Jerome Stern has posted an excellent interview with filmmaker Ed Burns. In it, Burns talks about the new model of independent distribution, and how to work smarter and leaner to make money on your film from day one. He references FilmBuff, a licensing company that is a aggregator, a conduit to get content onto Netflix, iTunes, Playstation, XBox, et al distribution channels. A good read.

Just watched the demo for Martini Quickshot Creator…wow. Just wow. Posted at PVC.

Jason Wingrove has posted a nice long first-look at the new SmallHD DP6 SLR monitor with HDMI input. We first got a look at the DP6 at NAB 2010 (watch our SmallHD NAB video here). Jason’s first look video is embedded below, along with another video overview of the menu system. Excellent look at this sweet new monitor.

SmallHD DP6-SLR HD Monitor Hands on. from Jason Wingrove on Vimeo.

SmallHD DP6-SLR Menu walkthrough. from Jason Wingrove on Vimeo.

At Cine Gear 2010, FreshDV got a look at Lighttools focused soft-light eggcrates. It’s a really cool product that solves a number of issues with using large soft sources. So the other day I ran across the following video on Youtube that delves a little deeper into how the product works. Watch below…

And here’s another Lighttools tutorial video on how to use soft light to create dramatic looks. Watch below…

Some time ago, Techspansion shuttered up their doors and discontinued development of VisualHub. Which is a shame, as it was a really handy and useful transcoding utility for Mac video users. I’ve just learned that VH lives on as ReduxEncoder! You can download a beta here and follow the developer’s blog here.

Similar to the Cinevate Cyclops LCD shade/viewfinder combo, Jag35 just announced a shade+magnification combo for DSLR LCDs. DSLR News Shooter has the scoop.

Class On Demand
Fresh Score 4/5
Pros: An extensive and easy to watch series that is very in depth and designed to get you up and running quickly and efficiently in Apples Color. Well worth the price.
Cons: I would like to see even more emphasis on color theory and grading techniques.
“Basic Training For Apple Color” ($69.99)
“Advanced Training For Apple Color” ($99.99)
www.ClassOnDemand.net

We are all very aware, that Apple’s Color software has brought a revolution to the color grading process. A lot of people out there however are still attempting to master this new software and many are too intimidated by the interface to even try it. This is unfortunate since Color is simply a tool that is too powerful to be ignored. Class on Demand has recently released a series of training materials aimed at fixing this problem. “Basic Training for Apple Color”, and “Advanced Training for Apple Color”, both feature well known author and color correction expert Steve Hullfish. Steve is perhaps best known for his book, “The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction”. Joining Steve is professional colorist Bob Sliga who brings his hands on experience as a colorist to the discussion. Both of these volumes attempt to get users up to speed as quickly as possible and immerse them in the world of Apple Color. I should probably mention that this series has been released as an interactive DVD-Rom intended for playback on your desktop or laptop, and has been updated for Apple Color 1.5, the latest version available at the time of this review.

Basic Training For Apple Color
Basic training for Color is just that a boot camp of sorts for Color. This DVD makes no assumptions about the users skill level and starts at zero and provides a complete overview of the software, beginning with the often misunderstood interface. The presenters do a great job of teaching the interface and layout. Understanding the why behind the tools provides a solid foundation for delving into basic primary and secondary correction as well as the other Color Rooms. One thing I’m especially glad to see them spend time on is the chapter on interfacing with Final Cut Pro. This is sometimes a less than intuitive experience and often can cause a great deal of frustration for new users. Their workflow suggestions here are very appreciated and will go along way to aide new users in removing the headache from the process.

I found the presentation to move at a nice pace, one of my common complaints with training materials, and the presenters were pretty articulate in their approach. If you have been using color simply to apply presets then you have really been missing what this software is really all about. Steve and Bob often attempt to teach beyond just the color software and help users understand fundamentals such as scopes and hardware as well. One area I wish would have been covered a little better was codec and video compression and how those considerations factor in when grading footage. All in all I found the basic course a great way to lay a foundation for new users unfamiliar with Apple Color. New users looking to get familiar with Apple color quickly should consider the $69.99 money well spent. While this training material will not teach you the fundamentals of the color grading process it will teach you the software required to do it. I should also mention here that this title is also available On Demand via www.ClassOnDemand.net for the same price.

