, S.two should forbid use of those characters, and tell you why.

-A.DOCK "forgetting" images to backup - maybe related to same above issue?

-some bozo decided to use non-full digital mags two days in a row, generating duplicate timecode on the same mag

-dead pixel lines from the camera due to bad boot initialization on the camera

-director misunderstandings

There's more good stuff in there as well - go read it, an EXCELLENT real world example of how things can go.

After I emailed Jean-Luc about quoting his blog so extensively, he said:

Re-reading my post, I would had some things about the linearization of the viper files. When I say linearize, best thing would be of course the linearize those 10 bit log into a 16 bit LIN format. As Viper's output it 12 bits coded in 10 bit log, 16 bit LIN won't clip anything in the linearization. BTW, Kodak cineon is 14 bit lin coded in 10 bit log, another proof that 10 bit log can be whatever you want..


Thanks Jean-Luc!

-mike

CinemaTech: Netflix Faces "The Innovator's Dilemma"

Netflix has always planned to get into online distribution of movies, but when? Scott Kirsner has a nice article about the position Netflix is placing itself in, waiting for others to prove the market then leap in with a Hail Mary pass.

I respond with a loooooooong comment at the end of the article, just my first off-the-cuff rambling thoughts about the subject.

DO go read the excerpt from The Innovator's Dilemma, while at first glance it is dry and boring and talking about disk drives in the 1970s, it has lots of interesting ideas to glean. Onetime innovators get stuck in their current market, and fear cannibalizing their existing sales with new products. Disruptive technology is often current tech taken off the shelf and reconfigured in a new way. Anyone else thinking of Red right now?

-mike

Macworld: News: Automatic Duck brings Final Cut Pro tools to Intel

You can now get FCP projects into Avid and Avid projects into FCP using the latest build's of Wes Plate's excellent tools.

One of the subtle sticking points of whether to migrate to a Mac Pro has been plugin support - with no After Effects plugin support (because no MacIntel API from Adobe), one has to be careful what technologies you rely on, and what platforms you'll be running it on (even within the same OS!).

-mike

FresHDV | Fresh news & views for videographers, editors, filmmakers, directors, producers & creatives.

FresHDV has links to some free tutorials excerpted from Adobe's excellent Classroom in a Book series, covering Getting To Know the Workflow, Creating a Basic Animation, and Rendering and Outputting.

These three things are the basic cornerstones of AE, so worth checking out if you want to start learning about it.

There is also a 30 day demo of After Effects 7 downloadable from Adobe, and yes I'm too lazy to go chase down the link right now.

For the advanced class, here's how to recreate the look of the new iPod nano commercial with the motion streaks.

-mike

UPDATED WEDNESDAY - SEE BOTTOM

I'm bumping this up to the top of the queue as it has been substantially updated. There's more new articles below this one)


Apple has bought Final Touch and all of their variants of it - FinalTouch SD, Final Touch HD, and Final Touch 2K.

From the front of their web page:

We are pleased to announce that all Silicon Color technology and intellectual property, including FinalTouch color correction software, was recently sold to Apple. Maintenance agreements held by current Silicon Color customers will be honored by Apple until they expire.

UPDATE TUESDAY AFTERNOON: After a little time has passed and the initial excitement has worn off (shall we call it the Wishful Fanboy Syndrome?), here's my latest thoughts:

1.) Apple bought it for the IP primarily, and won't be interested in supporting it as a standalone app. I'm guessing they won't sell copies beyond a date very soon. No new support contracts, just support of the existing ones.

2.) As much as I'd like it to be of benefit for FCP 6, that I fervently hope they demo at NAB 2007 (if not ship), I don't think Apple could integrate it that fast into their development cycle, UNLESS this acquisition was made as a band-aid to get performance up by bringing in guys that have been focused on realtime GPU based color correction stuff for the past few years. With the acquisition of the IP, there MUST be some handoff assistance to the Apple guys from Silicon Color, so obviously Andrew and the guys will be spending some time in Cupertino. Oh wait! The IP was "recently sold to Apple" - we have no idea how long ago - so maybe things have been in the works for a while?

3.) I don't think the acquisition was made to squelch Final Touch, but Final Touch will be collateral damage - Apple isn't interested in supporting or selling software that presently only has around 300-500 users worldwide. They make tools for much bigger markets.

4.) Lots of interesting discussion in the Comments section below about the viability of Final Touch, apparently the Final Touch 2K folks are having a much easier time of it, as they aren't relying on the XML native media import.

OK, back to the article as it was originally written, but consider this update to supercede the below.

End Update


FACT:

Note that this does NOT say that Apple will be selling the product, nor that Apple will be incorporating the product into their line or rolling the technology into future Apple products, nor that Apple will even be selling the product in its current state.

SUPPOSITION:

My guess - the company is being bought to incorporate the IP, and the public result will be to squelch Final Touch - Final Cut Pro 6 has looooooong been rumored to take major advantage of the GPU. Perhaps some of Final Touch's realtime GPU based capabilities and expertise (and development personnel) will be wrapped into Apple's Pro Apps line, but not a whole lot I'd imagine.

Apple WOULD be interested in:

-FT's ability to do realtime color correction by shuttling data to/from the GPU and out an SDI/HD-SDI port
-FT's ability to do realtime "power window" type corrections (feathered shapes color correcting in realtime)
-FT's realtime secondary color correction capabilities

I could imagine Apple letting drop by the wayside:

-FT's user interface - very unApple
-FT's XML based import/export - if it is going to be integrated into Apple product line, it'd read the file formats natively I'd imagine

...but my gut says the competition is being pre-emptively taken off the market, well in advance of next NAB and Apple's new product line. Some goodies from the product will be assimilated into the whole (perhaps Apple is having trouble getting the RT performance they wanted, and this'll hasten development, by getting IP and staff?), or will just flat out be allowed to die on the vine for Apple's Greater Good (or Greater Market Share).

Final Touch ALWAYS had workflow difficulties that hampered it, and the UI is so non-Apple (not that that is an endemicly bad thing) that I don't see an Apple branded version of FT coming to market. Note that Shake got yanked in a vaguely similar way...while Shake is still being sold, it is effectively EOL'd (End of Life) with no future development planned.

So in the end, I think it is likely to be a net Bad Thing for indies, as I'm guessing (have asked but not received a reply yet) Final Touch is Not Long for This Earth. But that is purely conjecture until I hear more.

But I DO take this as a good sign that Good Things will come from Apple at next year's NAB...whether they'll ship at that time or merely be shown, I dunno...and maybe they don't, either.

-mike

UPDATE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON: My emails are still unreturned where I asked if the product is still for sale, other signs indicate total communication blackout as well - maybe they are all on vacation? Or just not answering phones/email.

The Universal Binary version that was shown at IBC hasn't been released, and it MIGHT not ever be released - if so, is a convenient breakpoint for Apple to keep it a last generation's hardware solution, encouraging Intel based Mac owners to get whatever Apple is offering.

After not keeping up with FTHD for a while, turns out they have changed some things they do - it used to only render the "used" media on the timeline with zero handles, now it can render with handles...but you have to render to the same codec you brought in. This can be disastrously bad if you started with DV or HDV - no way you want to render back to that. So the fix is to Media Manager Recompress To before color correcting to the codec of choice (usually uncompressed). Handles or uncompressed is the choice in FTHD now - but I'd want both, and that SHOULD be doable. This shouldn't bother me this much, since I don't use the product regularly anymore and I think it is getting disco'd anyway, but it is a choice I don't like.

MacWorld weighs in with their opinion: Macworld: Editors' Notes: Addition through acquisition

THURSDAY UPDATE

I got a well reasoned comment from a reader (Stu Willis), and he made some good points that tweaked my thinking:

-after Shake got bought, there was a week or two of media blackout, as Apple now needs to step in and take over public commentary for the SC folks, so maybe it isn't as bleak as we thought

-putting high end color correction features into Final Cut might clutter it up - what if what was to be v3 just became another Apple Pro App? That's entirely possible as well I have to say

-if Apple WERE to have Final Touch 2K working correctly in its stable, they could tout end to end workflow - ingest, edit, conform, color correct, etc., and it would be marketable and believed in much more than Apple pointing to some small 3rd party developer and saying "yeah you can do it - go talk to those guys." Apple gives it credibility and respectability.

-so we should wait a few days/weeks and see what comes of this - maybe a UB version will see the light of day after all

-and if Apple does ship a version of it, I'm pretty damned sure the price on the 2K version (presently $25,000 US) will drop substantially - I'd picture $8K as maximum possible price, $3-5K more likely. I'd love to see FT2K for $5K and FTHD for $3K, with SD for $1K or less...or FT2K for $3K and FTHD/SD for $1K. Who knows.

-I'm well aware I'm all over the map on this, everything from "the sky is falling!" Chicken Little scenario where FT gets pulled from market and we see no benefit until 6-18 months in the form of a tweaked Final Cut color corrector; and on the other end of the spectrum Apple would release v3 as their own product at NAB (or at least announce/demo it). Could be anything, I'm just sharing all my thoughts on it. And in classic rumor site style, if any one of these things happen I could say I called it.

