tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239305552008-08-05T13:59:31.242+01:00Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-61661834819322629662008-08-05T13:44:00.005+01:002008-08-05T13:59:31.403+01:00

Digital Heaven have released their Mac OS X video space widget as an online application. It allows you to work out how much space a given amount of video will take up on your hard disc. It's aimed at Final Cut Pro users so the codecs are mainly ones found in a Final Cut installation (though the Apple Intermediate Codec is missing, possibly as it's a variable bit rate codec which makes final

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-26364970986338402442008-08-05T12:54:00.007+01:002008-08-05T13:42:56.754+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, Joss Whedon released his superhero musical "Dr Horrible's Sing A Long Blog" on the internet. The 45 minute show (actually three 15 minute episodes) was notable for a number of reasons. 1. It's high quality content. Maybe not to the standard of Whedon's work for movies and TV, but certainly stronger than a lot of online content. While it makes reference to it's online

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-38981066268411756482008-07-28T17:59:00.005+01:002008-07-28T20:47:01.884+01:00

Having sullied this blog in a recent post with a mention of a Jason [spit] Statham movie, I'll attempt to claw back some indie cred by flagging up a proper low budget HDV independent movie currently doing the rounds - In Search of a Midnight Kiss is currently released in cinemas and is still doing the rounds in the regions. According the the IMDB it was shot on the Sony HVR Z1. If you can't

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-19208141538209441192008-07-26T18:53:00.007+01:002008-07-29T11:56:18.074+01:00

DV audio legend Jay Rose has started 'blogging over at Provideo Coalition (for those that don't know him, he wrote two almost essential books on Audio for low budge/independent/self reliant filmmakers: Producing Great audio for Film and Video (formally Producing Great Sound for Digital Video) and Audio Post Production for DV (UK editions from Amazon can be found here, though the third edition of

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-6092901557584341192008-07-24T18:14:00.007+01:002008-07-24T21:38:41.665+01:00

Another feature film is being shot with standard prosumer HDV cameras: The sequel to the 2006 action thriller Crank is being shot right now Canon XH A1 camcorders. The first Crank was shot on HDCAM Sony F950s, and the co-directors have recently completed a movie using the Red One camera system. Unlike previous HDV movies, like Searchers 2.0 or Once, which were low budget, independent

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-35247601899204154632008-06-26T16:06:00.008+01:002008-06-26T17:11:33.062+01:00

Celtx Software is a widely used freeware screenplay formatting/pre-production suite of programs that independent filmmakers might like to have a look at. It's been around a while but has finally made it to release 1.0 status. I've used it on and off since it was first making a name for itself. It's useful but annoyingly (at least until recent versions) shies away from following industry formats

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-61829546927038072442008-06-26T10:36:00.007+01:002008-06-26T16:29:09.832+01:00

Off topic in some ways again, as I prefer the info on this site to refer to what blogger and filmmaker Paul Hamill calls "self reliant film" (from production to distribution). TV broadcast is at the opposite end of that spectrum, but this set of articles from The Guardian is interesting as a call (in line with Ofcom policy) for more TV production to move out of London to engage with the various

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-19902393597732825592008-06-20T15:10:00.008+01:002008-06-20T17:21:35.706+01:00

Youtube have launched the Youtube Screening Room in order to promote short films to their huge global audience. The idea is to provide a more organised selective page where high quality (i.e. professionally produced) short films can be viewed. It's sort of backwards from what iFilm and Atom films did a few years back, those sites have now moved over to be based around User Generated content,

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-33198704382399667892008-06-20T15:01:00.003+01:002008-06-20T15:06:29.111+01:00

An excellent video here, found via the Radiohead blog. It comes with a personal recommendation from band members Colin and Jonny. It's a remix of the song Nude from the new Radiohead album that appears to be played entirely with preprogrammed technology. Whether it's "for real" (what ever that could mean in this context) I'm not sure, but the effect is fantastic. Big Ideas (don't get any)

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-43055820354088021222008-06-15T21:57:00.006+01:002008-06-15T22:27:22.607+01:00

Alex Cox's HDV western, mentioned in an earlier post, will be broadcast in the UK on Monday 16th of June on BBC4 at 10pm. The movie was shot with Sony Z1s in 1080i mode and premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival. Alex Cox has apparently recorded a special "Moviedrome" style intro for the film, as well as for some other classic westerns showing this weekend.

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-56318440068892619582008-06-12T22:14:00.005+01:002008-06-15T22:31:24.845+01:00

I've no idea if stock price really does mean that a company is in trouble. However this site reports financial woes at Avid. www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/17543/ It's actually old news, but it's picking up. This came on the heals of news that Avid pulled out of NAB (the big US Broadcasting and video trade fair) in order to "focus on other ways of reaching their clients" (Apple

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-18277439043411279982008-06-02T21:27:00.001+01:002008-06-02T21:30:11.241+01:00

Off topic, but still, the otherwise immortal Bo Diddley has passed away.

