Demystifying camera specs,view in online flash

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.

Demystifying Digital Camera Specifications

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 download is a monster, It's been broken down into seven chapters, you can get each in 480p. 720p or 1080p but the server doesn't seem to be very fast. It would have been nice if Panavision could have release these clip's on Bittorrent so those interested could grab the movies from peer to peer and watch at their leisure.

It's actually a great primer on image and optics and how video imaging video systems work, so worth the work of getting it down, especially for ANYONE interested in cinematography.

The Future of 3D.

It's not news that 3D (or better stereoscopic) film is making a return to cinemas (of course it's been a mainstay of Imax for nearly a decade). However it is hotting up and starting to make roads into the feature film mainstream beyond CG animation projects.

A three good articles to read:

From Variety Online, this interview with James Cameron, who has made a number of 3D films (the two undersea documentaries on HD for Imax and the Terminator2: 3D ride for Universal studios) talks about the challenges and opportunities of 3D (or stereo as he prefers to call it) while he is shooting his first 3D feature film. Cameron is at the very top end of the filmmaking spectrum, commercially and technologically. Almost every feature film he's made from Terminator 2 on has been the biggest budget movie to date. This latest project , Avatar, STARTS with a budget of $195m (and I don't think Cameron has brought a movie in on budget since Aliens!)

Second. two articles on Lower budget production. Also from Variety online: The Mortician (a British film) and Dark Country have single figure million dollar budgets and are thriller/horror films, genres more traditionally have been associated with gimmicks like 3D. An interesting quote from the article: "For 3-D evangelists, this is both good news and bad. Good news: There is growing acceptance of the digital 3-D format. Bad news: The arrival of low-budget 3-D indies could undermine efforts to position 3-D as a premium format that can command higher ticket prices." There is another article here, from Showreel Magazine specifically on the making of Dark Country (which is also using the new RED ONE cameras). Dark Country is interesting as it is specifically the sort of situation Cameron discusses in his article, of low budget character centered drama by a first time director, previously an actor ratherthan someone from aVFX or technical backgroud, that stands is contrast to Cameron's own position as a filmmaker with a huge budget and resources as well as a phenomenal understand of the technical processes of film production.

Second post...

Found an article at cinematech.blogspot.com The UK Film council has installed 50 digital projectors across the UK, amounting to just over 1% of all UK screens. Not much really, but then when you consider how many screens many Independent/foreign language/documentary film projects will go to, it's a possible market.

I need to do more research on exactly where these screens are, and the screening format, are they working from Tape, HDD, optical disc or what? Also do they conform to the DCI specs, or will the Europeans follow a different route to the American D-Cinema system

One year ago, this story announced that the film council were investing £11.5m in a "digital cinema" network, just over a year later it seems we're only 20% of the way into that programme. this page lists the most recently completed installations. There's a depressing number of Cineworlds, Vues and Odeons in there, seeing as there was supposed to be a commitment to Digital cinema opening up to the independent film sector.

However, this all harks back to the early 80s, when the Multiplexes began, that there would be screens for all tastes, which instead turned out to be blockbusters playing on multiple screens. At the local Vue, Oscar winning-or-nominated films like Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Good Night, And Good Luck stayed a week before being shunted off. Fun With Dick And Jane, however is in its third week, despite its death at the box office. Old habits die hard it seems.