: )

-mikey

Final Cut Pro 5 may fail to open with 64 or more QuickTime components installed

...so don't install EVERY codec you come across! The article has a list of the ones FCP needs to run as well.

Also, I've been updating my Final Cut 5.1.2 issues article since I originally posted it, there are about 15 things in there that are Good To Know.

Correction, 16 - What's New in Final Cut 5.1.2 is a detailed, screen grab laden excellent article over on Ken Stone's website, the article is by Andrew Balis, including nifty new keyboard shortcuts, behavior changes in FCP, a TON of new effects, etc.

UPDATE Friday: since originally posting that article, he's updated the chart. Read about what he's changed here - forthcoming download services & DVD burning services.

CinemaTech: Getting Paid: Sites That Help Video Producers Make Money

As a follow up to Scott's article about Google and Apple not offering a venue for for-pay indie content, he's posted an an article about sites that DO pay content creators for their work, and better yet, he's posted this chart showing sites that pay, what the deal is, restrictions, etc.. (link now fixed, thanks Scott)

He mentions sites you've probably heard of, like Atom, Yahoo and Google, and sites you may not have heard of, like Revver, GreenCine, Revver, Brightcove, and many others.

Interested in selling your indie generated content online? Then this is a MUST READ.

I do think it is possible that Apple will follow their usual pattern of waiting for others to prove that there is a market, and then come out with their own improved version. Apple certainly wasn't the first MP3 player to market, just the first really good one, with good design, excellent hardware/software integration, and enough money to distribute and market it well.

The same thing could happen for indie content...maybe....but that's a whole other article. Some topics in that would be:

1.) Why should Apple bother?
2.) They might bother if profitable, but HOW profitable would it be?
3.) Apple wouldn't offer a service for pay that didn't have some content restrictions of filtering on it - somebody has to eyeball the content to make sure it isn't Nazi propaganda porn
4.) Come to think of it, why WOULD Apple do this, unless it was a hook into more profit for them...what if you HAD to use Apple tools to post content to this for-pay thing?

: )

That was the play with the iTunes Store - have content that you make negligible profit on to push sales of the playback device...the flip of that would be to sell content for small margin to make profit on the content creation tools...except the ratios are backwards there - one popular song can sell a lot of iPods, but only one Mac....a fun idea to doodle with, but the numbers don't add up right.

-mike

Macworld: News: Hard drive replaces PB, MacBook Pro optical drive

Interesting thought for editors that need a truly self contained, battery powered portable editing solution.

Just that you'd need an external DVD drive for software installs and DVD burning then. One or the other...but I see this as being possibly useful in some situations...

Think Secret - Briefly: Apple to back HD-DVD and Blu-Ray?

Think Secret claims to have info that Apple will support BOTH Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Makes sense - since the studios are split, why not cover all options? While Jobs was on stage with the prior leader of Sony and specifically mentioned making Blu-ray discs at MWSF 2005, no clear leader has emerged between the two, and the PS3, expected to give Sony a major boost, has been delayed substantially.

This suddenly makes Apple's decision to have two optical drive bays in the Mac Pros make all kinds of sense - what if you could get a Mac Pro with BOTH Blu-ray and HD DVD burners installed?

I'd buy it.

-mike

CinemaTech: Google Video: Actually, Indies Can't Charge for their Work

Scott Kirsner, writer of the excellent CinemaTech blog, calls Google to task for their switch - after initially saying they WOULD offer a distribution channel for indie content, they've now reversed their tack and will NOT be making it possible for indie content creators to charge for their work on Google.

Kirsner has previously tagged Apple for similar behavior - major studios can sell their content via iTunes (music and video), but indies can only offer via podcasts...not for sale.

Perhaps in the future, but not as yet. WHEN indies can offer their content for sale online in a viable environment, I think that'll be a huge step forward. Even when that happens, however, the challenge of marketing that content effectively will still be a challenge, but word of mouth, user based ratings, and especially recommendation systems (think if Amazon and their "Others who liked X also liked Y" correlative system) may help make indie content distribution viable.

As always, if you're an indie curious about how technology is affecting movie distribution, go read Scott's site DAILY. He's right on top of the scene there the way I try to stay on top of production related stuff.

-mike

AJA & BlackMagic just recently updated their drivers for their Kona and DeckLink/Multibridge product lines, mostly centering on Mac Pro (Intel based Mac) support and improvements.

AJA has updated their drivers to version 3.2

This version adds SD-SD aspect ratio conversions, 720p25 Varicam support, 720p23.98 hardware based capture, little-endian captures in Log RGB and RGB codecs, capture to IMX50Mbps compression in NTSC and PAL, new Easy Setups%u2014plus other improvements and bug fixes.

One of the biggies recently added to AJA's drivers was a realtime 720p to 1080p uprez capability - excellent to have!

Blackmagic has updated their drivers as well to version 5.7.2:

This software update adds audio level adjustments and universal binary support for the new Intel based Apple Mac Pro systems. This update supports all DeckLink PCI Express based models. DeckLink HD models now support full 64 bit addressing allowing more than 4GB of memory to be added. Please check the included "read me" for more information.

There is a version for Decklink cards as well as for Multibridge products.

--------------------------

As always, regardless of which vendor's hardware you use, check their website to make sure your Final Cut, OS X, and driver versions are in sync - there is usually a recommended combination, and if any one piece of the three (driver, OS, or application) are out of step, there can be potential problems. So check before upgrading - you might break something.

-mike

Missed this one yesterday in the Silicon Color hubbub -

Avid released Avid Studio Toolkit v5.6 on Monday.

-includes Avid 3D, Avid FX, Avid DVD by Sonic
-can do simultaneous DVD and Blu-ray disk authoring
-according to Avid, " the first editing solution to make it very easy for independent professionals to deliver their projects" in HD
-over 1500 customizable title, effects and transitions in the Toolkit
-works with Composer, Xpress Pro or Newscutter
-list price about $2K, BUT through Dec. 20th, about $1300 list price - so get it sooner rather than later
-also a bundle with Xpress Pro, Mojo, and Toolkit for about $3K

From the press release:

New features in Avid Studio Toolkit v 5.6 include:
· Integrated Blu-ray support in Avid DVD by Sonic – allowing Avid Xpress Pro, Media Composer and NewsCutter users to output HD projects to Blu-ray Discs. Avid DVD by Sonic offers new HD and 16:9 menu support, enabling customers to make the most of the next generation of DVDs.
· Updated UI, new paint engine and more for Avid FX – offering professionals the ability to create visuals with integrated 2D and 3D compositing, titles and animation. With Avid FX version 5.6, editors can benefit from:
o AVX™ 2 plug-in support for 16-bit color rendering;
o A streamlined UI for improved integration and ease-of-use;
o A new paint engine for touch up and rotoscoping;
o A Raster-to-Vector conversion tool for easily bringing corporate logos and other graphics into a vector-animation environment, including 3D extrusion;
o A new motion key feature, to remove unwanted objects from the frame;
o Several new filters - in addition to the 110 existing filters - such as color match, half-tone, median, noise map, and turbulence; and
o A new subtitle workflow that converts EBU format subtitle files to a flat movie with alpha channel.
Updated UI, new title features and more for Avid 3D – delivering more powerful “3D for the Video Guy,” via an updated UI that allows any editor to import, animate, and light 3D models and create compelling text animations with greater ease. It includes directly accessible controls for camera and model animation, task-oriented workflow, and new title creation features. This makes it easier to create text animations, create unique 3D looks, and export back to the Avid editor.
Expanded I/O with Avid Mojo® SDI – providing digital and analog SDI I/O to expand interoperability with mastering quality SD cameras and decks.


See? Some non-Mac, non-FCP news every once in a while!

: )

-mike

ScopeBox

Not instants after I posted about DV Monitor, I got an email giving me some more information on ScopeBox, a new OS X app "coming soon" that promises to deliver a whole host of useful capabilities:

-pixel for pixel preview monitoring
-waveform, vectorscope, audio monitoring
-Direct Disk Recording
-luma histogram, RGB histogram, RGB parade, etc.

No pricing as yet, but works with DV, iSight, SDI, HD-SDI etc. sources - any valid QuickTime source it would appear, either live or from tape or even from your drive (final QC type tasks).

This sounds VERY promising if they can deliver what they are claiming.

-mike

Panel Schedule | Austin Film Festival



UPDATE: MY "When the Budget Falls Short" PANEL HAS BEEN MOVED UP TO 9AM, not 10:45AM AS ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED.

The Austin Film Festival is a writer centric film festival held each October in (conveniently for me) my hometown of Austin, Texas. This year I'll be on two panels discussing the potential benefits of digital technology in filmmaking:

My first panel will be on Saturday, October 21st:

When Budgets Fall Short:

Can't shoot 35mm? Shoot 16. Can't shoot 16? Shoot HD. Filmmakers give invaluable suggestions on how to get your film made when your budget falls short or runs out. Learn how to get the most from your budget.