Advanced Training For Apple Color
While I have read, watched and reviewed several basic levels of training materials for Apple Color, this DVD was the first one claiming to be an advanced level of training. If you are really want to get into the nitty-gritty of things such as managing grades, workflow, and shot grouping, then this is the what you have been looking for. I actually learned a few new things hidden under the hood of color while watching this series. For example I had always copied or pasted grades from shot to shot, and Bob demonstrated how to group shots several ways and then apply a grade to groups, which was a workflow I had never done, While a simple thing on the surface I think it demonstrates exactly how extensive Color really is and how it really does require a course like this to begin to uncover some of the features.

Part of what I feel has been missing from a lot of color correction training is a better explanation of color theory. Bob and Steve do a pretty good job of dropping tidbits along the way. The human eye sees less color saturation in dark circumstances, and the cones are less sensitive to red under dark conditions. Bob explains that this is part of the reason for tinting a night look towards the blue side and using less saturation. While these little nuggets are sprinkled throughout the course, I personally would have liked to seen an entire part of the course dedicated to just color theory and science.

Summary
I really like the conversational tone that both Bob and Steve brought to the presentation. Both videos flowed nicely and had the natural give and take of a conversation, which makes the material feel a lot less like a class room lecture. Both presenters knew the material well and the presentation was both clean and articulate. If you are looking for a series that teaches color correction as an art form or the theory and science of color theory then these series may not be your first choice. While there is information on grading and color theory included this series is primarily aimed at teaching Apple Color as a software package. However if you are looking for a good way to gain extensive knowledge of Color then you should be able to take away a wealth of knowledge. Next to paying for a workshop or some hands on training, which would be considerably more expensive, you won’t find a better way to learn Apple Color for the price tag.

FTC Disclosure: Per the new FTC guidelines regarding bloggers and disclosure, I was offered review copies of both sets of training DVDs to watch and review. As always at FreshDV it is our goal to bring unbiased opinions to our readers through our reviews, regardless of the product or manufacturer.

So this week I wrapped a short film I was camera operating on. The film was for an upcoming CIY conference called “Believe,” and it was shot on the Canon 5D MKII. Director was Stewart Redwine, and I must say he and the rest of the crew were an absolute pleasure to work with. Incredibly professional. And the level of pre-production work Stewart put into this film really showed once we got on set. We managed to wrap every single day of our four-day shoot ahead of schedule. By the way, if you are looking for a Gaffer/DP or grip truck in the Kansas City area, give Troy Paddock a shout. He was amazing to work with.

One of the shots that was scheduled for the final shoot day was a timelapse of a cardboard box wall being built and then painted. The artist (who was one of our lead actors) is Eric Samuel Timm, and his work is amazing. In the shot, he was to build the wall, and then quickly hand paint it. Hard to explain the shot out of context, but suffice to say that it works very well in the scope of the overall script.

Anyway, this scene was initially intended to be shot locked off. But as we were building camera the morning of the shoot, Stewart approached me and asked if there was any way to add a lateral dolly move to the shot using my Kessler Crane CineSlider. I’d talked to Eric Kessler in the past about testing out their new motion control units for the CineSlider, but unfortunately haven’t yet had the chance to work with one. Kessler’s motion control units would have been perfect for this shot, as they integrate nicely with the CineSlider and can drive the slider head the length of the track. But alas, I had no mo-co options in my bag of tricks.

So Stewart and I came up with a solution to manually move the slider, one tick at a time, as we fired off still frames on the 5D MKII. We determined that we could use a Canon intervalometer remote to trigger an image every 4 seconds, and calculated that we could traverse the width of the slider in 32 minutes if we moved the slider 1/16 inch every time the shutter triggered. To facilitate this, we gaffed a measuring tape to the side of the slider unit. Stewart’s challenge was to keep our onscreen talent on time with the building process, as he had to assemble a wall from pre-built cardboard boxes. Then he had to paint it.

So as we shot this, Stewart kept a stopwatch and gave a minute by minute count on what had to be finished. My challenge was to lay on the floor next to the slider and gently move it 1/16″ after every shutter trigger, and within 4 seconds before it triggered the shutter again. This was harder than it sounds, and one thing that made it possible was the CineSlider’s nearly-infinitely adjustable tension knob. You can subtly apply tension to the slider with this control, and it allows you to move the slider with your fingers, yet the head will stay put once you stop moving it. On a system without such fine-grained tension control, these sort of repeated subtle movements would be a lot harder to accomplish. Particularly given the small window of time I had to move to each new mark. 4 seconds between shutter snaps was barely enough time to find my next mark.

