Canon’s amazing 1200/5.6L USM tele still lens is a beast that weighs in at 36lbs, is over two and a half feet long and sports a massive 9″ wide front element. Canon builds this lens on a special order basis and since 1993 has shipped less than twenty of them. No word on what it costs new (if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it), but B&H does have one used 1200/5.6 for sale for a cool $99,000. Just in time for Valentines Day…

“The viewfinder is surprisingly bright, and though somewhat sluggish as compared to the latest-generation Canon EF lenses, the 1200 was usually able to nail the focus on the first pass. The hard part is figuring out what you’re focusing on because the angle of view is so narrow. If you’re not familiar with the landscape you’ll find yourself peering out over the top of the camera every so often trying to figure out what you’re looking at. As for image quality, even wide open it’s quite lovely. Stopped down to f/8 and f/11 it’s actually quite remarkable. How remarkable? From midtown Manhattan we were able to read the street signs on the corner of JFK Boulevard East and 43rd St. in Weehawkin New Jersey when viewing image files at pixel resolution.”

“…Apart from a few minor cosmetic blemishes, this particular lens is extremely clean inside and out. Included with this lens is a leather slip-on ‘lens cap’, a fitted aluminum trunk case, and a prodigious measure of ego satisfaction. Pack mule not included.”

Simply amazing. I’d love to see this on the front of a 35mm adapter rig…

Via Motionographer comes this unique approach to incorporating a shot list and project details in a work reel. Sweet.

I am an avid viewer of the Discovery Channel. Dirty Jobs is extremely entertaining, anyone interested in hosting should take a few cue from Mike Rowe. Survivorman is very engaging, feels “real” and can be downright harrowing (remember the jaguar in the rainforest episode?). The new series Some Assembly Required tickles the Henry Ford gene in viewers and provides even more family-friendly viewing (my son loves the show). Planet Earth provided some of the most captivating imagery I have ever laid eyes on. I remember sitting there, mouth agape during the show’s US premiere. With that show they truly raised the bar on the nature documentary genre. Everest: Beyond The Limit upped the drama ante with very animated characters on an amazing journey that seems like complete insanity to outsiders. Finally, Mythbusters is arguably one of the best shows on TV, certainly among the reality/doc genre.

So when Discovery’s latest series debuted, you can imagine how surprised I was to discover how shallow and un-engaging Smash Lab really is. On the surface it looks like a great idea. Take some of the best of the Mythbusters formula, mix in a few attractive hosts with a geeky bent, add a liberal dose of gratuitous slow-motion, and blow things up. Sounds great, right? Sadly, it is lacking in execution. The science presented on the show is shoddy at best, the concepts and theories appear only casually tested and largely unresearched, and (unless an hour of 1000fps explosions is enough to entertain you) the viewer is thoroughly disrespected. I’m not alone in my criticism of the show…Discovery has a Smash Labs blog and they’ve been getting absolutely slammed in the comments by viewers.
Continue reading ‘Can Discovery Save Smash Lab?’

Screenwriter and filmmaker John August has personally weighed in on his film The Nines showing up on BitTorrent link sites.

“I’m not bouncy with joy over my movie getting torrented, but I think it’s a stretch to equate unlawful downloading with traditional theft. As many commenters have pointed out, The Nines isn’t available in any legal form in many countries around the world, nor will it be in any foreseeable time frame. So I have a hard time arguing that a reader in Germany should pay for the movie when there’s no way he could.”

“…That’s why I have no problem with Sony and the MPAA going after bootleggers and other merchants of ill-gotten films. It’s not just the studios’ right to see that the law is enforced; it’s their job.”

For a slightly different point of view on this issue, read BitTorrent, A Boon To Independent Filmmakers. Thanks to Anthony for the tip. The Nines is available at Amazon beginning Tuesday January 29th.

In the wake of actor Heath Ledger’s death, Newsweek has published a few personal anecdotes from The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan. It is a touching and eloquent read. Here is a short excerpt.

“When you get into the edit suite after shooting a movie, you feel a responsibility to an actor who has trusted you, and Heath gave us everything. As we started my cut, I would wonder about each take we chose, each trim we made. I would visualize the screening where we’d have to show him the finished film—sitting three or four rows behind him, watching the movements of his head for clues to what he was thinking about what we’d done with all that he’d given us. Now that screening will never be real. I see him every day in my edit suite. I study his face, his voice. And I miss him terribly.”

Here is yet another example of how DRM ultimately screws the end user and potentially drives people that are willing to pay good money for content to less-than-legal methods of acquiring it. This is the story of a user who subscribes to Netflix’s streaming movie service. When he upgraded his PC with an HD monitor, DRM said no-no.

“When I tried to launch a streaming movie, I was greeted with an error message asking me to “resetâ€? my DRM…
When I called them they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft’s DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I’ve purchased from Amazon’s Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue.”

It always amazes me at the steps companies make to ensure their content will be as hard as possible for users to access…in their haste to protect content from piracy, they potentially drive even more users to piracy out of sheer frustration. Fortunately, some major companies are starting to see that DRM hurts more than helps. A number of labels have dabbled in DRM-free digital music, and it seems that Sony BMG is the latest to agree that DRM can be bad for consumers.