Mike Curtis
Scott Rice
Gary Walker
Tom Copeland - moderator

(Stephen F. Austin Hotel, Assembly Room) 9:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.

My other panel is later that same day from 2-3:15pm:

Taking the HD Leap

When do you decide to use HD? What are the differences between the quality of film and HD? Here we discuss the pros and cons of using HD on an indie budget.

Greg Carter
Mike Curtis
Harry Lynch
Scott Rice
Steve Mims - moderator

(Driskill Hotel, Citadel Club)

Self-shilling aside, other folks you might be more interested in hearing speak include:

John August, writer - Big Fish, Go, Charlie and Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Titan A.E., Charlie's Angels (and writer of a great screenwriting blog)

Steve Faber and Bob Fisher - writers of Wedding Crashers

Richard Linklater - Slacker, Dazed & Confused, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, The Newton Boys, Waking Life, School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly, etc.

Christopher McQuarrie of The Usual Suspects and (the vastly underrated I'd say) Way of the Gun

Dianna Ossana - co-writer of Brokeback Mountain

...and others, those are just who caught my eye that I recognized from the list.

The AFF is a great festival for writers and indie producers (and others, just best for that crowd), lots to learn, so if you can make it, come on down. You can check out the speaker lineup for the conference here and the film lineup here.

{BlatantShill}
And if you can't make it, I'm always available for consulting as well...
{/BlatantShill}

: )

-mike

Home

Red Lighting Software offers DV Monitor. It lets you:
-preview pixel for pixel - helpful for critical focus
-over and under exposure zebras
-image flipping (for 35mm adaptors)
-up to 250% magnification
-computer screen calibration
-real time framing (but is there a lag? If so how much?)
-on screen guides for overlays
-works for NTSC and PAL DV cameras

The screen grab says HVX200, but it must be in DV mode, not DVCPRO HD mode.

You can download it and run in demo mode, and it can even use the iSight camera. This was perfect for me to doodle with, since I don't own (gasp!) a DV camera (I'm waiting for my Red - how's that for a smartass answer!).

: )

In any case, a handy little thing, $130. I wouldn't make any color critical decisions with it on a laptop's screen, but it certainly has it's uses.

Unlike DV Rack, however, it doesn't handle HD, doesn't offer scopes, doesnt do a lot of things DV Rack does. But it also costs a lot less as well.

In a pinch, you can get SOME of the benefits of both of these just by firing up Final Cut Pro and pulling up the Log & Capture window and calling up the scopes in FCP.

-mike

DVD Studio Pro: For motion menu background assets, use DV QuickTime sources with High Quality setting

If you use DV video content as a menu background element, the menu may not be rendered with the best possible quality if the High Quality QuickTime option is not set in the asset.

The fix: flip on the "High Quality" switch in QT Player. Read article for details on how.

Some codecs benefit from flipping the quality switch, some do not.

-mike

Mac OS X 10.4: How to combine RAID sets in Disk Utility

I fumbled through this myself in the past and had inconsistent results under about 10.4.5 or so; here it is outlined a bit more clearly.

The benefit of RAID 10 is that it is redundant AND fast. The catch is that if you have a 4 drive array as RAID 10, it has as much capacity and speed as a two drive RAID 0 - your capacity and throughput are cut in half in order to achieve redundancy.

I still feel that for video tasks, having RAID 1 for the volume with the FCS project file, PShop docs, After Effects projects, etc. is a good idea (or back that folder up DAILY to CD/DVD).

But for captured footage, RAID 10 CAN work, but doesn't protect you from user error, directory damage, lightning hits etc. - it only protects you from a single drive's mechanical failure. I prefer a separate copy of all that footage, on a separate drive unit, preferably stored offsite. Once you've captured all your footage (and that is a significant caveat, don't forget to update the backup with later pickup shots), make sure the backup is up to date then put it in ANOTHER BUILDING. I had a client's edit suite burn down - if that backup were sitting on the shelf in the same room or building, it would've been lost too.

Of course, you could always risk it and then have to recapture all your footage...but what is your time worth? Can your production afford that kind of a delay?

Incidentally, stripe mirrored pairs, don't mirror stripes - safer.

-mike

I was quick to respond when the email went out, so I had two tickets to see the FULL Kill Bill (parts 1 & 2 as a single movie with an intermission). Bonus - Quentin Tarrantino was in attendance, and sitting right in front of me. So was Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, and down the row was Kurt Russell (is he in Grindhouse? What's he doing in Austin?)

Was fun to see - this is the cut intended for Hong Kong and Japan, and has been screened here and Cannes and that's IT. Quentin got up and talked about the movie a bit in his usual manic energy style, and we were off to the races. The event started around 10pm, it is nearly 3am and I just got home. In any case, a few editorial changes - a little more gore, a little more language (maybe a few different alternate takes from what screened in the US), and it is built as a single looooooong movie.

Anyway, another reason why Austin is a fun place to be.

-mike

johnaugust.com � As it turns out, I could care less

John August, screenwriter directing his own script for what he calls "The Movie."

He writes about his directing experience, and some of the cold, hard, but still quite humorous lessons involved. Talking about an 8 year old girl:

"As a stand-in, her entire job was simply to reflect light and not be annoying. She failed."


Read on for some good lessons in Getting It Done.

I've run into this same kind of thing myself to a lesser degree on the Texas HD Shootout set - trying to get things done yet still be pleasant and accomodating to everyone is a large challenge, especially when there are problems. Good people can stay calm and get things done.

But sometimes, that might require Caring Less.

Doesn't mean it is a ticket to sphincterdom, just fold this skill into your asset list.

-mike

HDBlog.net � Blog Archive � Home Theater Mag Tests HDTV%u2019s - Very Interesting

More than half of the sets tested from big name manufacturers failed tests for proper deinterlacing of 1080i signals, proper 3:2 cadence detection, and sufficient bandwidth for 1080p.

Over half failed deinterlacing test.

80% of the over 60 sets tested failed 3:2 cadence detection test.

Read on.

UPDATE: here's the original balls video

Remember last year when I posted this link and called it "This R Teh Kool-EST EVER!"? For those who don't recall, it is the Sony Bravia add of the quarter million super balls bouncing down a San Francisco street. Simple concept, beautifully executed.

They're making a follow-up, and Katy was kind enough to mail me this link to the little teaser video they have posted. Promises to be pretty visually stunning. Need more? Click on the Image Gallery at the top of that page.

This should be pretty fun. I'm 99% sure they shot it on film, I dunno if they'll post an HD version online, but this is a fun ad campaign.

I'd expect an online version on Tuesday, the 17th, posted here.

I usually cover the tech stuff, and even though this is advertising related, if you're a visual person (and yes you are, if you're reading this!), this has just GOTSTA be fun.

Put another way, simply:

622 Bottle Bombs of paint can't be wrong.

: )

-mikey

UPDATE: Here's footage from the set showing them setting it off.

Went to see the new Martin Scorsese film, The Departed.

In a word, WOW.

Scorsese is BACK, and full on.

The dialog is cracklingly sharp, the pace maintains even though the nearly 3 hour length (2:40ish I think), and you are THERE, in your seat, drinking in every last drop.

I could go on and on, and have points to make that are spoilers, but it is rich, deep, complex, satisfying, realistic, and BALANCED.

I walked out with my friend I saw it with, she didn't like the ending but I thought it was the only way it could realistically be...and if it WERE the ending she wanted, it wouldn't be true to the message of the film I thought.

There are all kinds of great details in the film - rats as a theme, shifting loyalties and the lack thereof, how the cop pretending to be a gangster is lousy at playing gangster and good at staying true to his cop nature...while the gangster playing cop is almost too good at playing cop, but is a crappy gangster...and so on and on and on.

In any case, GO SEE THIS. I'm probably going to go see this one again, and I see very few movies twice in the theater. And even for a Thursday night, this theater was PACKED.

No, it wasn't HD, who cares who did the coloring, it is just fantastic storytelling, with an amazing cast (Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlburg, Leonardo Dicaprio, Vera Farmiga, etc. etc. etc.), SUPERB rat-a-tat-tat dialog, and the whole thing is steeped in a completely believable Southie Boston vibe (I went to high school in that area...sorta - actually prep school 30 miles north, but totally knew the "townie" vibe the Southies were hitting).

In any case, yet again, go see this. Best. Movie. Out. There.

-mike

I've been having ongoing conversations with some HD4NDs sources about next gen DVD formats (HD DVD and Blu-ray) and their likely adoption and market penetration rates.

After some initial excitement about HD DVD and Blu-ray, my concern continues to grow that the format war, in addition to high deck costs, and low perceived value will lead to a very mediocre market for the high def players - LaserDisc 2.0, if you will (written in July 2005).

