I recently worked on a short film by Amy Puzia called, “The Gift”.   The shoot was actually just an editing exercise for class at De Anza College, but in order to edit something, you have to shoot something, so we ended up doing this piece.  We had a very minimal crew, and did very minimal lighting.  In fact most of it was natural, or the ambient light was enhanced with a single HMI 400 Joker. It’s a silent film, so there is no audio. If anyone wants to put music to it, let me know.  The camera settings were tweaked to reduce the contrast of the 5d Mk II or 5Dii as I like to call it.  The contrast was reduced to

Amy edited the film in 1 day, and then it took another 4 hours of color correction inside apple color. Here you can see the difference between the two versions:

Download the PDF

Here is to hoping the Stages go by quickly so my RED ONE can get into the Stage 4 upgrade slot!  That and I’ve got Scarlet on the mind.

NATIVE R3D SUPPORT in FINAL CUT PRO!

Buried on the site is a listing of software applications that handle native .r3d files.  They list Final Cut Pro, so I wonder when we’ll be able to see that in action in Final Cut!!!!

If you have ever used the h.264 files from the 5D Mk II, 1D Mk IV or the 7D, you know that it’s not real time.  It’s not easy and the rendering is a real pain.  I an edit RED 2K proxy files in real time, but not Canon Quicktime movies from their dSLR cameras.  So now, that ability to convert those files to Apple Pro Res files is going to really speed up my editing.  The Plug-in works just like the P2 plugin for FCP.

As you can see you have the option to make these files in every flavor of Pro Res.  Personally, I have been using Apple Pro Res 422 HQ for most of my footage.

For an in-depth review and tutorial of the plug-in check out http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/ssimmons/story/canon_releases_a_dslr_plug_in_for_final_cut_pros_log_and_transfer_tool/

Two minutes later on the 9^th of January Jim Jannard announced the RED Pro 17-50 T2.9 zoom lens.  The price is $6000.  They dropped the price of the RED 18-50 Zoom lens to $3995 until supplies run out.  Prices on the used market dropped immediately, running between $2000 and $2800 for a used RED ZOOM.

This zoom lens was used to shoot the “snappy” footage of RED’s resident crustacean.

Since the announcement we have been waiting for more information about the lens.  Originally, slated to ship by RED DAY (February 13^th) the lens is still not yet shipping as of March 7^th.

Some good tidbits about the lens:

-       No i/Data

-       Fit’s Arri Cameras (flange depth is less than the RED Pro Primes)

-       Minium focus is 4” in front of the hood, 11” in front of the plane, and marked 1 foot on the lens

-       Outside ring diameter is 144mm

-       Threads on the inside of that ring at 139mm with 1.0 pitch.

-       Overall length is 129mm.

-       3.2 Pounds.

-      Covers 5K.

[Update] The 17-50 Does cover 5K 2:1 [update]More importantly, many people really want to know if it will cover the full 5K of the Mysterium-X s35 sensor.  This question has not yet been answered. Also, not answered, is the ability to hold focus over the zoom range.   The original 18-50 zoom is used more as a “variable prime” because it does not hold focus over the zoom range.

The release date has come and gone, and still no word on when it will ship.  However things are always moving forward at RED whether or not we see it.  Just the other day, word that EPIC prototypes are booting in 15 seconds was announced.  It’s the “Epic prototypes” comment that is important there.  After the prototypes are working, the Tattoo program will start.  Estimated time on that is currently 4 to 5 weeks from today, March 7^th.

We have said that much of the delivery dates rely on a successful ASIC spin. We have also indicated that we are not going to rush to release given market conditions and the overwhelming opinion of our customers to put out a finished product and not a prototype. I wouldn’t expect any type of update for a couple of months. The schedule should be more clear by then…

Jim

This seems to indicate that NEWS of the release won’t be out until October, I’m guessing with a limited release around December/January. At this point, I wish I would have went with the RED ONE and could have been shooting for a year on it. However, waiting for the S35 Scarlet is still financially the right choice.

The biggest question for this blog is “How did we do it?”

The answer to that is, exactly how I do my day job.  My day job is Technical Directing and Compressing live webcasts for a fortune 500 company.  At the company we use Windows Media as our main live streaming solution, but have been working with Flash and Quicktime for certain events. For “Exit” we knew we wanted to go with Flash to offer the most compatibility.  Flash has a huge installed base and works quite well for streaming.  Bit for Bit, it’s not the best looking codec to use, but it is cross platform and browser compatible.

We set up a computer running an Intel Quad Core processor, a Digital Rapids capture card and Flash Media Live Encoder.  We set up our RMTP stream to a server running Flash Media Server.  We originally tested this on an HP AMD64 machine that was a few years old, but it was choking and only allowed 19 or 20 frames per second, which is why we went to a brand new Quad-core system.