The pan and tilt on our camera head was locked, thankfully the move was a simple lateral slide without any pan/tilt required. We chose a 16-35mm Canon zoom, framing it at 16mm low and wide to show off the sweet warehouse space, and used subtle foreground art direction to increase the sense of movement in the short distance we had to slide. Lighting was harsh HMI kicks from the sides and rear, with some stands intentionally left in the shot. The warehouse windows provided a touch of ambient fill and an interesting choppy-ness as the ambient light changed over time.

It all went off without a hitch…our artist and talent Eric Samuel Timm nailed his performance perfectly on time, and I managed to get through the 500+ shutter triggers with only one error (a dupe frame which was easily removed in post). What follows is a rough cut of the final timelapse assembly. Watch below:

ciy_timelapse

You can also check out some beautiful behind the scenes photos from our shoot, compliments of art director Grant Redwine. BTS Stills set #1 and set #2. Thanks to Terry Ohmart, our grip & DIT for the picture at the top of this post.

Interesting post over at Cinescopophilia entitled Camera Rig Knock Offs Do They Hurt The Market? Check it out.

At IBC, Sony revealed the latest iteration of the 35mm-sized sensor digital cinema camera they gave showed a peek of at NAB 2010. They say it will be “affordable” (draw your own conclusions on what that means) and available in early 2011. Good discussion over at DVinfo on this camera.

Kino Flo now has edison-style CFL bulbs for practical fixtures on-set. Just $14 each, and they match your big-boy Kino 3200 and 5600 color temperatures. Nice.

Jem Schofield’s latest Gearbox installment is all about finding non-standard or less obvious sources for fast (bright) prime lenses to add to your DSLR kit. Watch below.

So here’s an interesting announcement…the Atomos Ninja is a self-contained recorder box that offers HDMI input and records to one of three ProRes codec flavors. This looks similar to the $3000-ish Convergent Design nanoFlash (which records XDCAM flavors to Compact Flash media), or the $4000-ish AJA Ki-PRO (which records ProRes to pretty much any media variety). The Ninja has some unique options, and the price is also very attractive, at €795 (currently $1011 USD).

The box is pretty small in size, with a 4.3″ color touchscreen for configuration and settings. Input is HDMI only (with audio) and an additional 2-channel audio line-in. HD input formats include 1080i59.94, 1080i50, 1080p24, 1080p23.98, 720p59.94, and 720p50. SD formats include 480i, and 576i. The unit comes with two batteries, and is hot-swappable on the fly. You can apparently pull one battery and replace it with a fresh one without powering down the unit. Storage is via 2.5″ hard drive in various capacities, or 2.5″ SSD drives.

The Atomos Ninja not shipping at this time, they anticipate a December ship timeframe and are now accepting pre-orders (caveat emptor as always). If HDMI recording works for your camera system, this could be a really interesting and relatively low-cost “lightly-compressed” recording solution. It’s also an interesting option to consider for Red shooters…one of the attractive features of the ARRI Alexa camera is it’s ProRes output options. TV production loves this, as they can quickly drop these ProRes files into the editing workflow without processing. Not to mention that Red has not announced any intention of creating a ProRes output module for Epic. Perhaps a recorder solution like the Ninja is just what Red shooters need to fill that gap and offer a direct-to-edit “baked” format like ProRes in addition to Redcode Raw recording.

Dan Chung has posted a video on the Teradek Cube, talking about the tech and showing a quick demo of how this wireless HD transmitter works. They talk about how with a robust 4G network in place, the Cube could possibly stream directly from the camera, point to point, without the need for a news van location hookup. Clearly DSLR News Shooter is approaching this from a journalistic industry perspective, but there are many many many applications for filmmakers as well.

Recently I was at Birns & Sawyer LA, and I got to see Jared Abrams working with the Teradek. He was configuring the Cube to wirelessly stream live video from a DSLR to an iPad. I had to head out before seeing the final result, but it’s a brilliant application idea and just another example of the amazing tools that are coming out almost daily these days.

You can find out more about Teradek on their website, and the Cube is shipping now.

This is pretty creative…this creative group has rigged up dual Canon 5D MKII DSLRs with a beam-splitter, and using under/over-exposure settings + custom processing in post, created HDR video. It’s a striking visual effect when you crank up the HDR, though probably not practical for most shoots. However, the practicality comes when you see them process the HDR more subtly, to expand the dynamic range of the cameras and retain more highlight and shadow detail. Very cool. Watch below.

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II’s from Soviet Montage on Vimeo.

(Via @kevinshahinian)