"Regular" DVD players are dirt cheap these days...but why? Is it the usual advancement of technology? In part, but that is not the entire reason. Turns out that LOTS of DVD players are manufactured in China (no big surprise there) but that licensing fees are not tracked very well or paid very reliably. See this article -

Court Orders Citron to Pay $9.5 Million for DVD6C Patent License Infringement -- Tech-On!

It sounds like a Chinese DVD manufacturer just quit making royalty payments, yet kept chugging out DVD players. The integrated chip manufacturers provide a reference design, and manufacturers are off to the races, often vastly under-reporting or just not even paying royalty/licensing fees. The companies that are due this income have a hard time monitoring compliance - just exactly how many zillion DVD players did that plant in deep communist China churn out last month? A tough thing to keep track of.

The Japanese companies that came up with the DVD technology are obviously and righteously furious about this turn of events. They wanted DVD player prices to stay high. So this round, with high definition, very little if any sub-licensing is likely to occur.

While consumers have been the vast beneficiary of low player pricing, and Hollywood has benefitted from a large installed base of potential customers for their DVD product, the "DVD6" as they are known (although actually 8 companies) came out with the wrong end of the stick on this one. The studios felt bilked by unauthorized copying and bootlegging as well. Neither party wants to make themselves vulnerable to the mistakes of the last generation of products. This new generation of TV formats and player technology offered them the opportunity to lobby and/or legislate and/or build in protections for themselves - DRM for the content, and a new format for a fresh start on the playback technology side.

This next generation of DVD players employ vastly stronger encryption technology, are much more complicated, and employee technology and manufacturing processes that are at the very beginning of their amortization and learning curve - all things that push the prices up (as with any new technology).

Prices will definitely fall over time, but with $50 DVD players on the market, even if HD DVD and/or Blu-ray players got down to $300 in the next couple of years....people would need a much better, bigger TV to tell the difference between DVD on HDTV and high def DVD on HDTV.

But sources indicate that both the HD DVD and Blu-ray consortia want to keep player prices above $500 at a minimum for some time...and at TEN TIMES the price of regular DVDs, I don't see them getting much market penetration.

-mike

My longtime fave Sonnet has just posted a preliminary driver for Mac Pro systems for their E4P card - only one port multiplier (so I couldn't use it with my 2x5 drive RAID) or 4 solo drives allowed at present, more in time. First baby steps into Mac Pro compatibility.

I just got off the phone with a client that has two Caldigit 2 drive enclosures I'd told him to configure into a RAID, he's getting terrible throughput with the Kona testing application, but ZoneBench is reporting throughput is fine. But he's dropping frames all over the place, so clearly, it ain't workin' right. Also learned that the Caldigit stuff has internal controller (single drive connection and use their striping software) and that the 2 drive box shows up as a single thing, and the client couldn't figure out how to use Disk Utility to simply stripe all four drives (two 2 drive enclosures). In usage, dropping frames constantly, Kona reporting about 110 MB/sec while other tools reporting over 160 MB/sec, not sure what's up with that. But in any case, I prefer enclosures that let me directly see the individual drives, I dislike and am made nervous by having to rely on software from small companies to make my gear work. What if CalDigit discontinues this product line, or worse goes out of business, and the thing isn't recognized under a future OS revision? I like stuff that is more open in it's structure - my other enclosures, even those with port multipliers, just "show up" in SoftRAID or Apple Disk Utility, and I can feel safe that whatever other changes take place, it is unlikely that OS updates will permanently kill them. I've gotten kind of a funky vibe off Caldigit - I don't want to pick on them unfairly, but I'm not getting the same vibe I get from other vendors that I seem to trust more after the experience. This is an ongoing, developing situation, I'll try to update as I have time.

AMUG FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E PCIe SATA Host Adapter Review: "port "

-PCIe SATA card
-2 slots
-$100
-does not at this time support port multiplying
-does not at this time support Mac Pro, but working on it
-but BOOTABLE
-BUT is a currently working, shipping, Mac Pro solution for 2 drives (for now)

WiebeTech Micro Storage Solutions - Express34 Host Adapters - CardBus cards three firewire, dual firewire, dual SATA

2 port card, may be same as others have with different marketing, looks familiar.

Features:
-Express34 card
-2 SATA slots for 2 independent buses
-DOES do port multiplying, means can connect up to 10 drives to this card
-LED lights for drive access
-OS X, Win2k/XP driver support

MacNN | FW Depot unveils new SATA PCI-X card

-2 port PCI-X and PCIe cards
-no port multiplier support indicated
-$70
-doesn't mention bootability


AJA officially doesn't currently recommend ANY SATA solution - I don't know if that is because they haven't had good results with the stuff they've tested, or that there are so many variables in SATA they don't want to say it works and have it get screwed up, or what. I've been using SATA for uncompressed HD work successfully for a couple of years now. Dunno if they are doing some more stringent testing than I am or if I'm testing different gear than they are. In any case, that is what they are saying. I've emailed'em, will update as can.

-mike

EFF: Who Killed TiVoToGo?

A good example of how far Hollywood content providers go to protect their content at the expense of legitimate consumer use (such as timeshift).

When TiVO FINALLY came out with their HD DVRs, TiVoToGo wasn't included, even though it existed in the prior generation SD DVRs. Why?

"CableLabs has yet to permit TiVo to implement TiVoToGo in the CableCARD-compatible Series 3 HD. TiVo must first create a set of restrictions that satisfies CableLabs, and, if it cannot, the feature will remain extinct."

CableLabs is the licensing body that defines the specs for CableCARDs.

In any case, read up on how Hollywood....ah, I don't even want to try to describe it all, it irritates and disgusts me too much.

-mike

lafcpug at DVExpo

From the linked page:

lafcpug is once again going to DV Expo and yes, it will be HUGE. Join us for 2 hours of learning and fun. Scheduled to appear will be the boys from Apple who will demo...something, and then do Q&A and listen to your feature requests and feedback. This is a rare opportunity to come face to face with the folks that build FCP.

Also scheduled will be Ted (leader of the Rebellion) Shilowitz from the Red Digital Cinema team who will give us the latest info on the Red Camera and take any and all questions.

Also scheduled will be a demo of DV Monitor from Red Lightning Software which is looking more and more like "DV Rack for the Mac."

Plus surprise guests and World Famous Raffle with prizes totaling into the billions of dollars...give or take a billion dollars or two. You must register for DV Expo to attend this event. Go HERE and register NOW and mark you calendar for Wednesday Nov 15 at the LA Convention Center.


Worth checking out. Michael said Ted (of Red) will be answering questions in a casual Q&A style, but no footage will be shown.

-mike

Buzz Image | Making Of

Nice little video showing how they made some effects shots from Eternal Sunshine.

It's always more complicated than it looks when done well.

Slow news day...

Creative Workflow Hacks � Blog Archive � Final Cut Pro Quickie: Scrubbing Thumbnails in the Browser

Headline says it all - nice tip! Follow link for detailed instructions, handy when you need to quickly familiarize yourself with a lot of clips in a hurry....and like that NEVER happens....

-mike

Scott Kirsner's CinemaTech continues to cover the convergence of technology and movie distribution, not just linking to others' article, but Scott writes extensively on the subject himself for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, etc.

Recent articles:
-his move to Variety
-ratings for web downloads
-George Lucas on making fewer, less expensive movies
-Google's purchase of YouTube

etc. etc. etc....Scott does excellent coverage in these areas, if you read this site, you really should be reading his daily as well.

-mike

Serious Magic DV Rack HD 2.0 reviewed

Now supports HDV and DVCPRO HD, and can handle 24pA mode as well. Tim Kolb reviews for Creative Cow - he likes and recommends it. There is also a standalone DVCPRO HD and DVCPRO50 reader codec for $199 separately available so WinXP users can edit in the format. All good stuff.

Read on, this sounds like an extremely useful production tool. Anybody know if it'll run on a MacBook or MacBook Pro running Boot Camp?

-mike

UPDATE - I emailed Tim to ask about Boot Camp compatibility, he asked them and here's what I heard back from Tim:

DV Rack "works great" under Boot Camp...per Serious Magic.

Also...DV Rack HD exposed a little transfer issue with sysrtems with more than 1 GB of RAM where the video freezes on screen in 20-40 seconds. Clicking into the Disk Recorder module and back resets it, but it is a problem and they are expecting the solution to be released by next week.


Thanks Tim!

UPDATED AGAIN: Tim emailed to say he had yet further info:

"The issue only affects systems that have more than 1GB of RAM, and it affects Intel Core or Core2 chips more than others, and only affects DVCProHD cameras."

Thanks, I hate to end up causing a ruckus for HDV people on this...


thanks for the (further) update, Tim...

Latest on HD DVD and Blu-ray

NEC ships dual-format Blu-ray / HD DVD chip - Engadget - at $84 for the chip, roughly same price as their HD DVD or Blu-ray decoder chip. Coupled with Ricoh's announcement of a dual format optical pickup (the two formats use different spot sizes, slightly different wavelengths, and very different focal depths), the promise of One Player To Rule, I mean Play, Them All, is a possibility. I do recall hearing one of the consortia (Sony or Toshiba) saying they wouldn't allow anyone to dual license (restraint of trade? Hello?), can anybody confirm if that is/was true? UPDATE: supposedly, it is not prevented by the licensing schemes used.