Using Flash CS-4, CSS, and HTML I created a simple front end to run the video in.  I searched the web and found AJAX chat and implemented it.

That was the down and dirty funcionality of the Streaming Part.  We were lucky enough to have my friend Greg set up the encoder and test the stream.

Moving on to the video production side of things, is where we ran into a few problems.  We were working with a number of unknowns prior to the actual event.  We didn’t have the time or budget to have a day of rehearsal on the 24th as we were hoping to do.  So that left us just the 25th to set up test, light, and rehearse. This caused us a lot of pain during the event, which is why we ended up running a bit behind.

I’m used to working with full studio configured cameras, such as the Sony D50 that allows me to control Iris, color balance, and black balance from video village.  In this case however we did not have access to a flypack with our limited budget.  Instead we went with 3 HVX-200 cameras and a Sony EX-1.  The sony was graciously donated to the production from Brett at Prompter People and the additional HVX was from SJSU.

We ran those cameras with S-video cables through monitors, and into a Panasonic MX-70 8 input switcher on the main inputs.  A 5th input came from a Mac Pro through an AJA I/O HD via SDI.  The playback of the Audio and Video Roll-ins was from a Final Cut Pro Timeline.  This is also how we rolled in our countdow.

Audio consisted of a Mackie 16 channel mixer, 8 wireless Sennhieser microphones as well as a few off brand wireless mics.  We have a boom op covering one scene where we didn’t have enough microphones to cover everyone.

Throughout the morning and early afternoon, I set up video village while Chris and crew set up all the lighting and the show.  Video village set up took longer than originally planned, as we were waiting on some equipment to arrive after it was used.  This is also due to the new aspects were were not counting on.  The AJA I/O was freshly opened up and drivers downloaded and installed.  This was it’s maiden voyage if you will.  Set up basically contined all the way up to 6:50 at which point we realized that we needed AT LEAST one rehearsal.  Well we didn’t get it.  We did however get about 4 scenes into the show 10 minutes before we went live.  So, we in all essences didn’t have a single rehearsal for the live show.  The live was our rehearsal.

It was crazy.  No one really knew when things were happening and the script that I had, wasn’t up to date.  Things changed in editing the produced episode to they had to be handled on the fly.  We also had problems with our Clear-com, as the wireless wasn’t working and I had only one way communication with 3 of our 4 cameramen.  The 4th was flying free out there.

So that’s the basic story of how it happened and the gear we used to do it.

We’ll see how well this puppy shoots now!

Canon 5d mk2 Manual Control

5D Mk2 manual control

The real question for this is, why no 24p? If this really is by popular demand, why not offer 24P as well. I think that Canon’s source for their popular demand is journalists and other still shooters trying to use the camera as a real video camera, NOT indie filmmakers.

Indie filmmakers want 24P. news organizations do not.

This however does open up the possibility for updating the camera to allow 24fps should enough people ask for it.

The new “Lowry Theater Company” is a massive space. A huge theater, big stage, large prop and wardrobe rooms, and a large black box theater, left us in need of more lights. Luckily Prompter People came through. We were able to use several of their new LED lights, called Flolights. We use three LED 500′s and five LED 1000′s

These lights provide a broad and long throw without the heat. The barn doors allow us to control the spill of the lights as well. The first thing you will notice is that on close ups, we finally have the lights to properly accomplish 3-point lighting. You can see in episode 8 how that tool changes the look of the show. With all of our lights, we now have enough light to accomplish the 3 point lighting for multiple cameras. And we no longer run the risk of throwing the breakers! These lights use considerably less power than equivalent “hot lights.” In fact the lights consumer just one-tenth of the power.

If you notice the credits to Episode 8, you will see that Chris Faulkner is listed as the Director of Photography. Chris has been shooting with us since we moved to the new location and has been handling a lot of the gaffer duties during these shoots. I had a job that required me to travel to Germany for a week, and during that time, EXIT Stage Left had 2 shooting days. Chris took charge of the camera department during that time, and used the new LED lights to great success. Those two shooting days resulted in footage for all of one episode and most of the next one.

I resumed my duties as the Director of Photography a few weeks ago and have been delighted with the LED lights. These lights, when diffused with frost gel provide some extremely smooth and powerful light. The built in dimmers give us the infinite control of the light. The throw from these lights are several times more than fluorescent light fixtures as well, and are an excellent replacement for both Hot Lights and Fluorescent lights. This allows us to move the lights back from the actors and give them more space to move around. This is extremely important when we are doing the improv elements to the show.