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-30224536873935966772008-05-27T14:44:00.006+01:002008-05-27T16:15:25.360+01:00

I've not posted much about the Red One as it seems far above the league of most true independent/no budget filmmakers (after all, Alex Cox made a whole feature for about the cost of three properly kitted out units.) Fitting with this, on the website, a lot of the interviews and promotional material is aimed at/comes from big budget filmmakers (Steven Soderberg, Doug Liman, some other full time

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-65111158759319932582008-05-27T13:52:00.005+01:002008-05-27T14:34:33.929+01:00

Found this one on the dvinfo.net forums. www.theassistanteditor.com the automatic editing app for Final Cut Pro. It throws together a highly competent round cut based on the footage you've logged and captured. This Application shows the power of XML. For lazy editors, it will throw together a round cut based on keywords out oput a XML fil that can be imported into the assistanteditor.app,

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-63284168996377053232008-05-23T23:38:00.004+01:002008-05-23T23:52:21.057+01:00

FreshDV has been given permission to host the Panavision/Canon talk I mentioned earlier. The films are lower (but still good) inline flash movies you can easily watch in your browser. Some of the detail if the powerpoint presentations is lost but it's still worth a look  Watch online here. The first five videos are online, the next two to follow later this week.

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-15059020320692947512008-05-23T23:34:00.002+01:002008-05-24T00:05:55.546+01:00

I don't know what it's for but it looks cool.

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-51789607950728405982008-05-22T14:52:00.003+01:002008-05-22T14:58:23.997+01:00

The final parts of the Walter Murch interview I featured before are now online. Murch continues to discusses his move from film to NLE editing, particularly his early experience with Avid systems, to his decisions to move from the industry standard Avid, to adopt Final Cut Pro for all his films so far since Cold Mountain (his next film, he maintains, will be edited on FCP). Part 4 Part 5

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-45173212522383093482008-05-16T21:07:00.004+01:002008-05-16T21:54:59.301+01:00

Maybe you've heard about the infamous Red One camera. If you fancy getting you hands on some Red One footage to edit, you can enter the opencut editing competition. They're presenting it as an "open source: film project. Basically the winning cut gets to be the official version to the world and the winners will be listed as the official editors. They've released it under the non commercial

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-8726150644711210612008-05-14T21:08:00.004+01:002008-05-14T22:52:37.437+01:00

After the heavy material in last week's post, something FUN! A good example of independent creativity finding an audience via Youtube, it has in one week so far racked up 377,000 views. The band's original video (a rather tired 60's retro Euro-art movie homage), posted by Blue Note Records, their label has has so far garnered the same number of votes over a whole year.

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-71482489898440100792008-05-08T20:14:00.004+01:002008-05-08T21:42:12.976+01:00

Found this via Mike curtis' new Pro Video Coalition blog. It's a presentation given by Larry Thorpe of Canon and John Galt of Panavision (the direct link to part one is here) and a lot of the terms regarding digital imaging technology and what this all means. The big sentiment of the talk seems to be to debunk the idea that a camera's pixel resolution equals its imaging resolution. Beware the

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-77315405687704663822008-05-04T17:36:00.014+01:002008-05-09T06:58:58.676+01:00

ALex cox's latest film Searchers 2.0 is a comedy road movie, with nods and references (as usual with Cox) to Hollywood's past, especially westerns. It was filmed in Monument valley, but most interestingly was made in 50i HDV on a sony Z1. The budget for the film was a measly $175,000 (less than £100,000) but this was a fully professional production, with veteran DOP Steve Fierberg head of the

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-780473307521373192008-05-04T17:14:00.003+01:002008-05-04T17:26:06.866+01:00

Despite winning the format war, it seems Blue ray is not surging ahead as the new video format of choice. It seems that upconverting DVD players are still seelimg very well, and BLue ray isn't even selling as well as HD DVD did when the format was was still. So it seems SD still has a lot of life left in it, and HD still has a long way to to go. Read the story here So Blu Ray could in fact

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-14125438652221658992008-05-02T21:08:00.004+01:002008-05-03T17:24:45.247+01:00

In don't know if this relly should go in this blog, but thanks to Quba at imagonewmedia for the heads up on this. It creeps me out but it's pretty astonishing all the same. www.motionportrait.com/about/TIminoriHair.swf

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-23251564076029812602008-04-28T14:05:00.007+01:002008-05-03T17:29:06.538+01:00

A fascinating interview: apparently, film editing was invented in Brighton, and non-linear hard disc based computer editing was in use in 1969! Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 I love the sound of his still image gallery database, a frame selected from every set up taken in the film, and then printed out, while also stored in a database and cross referenced to other edit log notes (you can see this in

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23930555.post-28754103146745395812008-04-27T10:59:00.010+01:002008-05-01T07:34:35.733+01:00

Two stories here about some low budget feature films with one-person crews. The first is on new animated Sita Sings The Blues, a strange blend of 20's American Blues and Hindu mythology. The 80 minute long film was animated entirely by one artist, also the writer , producer and director Nina Paley. After six years of production, for a budget of $200,000, the film received its premiere at the

Dylan Panknoreply@blogger.com