Variety.com - Warner adjusts HD/Blu-ray sales projections....downward. Lower than expected sales of players main reason why.

Format wars: Blu-ray to come out on top? - Ars Technica checks in on the state of the Blu-ray vs HD DVD format war, and reports that Forrester research thinks Blu-ray will come out on top, due to these reasons:

-PS3 will be a big push
-more studios, and thus more movies, will be putting out titles on Blu-ray
-PCs and laptops w/Blu-ray drives installed

Those are all valid things in Blu-ray's favor, however Blu-ray is still suffering one major, inescapable factor right now: PRICE. At twice the price of HD DVD, and with no arguable benefit for the consumer over HD DVD in quality, it is a tough sell. I've been looking at all the factors involved, and it is tough to tell how this will all shake out. From the vendor side, there are various allegiances that distort what happens (Sony makes players and movies, for instance), the console market is up in the air as to how much that'll matter, but as far as consumers are concerned, player and movie price and movie selection will be the key factors...and consumers ultimately determine the winner.

Sales are definitely far under original projections - see this article for graphs making it pretty bluntly clear. From the article: "Thus far, only $30M has been spent by consumers on the new formats, $25M on hardware and $5M on software, as reported by Reuters."
...and in regular DVD news -

� Protect DVD-Video - A slap in the face for PC and Media Center owners | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com - new copy protection format forbids purchased DVDs from playing in WinXP systems. Now, not clear that ANY studio is using this technology, though. Annoying.
Various Vendor News

Five Questions: AJA Video Systems - same questions asked to a bunch of vendors, this time to AJA

GridIron Nucleo Pro - video tutorial on how to use this After Effects enhancer. I've got a copy and will doodle/review ASAP.


Studio Daily | Autodesk Eye Candy Tour - roadshow demoing various film/video goodies they make. They'll be in Dallas in a month, I may check it out there.

-mike

Sony HVR-V1U HDV Camcorder, Part 2: An Interview with Sony's Bob Ott More info (if you haven't seen it) on Sony's forthcoming (early December) $4800 MSRP, truly 24p capable HDV camcorder.

Reader Thomas was kind enough to post a link for Part 1. Thank you Thomas!

-mike

MacNN | Cineon/DPX PRO QT Components v2.0

New and improved toool to get Cineon/DPX files out of QuickTime applications. Was talking to Sam Jorgensen yesterday about progress on his project (the one we telecined direct to disk with 10 bit 4:4:4 RGB log transfer), he's chugging along but having issues getting 10 bit still image sequences out of FCP (his VFX partners need DPX files).

Perhaps this might be a fix - things this will do:

-export DPX/Cineon sequences from any QT 7.1 compatible application
-reads and writes header metadata (this is HUGE!!!!)
-timecode metadata goes in and out
-can index search using Spotlight
-in FCP, can search for keycodes in the DPX data
-can input project info and image descriptions into the headers for later use
-reel info can be set during import from the DPX
-sequences seeing as clips rather than frame sequences within applications

It's only $90...certainly worthy of investigation

News glob for Tuesday, October 10, 2006:

AppleInsider | Two studios seen joining Disney on iTunes post holidays - so as not to antagonize Walmart and Target, which represent over half of ALL domestic DVD sales.

AppleInsider | Foxconn lands Core 2 Duo MacBook orders from Apple - article says Core 2 Duo based MacBooks to begin production before end of year - so MWSF announcement in January with immediate availability? At the latest?

EETimes.com - DVD Forum defines China-only HD DVD-ROM spec - apparently, a China-only HD DVD format is being developed. To help isolate against copying? I would think China wouldn't care, as it would limit the market for imports. Then again, maybe this is being pushed from outside?

Serious Magic's DV Rack HD 2.0 now offers DVCPRO HD, HDV support and other goodies - worthy of significant further inquiry.

Register for Sundance attentance by Saturday! CinemaMinima tells you how.

Final Cut Pro: Assemble Editing with a Panasonic VTR - having trouble with Panasonic deck? Upgrade to 5.1.2.

MacNN | Red Giant updates video plug-ins - Intel Mac support, for Final Cut and Avid. "The Avid updates are only for PowerPC-based systems, however, and a new update it scheduled when Avid releases new versions that offer compatibility with Intel-based Macs, according to Red Giant."

Rumor has it Intel is getting ready to buy Nvidia - especially after ATI was bought by AMD. If true, suddenly graphics is no longer an open market - there will (eventually) be the Intel/Nvidia flavor, and the AMD/ATI flavor of integrated motherboards with graphics (probably in 3 or so years). The Inquirer thinks not (and estimates it'd be a $10B minimum pricetag). But, if any administration is going to let this kind of thing fly, THIS administration would be the one to try to get away with it under the wire before the deadline (how's that for a grammatically horrible sentence?).

Variety.com - Lucas tilts at studio tentpoles Lucas says small movies, pay per view, and online downloads are the future of entertainment. He also gave $175M to his alma mater.

-mike

Zodiac Director David Fincher adapts a tapeless workflow for the big screen

Zodiac is probably the first all digital, completely tapeless major motion picture production. This article has details on what, why, and how they did their production.

Considering an all digital production? Read this. I'm not saying much here, but I consider this a MUST read for anyone considering a heavy digital production.

-mike

Thanks to Paul (one of the organizers of FantasticFest, BTW) for pointing out this article to me. As always, if you come across something good that you think I should be covering, please drop me an email at mike at hdforindies d0t com.

Another clip up

RED / Gallery has one new clip up now and another expected up shortly - realizing they were getting totally over-run with bandwidth requests, they've posted .torrent files...but since there's only one copy up as of this writing (9:15pm Monday), it is deathly slow - wish Red.com would host these files...in any case, my download speed grumpiness aside, they've posted a 75 MB 8 second 1K res clip of the girl blowing and popping a bubblegum bubble (same as was shown at IBC in 4K).

Another clip coming...

Shortly, a brand new clip will be posted, demonstrating how well the Mysterium sensor can generate images to key. They know it was unevenly lit and overexposed, but it is lab footage they are sharing with the world. In the meantime, here's a teaser.

Actually, now the torrent is up - it is the greeenscreen source, 65MB file, compressed I dunno how (I'm waiting for the download myself). As a compressed file, downsampled, it isn't the full story (by far!) of how it will composite, but gives SOME clues.

UPDATE - ACTUALLY, it is a big honkin' uncompressed TIFF...so this IS a good way to evaluate how the uncompressed output of the Red will work. As for Redcode results....wavelet tends to go soft rather than mosquito noise and blocking of DCT based systems, but I don't have enough experience to evaluate wavelet's usage for compositing. This is a full size, 4515x2540 frame.

Theft update - some items recovered

Also, Jim Jannard talks about recovery of some items stolen from the break-in...recovery of the non-IP critical items is a major accomplishment, I'm amazed they have them back, I'd expected them to have left the country within hours of the theft, never to be seen again, or dropped off a bridge at midnight after being analyzed...

-mike

The Production Assistant's Pocket Handbook, a FREE downloadable guide to being a Production Assistant in Film or Television

Having not been a P.A. (production assistant), I dunno how good the advice is, but it is a fun little breezy read. Somebody emailed me asking how to get a foot in the door in some city I've never been to and I said I didn't know beyond looking to post/production houses and checking the online forums, so to that stranger, here's the best answer I've got.

Free downloadable PDF.

-mike

AppleInsider | Target warns studios over digital movie pricing

Short version: Target and Walmart have both complained to Apple and the major studios that online movie download sites (like Apple's iTunes Store) are paying lower wholesale prices than Target or Walmart, and those retailers don't like it and may take some form of retaliatory action.

I declare "Shenanigans!" South Park style.

What bugs me the most about this is that on face value, Target/Walmart are complaining that offering an inferior product online at a lower price isn't fair to them with their superior physical/tangible product. On top of that, since there is no physical product, no packaging, no shelf space taken up, and no physical shipping costs (just broadband hosting fees), that is all the MORE reason for it to be fair that downloads cost less.

This just galls me all to hell.

When you buy a movie for download from Apple (at present), you get:

-a lower resolution, more compressed version of the movie that doesn't look as good

-ZERO extras or BTS stuff, no case, no artwork, nuthin'.

-tangibly, you receive no goods at all, and it is up to you to back up that data -- if the hard drive fails, poof! It is gone.

-that downloaded file only plays on up to 5 computers at best, or has to be downloaded to a "mated" iPod to be plugged into a TV, or...

-watching on a TV requires some finagling - I watched the Season 2 ender of Battlestar Galactica on my 34" TV by connecting my MacBook, with video adaptor, into my A/V receiver. A bit of a pain, requires a bit of geeky knowledge, and then isn't as good as a DVD or even digital cable (with all the compression artifacts THAT has).

....so it isn't a walk in the park.