Jonny Lee, the creator of the $14 Steadicam and other unique indie-tastic solutions has come up with a Virtual Reality proof of concept program that works with a Wii Remote and sensor bar. It has obvious implications in the gaming world, particulary on the Wii platform. However, I see this as a potential tool for 3D artists and compositors. The ability to simple jog your head left or right to view and navigate around objects in a comp might be very useful. Here’s hoping someone picks up the torch and runs with this idea. You can download the software at Jonny’s site. Video embedded below.
Continue reading ‘Head Tracking for VR Displays with the WiiRemote’

The whole production crew of NBC’s Scrubs helps with a surprise proposal. I got a kick out of Zach Braff running the boom mic. Video below.
Continue reading ‘Engaged on the Set of Scrubs’

We here at FreshDV would like to take a moment and wish our North American and International readers a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo, Glædelig Jul, Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein glückliches Neues Jahr, Buon Natale or Buone Feste Natalizie, Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto, Srozhdestovm Kristovim, Joyeux Noël, Mele Kalikimaka, …..

We’re thankful for another fantastic year here at FreshDV, and look forward to many new developments and fresh content in the coming year. Thanks to all our sponsors and those who provided gear for reviews and tutorials. And of course thanks to you for reading, watching, and listening. Stay tuned at this space, the best is yet to come.

Kendal’s Update:
May all your productions be glitch free, diva free and highly profitable!! May you make many new friends who will stick with you for a lifetime! May all electronics function virus free and enjoy a long revenue producing lifespan! Merry Christmas God, bless everyone of ya’ll!!!

You know you want it. It’s Western Digital’s new 2.5″ notebook hard drive with a whopping 320GB of space, priced at a cool $200. Yeah, it only rotates at 5400 RPM, but what do you expect? It’s only 2007 after all! And they’ll have a 7200 RPM option out before you can say “Dang. I just upgraded my system with the 5400 RPM version and now I hate my life.” Here’s how to swap the drive in your Macbook or Macbook Pro with this new drive (or any other 2.5″ drive) using Leopard’s Time Machine.

NYT has a interesting video segment up, a short scene from “Revolver,” Guy Ritchie’s new film from across the pond. He talks about how they lit the scene with four 20K lights (!!!) and used a “special lens” that allowed them to keep both near and far subjects in focus. Sounds to me like a lens with an absurdly high f-stop rating. Ritchie also outlines the point he was trying to convey in the scene. It’s interesting to note that the Times gives the viewer the option of mixing the director’s voiceover with the film audio as they please.

(Via Flippant News)

So you know how in Corporate America it is somehow considered acceptable to use the painfully horrific (and equally unprofessional) Comic Sans font for memos, notices, and newsletters? Trajan is like that, only for movies. Goodiebag TV takes the font’s overuse to task in this humorous episode. “Russell Crowe has co-starred with Trajan three times now.” Video below. And while we’re dishing on design, Make My Logo Bigger Cream is not to be missed.
Continue reading ‘Trajan - The Comic Sans of Movies’

During production of The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Vivian made a behind the scenes documentary on the process. Even at 17 years of age she was an adept filmmaker and apparently a quite good at the art of interviewing as well, considering some of the very candid comments made by the film’s stars. The resulting 35-minute film is included in The Shining two-disc DVD release (also on HD-DVD and Blu-ray), and also happens to be up at Google Video. There is a version with Vivian Kubrick’s commentary as well. That one is really interesting, her commentary is very revealing about the process. She talks about the early model video tap that was used for playback on set, Garrett Brown’s mods to her Aaton camera rig, Jack Nicholson’s door-smashing technique, and much more. Finally, more food for thought on metaphors and “mistakes” in The Shining can be found here.

(Via Ticklebooth)

A few 133t H4X0rs have found a way to enable video recording on the iPhone. Right now the app only records five seconds of 15fps video to the iPhone’s RAM, but the developer says a future version will be able to record “somewhere from 15-30+ fps” with length only limited by the device’s storage. Video below.
Continue reading ‘Hackers FTW - IPhone Gets Video Recording’

In your off-topic news of the weird, it seems that Fox execs allowed Mike Judge’s latest film Idiocracy languish without an audience or proper promotion (just like his cult-fave Office Space), yet are running with the film’s idea of an energy drink that ultimately destroys the human race. Drink Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator!

“Fox wouldn’t support a film about Brawndo, the energy drink that destroys plants, debases the human race, and makes those who drink it ‘win at yelling’, but they are now putting wholehearted support behind the actual drink.”

“There’s no beating that kind of corporate rationale. More rich absurdity, meanwhile, surely lies in Fox’s choice of business partner: Redux Beverages having until now been best known for the last vastly caffeinated energy drink they launched - the interestingly named Cocaine.”

And people wonder why the entertainment business seems to be faltering… Watch Brawndo’s viral ad below (which happens to be a complete Powerthirst ripoff clone):
Continue reading ‘Win At Exercise With The Thirst Mutilator’