I've outlined the pros and cons of Apple's current TV/movie offerings here, and all this still applies.

Now, in the future, if Apple had downloads available at or above DVD resolution, with extras in the download (technically quite doable today)....it would STILL be arguable that Apple could negotiate for less...since there is still NO physical good produced nor shipped cross country! But at least then Walmart & Target would have a more legitimate complaint.

Target and Walmart are fearing the day when it is more convenient for the mass market to download, and the quality might be equitable - their brick and mortar retail business is in trouble, therefore they are starting to complain now to try to head that off at the pass. As a company, they have the right to defend, even proactively, their business model. But on face value, this is irritating all to hell.

Somebody refresh my memory - did Walmart and/or Target complain when iTunes went live with audio content about lower pricing? Did they threaten to take retaliatory action? What did they actually do in response?

Hell, even John August, screenwriter, said "F*ck Wal-Mart. Seriously" in his blog on this subject.

-mike

Off Topic PS - It is interesting to note that while 90% of the content on this site is my first draft, dashed off as fast as I can type it followed by a slap on the "Publish Post" button, that I make grammatical and typographical mistakes all the time (OK that isn't suprising)...and when I'm writing stream-of-rant style, I TYPE the way it SOUNDS, which isn't always the way I know it should be SPELLED - they're for their, negociate for negotiate and similar mistakes, that can't be ascribed to finger fumbling, but some kind of mental fumbling. Besides making excuses for my typos, it is interesting to think about what kind of mental gymnastics are going on between my cognitive, upper level thinking/writing brain and the low level, "make the fingers go" part of my brain that controls the physical act of typing. Somewhere in there the "lines of code" about grammatical accuracy are getting circumvented....I've been meaning to add this in somewhere but never found a spot, so I'm shovelling it in here. But worthy of further exploration...on some other blog...

Sony plans to have it both ways with Blu-ray and networked downloads

Talking about games, not movies, but has obvious rollover ramifications. In five years, Sony exec says, downloadable games could easily replace it.

Typical Ars snacky cake goodness, read on.

Download seven G1 clips provided by Kaku Ito - The Digital Video Information Network

My friend Chris at DVInfo.net was kind enough to drop me an email to let me know about the availability of some SOURCE clips from this new camcorder. A bunch of 24p stuff, check it out.

They are MPEG-2 transport streams, so use something like VLC to watch these.

May be more posted at this thread over the weekend, keep checking back if you're interested.

For those of you who haven't been keeping track, the XH G1 is the little brother to the Canon XL H1, and it will shoot 1080p24...or actually 24F in 1080 resolution, Canon calls it 24F mode not 24p mode. So 1080F24 is the nomenclature I'd use.

There's a whole thread about this camera (and the baby brother XH A1 camcorder) here, and overview info here.

It's on the list of camcorders I'd consider for ultra low budget indie work.

Thanks Chris!

Monday evening update: many have written in to say Google is wise to get their foot in the door at an early stage, I say this is possibly/probably true, but again the "how X much revenue can be generated from Y kilobytes of hosted data" question is still relevant, even if broadband is known to be cheap, falling in price, and Google probably gets the best rate in the business. Again, the AOL/Time Warner deal - timing is everything. However, CBS Puts The Eye in YouTube talks about CBS is the first major broadcaster that will be providing content to YouTube. CBS sees a good deal when they know it - Youtube handles the infrastructure and hosting costs of hosting/serving those videos, CBS pays...what? Nothing? I dunno the terms of the deal.

Google Is in Talks to Buy YouTube - WSJ.com

Now, I'm all in favor of long term solutions to have cheap and easy hosting of video content. Google is a proven winner at being able to make money by placing ads around content. Youtube has been phenomenally successful to date...scratch that, they've been phenomenally POPULAR to date.

BUT...

Youtube has been losing money since day one. And I think the endemic challenge to this type of endeavor is just simple math - how much does it cost to serve a video? Much more than it costs to serve up a web page...orders of magnitude more, because there are orders of magnitude more data to be hosted. Text is dirt cheap, video is expensive in terms of bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money. Now, bandwidth has been getting cheaper and cheaper, and I have faith it will continue to do so.

Most of Youtube's content is user provided fluff, of limited value. Hosting video is expensive.

The crucial math is this - is it possible to charge more for the ads that run on, in, or around the video content, than it costs to host the video content? Don't forget to factor in the costs of staff, servers, development costs, scaling, etc.

At this point in time, for the kind of media Youtube is hosting, I don't think it is clear how they can make money. Phrased less politely, how the hell do they expect to turn a profit? This smells very much like the dotcom era of the 90s - "We're so popular! This will HAVE to make money someday!" Well folks...to use a metaphor, Youtube is basically giving out free cab rides. You used to pay for it, now it is free, we just show you some ads along the way. Wouldn't that be tremendously popular? Of course. Now, how could that be profitable?

I pick this metaphor intentionally, and while I don't believe the Internet is just a series of tubes, it is about transporting things, even if they are just ephemeral bits. And it costs money to transfer bits.

How are they going to monetize this? And not just a little, like Google has been successful with low bandwidth pages, but enough to make it a worthwhile endeavor? Wait, let me rephrase that - Google has made tremendous amounts of profit by making X amount of income per hosted page with Google placed ads on it. At present, they don't host most of the pages, they just put their ads on other people's pages that other people pay to host. Now, if the cost of hosting a given page (which Google would shoulder if they bought Youtube) goes up by clearly more than 10X, if not 100X....can Google charge that much more for the ads on that page? I wouldn't think so. And it has to work on a page by page basis....volume doesn't help this. Or at least, it has to work on an aggregate scale - it has to be profitable for the average visited page. Britney and Christina's kung fu fight over a man on the red carpet video would obviously be able to charge more per ad, and have enormously more traffic, than a video of my cat trying to roll up off her fat back, cute as she is.

And that's the catch with Youtube - not by traffic, but by pages overall, most of the content is utterly forgettable. And while it is looked at far less often, it still has to be hosted and served. Youtube definitely represents a high chaff to wheat ratio, whereas a site like Apple's Movie Trailer page offers the reverse ratio...and much much better quality.

To date, I am unaware of any large, successful, profitable advertising supported online video content sites - and I'm including ifilm.com and its ilk. I've seen swarms of them fail over the years.

The first clue is that Warners is embracing the idea and posting up their music video collection, and will get a slice of the income from the advertising. Nice start, but where is this going?

I don't see it being $1.6 billion well spent for Google, even if they have $10B in the bank.

There's better ways to spend their money.

So why am I complaining about free cab rides? Because if these guys blow it, it'll be a very public flop, and future investors will look at other video distribution online deals and say "Nah, just like Youtube."

Oh course, as Dennis Miller says, I could be wrong.

I hope so, but I don't think so.

Anybody feel free to shoot me some numbers on how this might work profitably.

-mike

Little Frog in High Def: BS Filter

...talks about the trouble using the not-very-functional-nor-effective broadcast safe filter in Final Cut Pro (which may or may not be fixed in v5.1.2, dunno yet).

Got a tip from my buddy Mark who says that the new Kona 3 v3.1 drivers have a HARDWARE based broadcast safe filter.

In any case, broadcast safe is a MAJOR concern for broadcast projects, Final Cut Pro (as well as After Effects, Final Touch HD, and other apps) have had problems in the past, so is not something to be taken for granted.

Exporting a sequence to a QT movie and dropping it on a timeline will handle some aspects of broadcast safe.

Consider this an extension of these stories.

I'd been meaning to write an article like this myself, but of course I waited too long, so somebody beat me to it, and did it in two parts:

Brad Choate: Why You Should Buy iTunes Shows and Movies

Brad Choate: Why You Shouldn't Buy iTunes Shows or Movies

I'll be lazy and rely on Brad's work for the first part, please go read.

Good as that is, I do have a few things to add:

TV Shows

Actually, I think TV shows offer the better value. Of course, if you had a VCR or a TiVO or other PVR, you could record the shows for free. But if it is after the fact, $2 a pop isn't bad. And since you can get it the next day after the show airs, that beats the pants off waiting months for the whole season to come out on DVD. The only downsides (as noted in above articles) is lesser quality and ZERO extras. But for the convenience and the roughly broadcast quality (actual, on-your-set digital cable TV quality) it's not a bad thing at all.

And if they DO go high def, what - $4 or $5 for the HD version? Dropping to $3 or $4 over time?

Movies:

There are a lot of good and true and valid reasons for the large price discrepancy between TV shows and movies (movies have massively bigger budgets and are not advertising supported, for starters), but I can't help but notice that a movie costs up to 7 1/2 times more than a TV show. In terms of entertainment value...hmm....how much more entertaining is it? A question worth asking.

In terms of availability timing, downloadable movies have minimal benefit over DVDs - they are released at the same time.

But in terms of accessability, downloads are pretty quick - I downloaded Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl in roughly an hour, and checking my Activity Monitor, I was pegging my transfer speed at about 630 kiloBYTES (not bits!) per second - pretty damned fast as far as downloads go (I'm on a cable modem in a not-very-techie neighborhood, downloaded in middle of the day). So the impulse buy factor is great - you just click and wait and doodle around a bit until you're ready to watch....on your computer. Hmm...unless you have your computer connected, or have a video iPod, or an iTV once they ship....go read the above links for more thoughts on that.

Downloadable Movie Quality

After downloading, I checked it out - the resolution is square pixel 640 x 272. As compared to an NTSC DVD resolution of 720x480, this is a pretty good step down - it is actually about HALF the pixels if you run the math (174K vs 346K pixels). The quality looks good on the download. It is a file that you can copy around and play on up to 5 authorized computers...but not on just anybody's (again see other article for the implicit limitations).

They do have chapter markers that work in QuickTime, which is nice, so you can jump to whichever part of the movie you want. 5.1 audio is also included I believe (right? Anybody verified?)

What the future may bring

However, long term, I still expect Apple to have high def movies available for download, at perhaps 960x720 or more resolution - I'd originally hypothesized, last year, that Apple would ship a stadard definition version (and ship it last year) and move up to high def in the future - but instead, Apple waited until they could get their movie deals and then decided to ship a unit capable of both SD & HD. Since Steve Jobs specifically mentioned "big flat screen TVs" and the iTV device will come with an HDMI connector (a digital, HD only connector), high def movies are clearly in Apple's future, assuming the iTV can handle decompressing that large of a data stream...and I don't see why Apple would be that short sighted.

DVD vs. ripped DVD vs. iTunes download

But I did conduct a little test - I'd purchased Pirates because I also own it on DVD. So I popped in the DVD and used Handbrake to rip the DVD to my own H.264 encoded movie, and I chose to keep it 720 wide, which made it 304 pixels tall (in order to maintain square pixels..although I could have kept it 480 tall and stretched it wider for maximum quality). I intentionally encoded at a higher bitrate to see if I could make a better looking movie (which also makes for a larger file, taking up more room on your hard drive). By the way, due to the DMCA, this is in fact illegal - I did (and you would be) circumventing copyright protection, even though it is under the rubric of media format shifting for personal viewing. Crazy, isn't it? Just so you can put your DVD that you own on your iPod that you own? Lobbying is a scary thing.

Results: even on my Quad G5, after turning on the higher quality options (multipass variable bitrate encoding, etc.), it took a LOOOOOOOONG time - I think over 2 hours, but I didn't babysit it. The resulting movie didn't look quite as good as the DVD, and was sharper than the Apple download (more detail...higher res, not a surprise). In the end, it wasn't terribly convenient, but did offer a good value.

For most folks, once iTV ships, I think downloadable movies will offer a convenience. I'll also expect iTV to be able to connect definitely to your iTunes, iPhoto, and possibly iDVD/iMovie libraries (future versions). So while it will essentially be an expensive media player, it will also offer other benefits (and I'm sure Apple will drop the price over time as they always do - so $249 or maybe even $199 for Christmas next year I'd guess...depending on whether more studios get involved, HD movies become available, sales volume, etc.).

The Geeky Combo Best Value Play

But in the meantime, I think the ULTIMATE play, if you want movies on your big TV, movies on your computer, and movies on your iPod, will be to do the following:

1.) Buy the movie - I like pre-ordering on Amazon so I get it the day of availability (or I would if I bought any DVDs these days, I Netflix like mad...and while I don't, and don't advocate, there are those that Rent, Rip, & Return.)

2.) Use Handbrake to rip it to an iPod compatible (or higher quality) .mp4 H.264 file - but this is sloooooow, and gets you no extras.

3.) That way, you have a copy for your DVD player which plays anywhere, as well as a mobile version for laptop or iPod...for about the same price, or a few dollars more, than the iTunes version. And you'll get to watch it on your TV/HDTV the day it comes out, in better quality, with more stuff involved.

Now, few people are going to do this - just the zealots, such as those that care enough to bother reading this far into this article. For the mainstream audiences, this will not be a viable option.

I think for Apple to make this whole downloadable movie thing to work, they need the following:

1.) More movies from more studios available

2.) Either more aggressive pricing considering the value is lesser (difficult with Walmart trying to block lower cost wholesale pricing, and it is interesting to note that online quality versions are consistently lower quality, but about the same price - economically shouldn't be the case), or

3.) Apple must offer HD res movies shortly after iTV ships (within 6 months, TOPS, from ship date)


At that point, Apple would have a high def player, for $300, for substantially less than HD DVD or Blu Ray, with a box that does more than just play movies - it also streams any of your audio collection, plays back your home movies (maybe, in time) and digital photo collection, etc. Think about what iLife does now...and imagine being able to play back and control all that content from the couch, with a remote, in your living room, watching it on a big flat screen HDTV.

And THAT is a compelling option...if there are movies available!

...and that's what I was thinking last year when I bought a big gob of Apple stock (at around $65/share) - I see Apple making a significant play for the home entertainment market, in a way that other vendors can't compete.


-mike


Gratuitous Personal Complaint

As a side note, I can't begin to convey my frustration with Dell Computers for their abysmal failure to make an impact in the home entertainment market after what seemed would be a promising start - a friend conveyed the story of sitting on a plane next to a rep from a consumer electronics firm stating they were afraid of Dell and their buying power. They have the best buying power in the world, are probably the #1 purchaser of LCD panels in the world, and could convert that into a killer value brand for home entertainment...yet their product quality is awful, their support is horrific, their marketing for that sector not only anemic but lame on top of that. Whoever is in charge of that group should be fired, promptly. I guess Dell's real strength is in being a low cost commodity goods integrator/producer with good supply chain management and custom configurability....but that's IT. No strength in marketing to consumers in this space, and a profound lack of Getting It when it comes to what home enertainment should be. As a commodity integrator, they are in no position to design or do anything new or unique. I have watched my Dell stock plummet over the years while Apple climbs...and guess which I have more of. Can you tell why I'm cranky on this?

Besides the personal grumpiness on this, I think this is indicative of why other competitors will be challenged to compete with Apple - HP? Dell? Microsoft? When was the last time they came out with a slick, high quality, high efficacy product that was a joy to use?

Yeah. Exactly.

Although, I DO have to say that if Microsoft can get the Xbox360 working as a media extender off of a generic Windows box, that offers a tantalizing hardware solution, regardless of how well the HD DVD add-on sells. The catch is then the sales interface and distribution model - subscription, purchase, or both? Does Microsoft set up its own movie store? Do the studios want to deal with Microsoft on that level? If MS did set up a movie store, which of their partners are they competing with and deeply offending then? It is a much more fraught possibility. Zune is a 1.0 product for MS - and it usually takes until version 3 or 4 for MS to get a product up to full swingin' strength.

End of bizarre out of place rant.

Update on complaints: OK, at least Dell is getting better at their HDTVs - Dell W3706MC 37" High Definition LCD TV reviewed by Charlie White.

Studio Daily | Focus Enhancements 2.0 Firmware Upgrade with Native QuickTime HDV Support

From the press release:

Focus Enhancements, a worldwide leader in video production and conversion technology, today announced the availability of version 2.0 software which adds native QuickTime HDV support to its industry leading Direct To Edit (DTE) FS-4Pro HD, FS-C and DR-HD100 recorders. The upgrade will be available for purchase in disc format on the Focus Enhancements website for $39.

1080i 50/60 and 720p/30 clips recorded in the QuickTime HDV format using FS-4Pro HD, FS-C and DR-HD100 can be used immediately in Apple Final Cut Pro 5 without having to first capture or convert footage.

So if you're shooting standard modes (no 24p) with Canon, JVC, or Sony HDV, can record natively to QuickTime. No quality improvment, but lets you work quickly in some situations and/or record large amounts of footage (4 or 7 hours of capacity). $1400 for the 60GB, $2000 for 100GB model.

Does this have a 2GB file size limitation?

JVC specific models are in 40 and 80 GB models direct from JVC for $1500 adn $1900 MSRP.

Firmware update is $39 direct from Focus Enhancements website.

Studio Daily | How Superman's All-Data Workflow Took Flight

Quickie - a nice read on the all digital workflow of Superman Returns, including this excellent PDF showing the entire workflow.

In case your forgot or have been living under a rock, Superman Returns was shot with the Panavision Genesis camera.

Even at the big big big movie scale (and hard to get much bigger), things are still rushed and last minute and figured out at the last second. They had tons o'cash, you probably won't, so get your workflow figured out all in advance...or (ahem) hire a consultant to help you with it all.

Worth studying, even for a scaled down version of your own digital productions.

-mike

Little Frog in High Def is another blog out there akin to mine - the author, Shane Ross, and I have met and chatted a few times, and email pretty frequently. He had a project they were working on for the History Channel that they shot on Varicam and had their deliverables changed on them midstream - instead of a 720p59.94 deliverable on D-5, they had to deliver as 1080p23.98 on HDCAM.

Read on for how they addressed issues of ingest, how they were able to use their offline as their online and use FireWire 800 drives to accomplish this, how they were able to use Kona 3 hardware to uprez 720p to 1080p (a GREAT new feature, BTW), etc.

-mike

I've been able to receive mail just fine, but between some laptop issues (got my Blackbook back repaired) and some Dreamhost server issues, no/very little mail has gone out since Monday. If you've emailed me and not gotten a response, is likely due to these issues - my outbound mail is all backed up...

On top of this, I'm having to crank out some tax stuff, as well as various projects that have approaching deadlines, so don't have a lot of time to deal with it.

I need a Plunger.app...

-mike

Final Cut Pro: For best performance on Mac Pro, install memory in risers symmetrically

Final Cut Pro's performance benefits from symmetrical RAM configurations on Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro comes with two memory riser cards, each with four DIMM slots. With a total of eight slots, you can add up to 16 GB of memory.

To achieve optimal performance when running Final Cut Pro, memory DIMM pairs should be installed evenly on both risers.


Click the above link to see the chart of the various RAM configs they recommend. However,

Maximum memory usage in Final Cut Pro is 2.5 GB. Note, that is max usable by FCP is 4GB total.

Explanation follows from second article:

Why can't Final Cut Pro use more than 4 GB of RAM?

Mac OS X is, at present, a 32-bit addressable operating system. This means that any single program running on the computer can take at most 2^32 bytes, or 4 GB, of memory. Final Cut Pro is subject to this ceiling just as any other program would be and is restricted to allocating no more than a total of 4 GB of RAM.

Why can't I allocate more than 2.5 GB of RAM to Final Cut Pro?

The memory available for allocating in the Memory & Cache tab of the System Settings window includes memory directly used by Final Cut Pro, but the program loads many other frameworks, libraries, and drivers, which may also allocate memory. Although this memory isn't directly allocated by the program itself, the allocation still falls into Final Cut Pro's address space and contributes to the 4 GB limit. Final Cut Pro reserves 1.5 GB of RAM for these frameworks, libraries, and drivers and so only allows a maximum of 2.5 GB to be allocated by the user.


Therefore, except for when you're going to run multiple applications (and there are plenty of other apps you might want open simultaneously), huge gobs of RAM for FCP isn't going to necessarily help things move briskly.

If you have a large project, such as for a feature film, my usual advice:

1.) break it into reel size chunks, no more than about 22 minutes per chunk (can be small as you want)

2.) If possible, keep each reel its own project (docs this is harder due to shared bins etc.), and for speed's sake only assemble the whole thing into one project when you have to/need to and make that a new project, not dumping all reels into one of the reel's projects. But that gets into the whole other production thing...

For more on working with Final Cut Pro/Final Cut Studio 5.1.2, read this article from the other week, it is a compendium of FCP 5.1.2 issues.

-mike

PS - FCP 5.1.2 also has some nice enhancements to tell you what is going on - check out this screen grab I got while doodling with 5.1.2 on my MacBook trying to play 6 tracks of DVCPRO HD from the internal drive (knowing it would fail):

It is so very, VERY nice to get specific advice on what's going wrong, and better yet to get specific instructions on how to fix it.

{Beer Ad Voice}
Here's to you, Mr. Warning Dialog Detail Improver, for all the help you give us. Have a tall cold one on us.
{/Beer Ad Voice}

Frankly, if this is what they consider an x.x.2 release, I think they must have beeeg, beeeeeeeeeeeg changes in mind for NAB next year - if they had wrapped the 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 changes into a new version and called it 5.5 and charged $200-$300 for it, they could have gotten away with it. But they didn't - so I figure they are swinging for the fences for the next version....

Sharp's very, very sharp experimental screen | CNET News.com

Somebody asked me how you would monitor a 4K signal (such as from a Red camera when it ships) - if not using the Viewsonic monitor (like Red had at the IBC booth) that is slightly sub 4K, or using the incredibly pricey, really for theatrical display Sony 4K projector, perhaps something like this would be used in the future - a 64" 4K LCD panel, DCI spec resolution - 4096x2160 (which is twice 2Kx1080 in each dimension). That
s about 9 megapixels. Another company was showing a similar resolution panel at IBC, I can't recall the name though.

This unit is experimental only, however, and not planned for resale at this time. They were also showing off a million to one contrast ratio screen.

MacNN | Sonnet ships eSATA ExpressCard adapter

-shipping now
-Express34 slot
-2 eSATA ports
-drive activity LEDs
-YES port multiplying, can connect up to 10 drives in 2 enclosures (2x5 each)
-NO not fast enough for most HD - because of bus speed limitations, about 100 MB/sec max write speed it would appear

Mike's Comments: I've used quite a bit of Sonnet kit, I like it, I like it a lot, this is good news for indies. Also, this pops to mind in terms of having hotswap drive enclosures for in-the-field P2 backup - you could even do RAID 1 sets for mirrored for data redundancy protection. Unless this product is an aberration from Sonnet's usual quality, I'd be inclined to recommend it sight unseen.

-mike

Entertainment Weekly's EW.com | Feature: Six ways for Hollywood to stop alienating women

Article on dearth of quality roles for women in Hollywood...OK, indies, how can YOU use to your advantage? Use your brain, folks...

-mike

Macworld: News: DTS launches new HD audio encoding software

So when we finally do start making HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs, DTS now has software to encode audio in one of the format options:

The DTS-HD Master Audio Suite MAS is designed to enable users to encode audio bit streams for HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc as well as DVD and DTS 5.1 Music Disc. Features include downmix setting and audition and DTS Digital Surround backward-compatible Core playback. With the DTS-HD MAS, users can encode DTS Digital Surround, DTS-ES 6.1, DTS 96/24. DTS-HD High Resolution Audio and DTS-HD Master Audio lossless. DTS-HD is compatible with up to 7.1 channels of 96 kHz audio, according to the company.


WinXP version first, Mac to follow, $1500 for the big gun, $800 for the lesser version that doesn't do stuff for HD. Be interesting to see what Apple's options are for audio encoding in the next version of Final Cut Studio.

-mike

RED / Gallery has a downloadable video - a commenter said it is 1K resolution, but I'll have to wait another hour for the either overloaded or woefully under bandwidthed server to finish downloading the 106 MB file. Based on the still image preview and the name, it may only be a shot of the glasses, but I'll have to wait and see, will update later.

-mike

Spymac.com - Social Online Community Network :: Features :: Waiting for Pro: This one goes past '2'

PC World tests indicate that you shouldn't sweat it too much. Whereas Core 2 Duo desktops racked up dramatically higher test scores than their Pentium D-based counterparts, notebooks got only a small performance boost from the mobile Core 2 Duo%u2026 The biggest performance increase over laptops with same-speed Core Duo CPUs was 7 percent %u2014 enough to shave a few seconds off day-to-day business operations, but nothing more.

PC World didn't find any boost in battery life either.

So no big deal that Apple didn't include them in the MacBook or MacBook Pros.

Some further conjecture on future Apple laptops as well.

-mike

RAID Levels graphically explained. :D

Showreel article : Silicon Imaging 'Eve' Eve of construction

I think I missed this when it came out, discovered the link when a reader cited it recently in Comments - Showreel has an article about a pre-production Silicon Imaging camera being used to make an indie feature. Talks about how they started recording to Cineform off of a JVC 720p HDV camcorder, that led to the creation of the Wafian recorder, then they had a delay and then were able to go with the new prototypes of the Silicon Imaging camera. They like working with the remote head - the tiny sensor block that you can run a GigE cable back to a laptop or full sized computer and record the RAW output (the filmmakers feel this is a more useful/viable workflow for cinema production going forward).

They like the false color LUT used for exposure assistance, they are recording reference audio, but the SI isn't set up at the moment for high quality sync sound recording.

They are using Premeire Pro at the moment, but a QuickTime codec is under development that should open it up to usage with other NLEs and workflows.

UPDATE MONDAY MORNING: Jason Rodriguez, who is working on the Silicon Imaging camera, contacted me to let me know much has happened since the Showreel article was written. He wrote:

Hey Mike,

JFYI, there's been a BUNCH of improvements to the interface since the Spoon guys were working on the movie (they've been wrapped since the end of July).

For instance, we now support those high-quality, relatively inexpensive USB/Firewire audio devices (M-audio has been tested) for some really clean audio input. The audio is still 16/48, but it's a really clean 16/48, as those audio devices can support over 100dBA dynamic range (basically giving you a full 16-bits of data, not noise). We would support 24/96, but the main issue at this point in time with that is the lack of support in the AVI mux . . . you can't have high-bit depth audio and keep video-for-windows compatiblity. But those features have been requested, and are coming down the pike.

But with the USB/Firewire interfaces, the analog front-ends are good enough that you're getting super-high quality DAT-style audio. Also the audio front-end is electronically isolated from any other noisy components . . . it would do us (or any other manufacturer) no use to have 24/96 and then be stuck with noise getting into the analog front-end so that your dynamic range really is only 16-bits again due to noise.


Thanks Jason for keeping me up to date.

-mike