28 MUST-HAVES For FCP Editors!!

"14 Must Have FREE Plugins & Tools for Final Cut Pro" from THEDVSHOW

"The DV Show lists 14 FREE FCP tools. Here’s 14 paid ones as well." From PVC

Things are HOT & HEAVY over at RED Right Now. . . (Also, Happy Birthday, Empire Strikes Back!)

There's been a slew of REALLY COOL NEWS from RED. . . here's 3 things that I think you'll find interesting. (BTW, that's a picture of a fully Functioning Epic)


10 Scarlet Questions from Joseph Hutson

Meet Ghost (EPIC Production Model?)

EPIC STAGE Clarification and update




Also, because it's cool, here's a trailer for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK circa 1955:

Canon Rebel T2i: Pretty Cool, From What I hear.

Dalton Brown, a good buddy of mine, just bought a T2i, and raves about it. Other people, i've heard, not so much. . . but it seems kinda neat. . . Can't wait to get my hands on one!!

Here's some stuff to read, in case you're on the fence, like me. . . seems like it's kinda fun!

"Canon Rebel T2i Review: This Should Be Your First DSLR" (From Gizmodo)


"How would you change Canon's EOS Rebel T2i?" from ENGADGET

"ADDING 550D SUPPORT TO THE NEW CANON EOS FINAL CUT PLUGIN" From FCPUser





^Here's a Video Basically outlining the FCPUser Post, just not as good.

Bill Gates Told Steve Jobs About the iPad in 2007

From Gizmodo

I don't think you'll have one device. I think you'll have a full-screen device that you can carry around and you'll do dramatically more reading off of that... yeah, I mean, I believe in the tablet form factor [...] You'll have some way of having a hardware keyboard and some settings for that. And then you'll have the device that fits in your pocket, which the whole notion of how much function should you combine in there, you know, there's navigation computers, there's media, there's phone.

~Bill Gates

NYFA RED Online Workflow FCP 7

Here's the NEWLY UPDATED RED ONE Online Workflow for NYFA Students. . . EVERYONE @NYFA USQ Edit Lab knows/trusts this, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask any one of us.

~Mike





ONLINE RED Workflow For FCP 7 ONLY (updated 05.22.10)

OVERVIEW:

The RED One is a Film Camera with a digital back.  The Imaging Sensor is The Film Plane, De-Bayering is the Chemical Bath, Color Science (LUT/Colorspace) is the Lab Timing, and Transcode is the Telecine.  Your R3D files are a Digital Negative.  Treat RED footage like film, and you will have good results.

The RED is NOT a Video Camera: it does no onboard image processing.

The RED is NOT an HD Camera: it does not shoot 720/1080

Glossary of Terms

• "The Caboose Effect"
• Plan from Front to Back.
• Start With Distribution, then work your way through Acquisition
• RAW
• A File that contains minimally processed data.
• Contains Pixel Data from an Image Sensor
• Also Known as a Digital Negative
• Online Editing
• Handling the deliverable footage
• The FINAL stage of editing
• Offline Editing
• Handling Transcoded versions of the RAW footage
• NOT THE ORIGINAL FOOTAGE
• Proxy
• Footage that stands in the place of the ORIGINAL footage
• Codec
• "Compression-Decompression"
• A set of instructions to Compress data for storage, and De-Compress for Playback
• a specific algorithm for compressing or audio* 
• Decompression
• the process of restoring a video or audio file for playback from a compressed video, graphics, or audio file.
• Compression
• the process by which video, graphics, and audio files are reduced in size.** 
• Color Space
• a way to interpret numerical values for Color (RGB/CMYK/Etc)
• A method of mathematically representing color for use with a specific display or medium.*
• LUT
• LookUp Table
• a set of instructions used to profile color and gamma to simulate their appearance on a given mediom, such as an HD display, or a specific film stock.*
• Gamma
• Mathematical method for calibrating an image's brightness values for use with different displays*
• Debayer
• the mathematical process of interpreting RAW image data from a sensor back into a full-color image.*
• DIRECTLY related to VISUAL QUALITY of your footage
• the PROCESSING of your DIGITAL NEGATIVE
• How it breaks down the Wavelet
• Quality (Down Convert is Size)
• 
  
• Import
• Bring Data INTO a program
• Export
• Send Data OUT OF a program (Create a NEW TYPE of file)
• Transcode
• Convert video or audio data from one codec, resolution, and/or format to another.*
• Redspace
• A custom gamma and color profile used for viewing RED footage

THE ONLINE EDIT

• Preparing Your Footage for Transcode
• Using Your Camera Reports, Mark the RDC's that you want to Transcode in the RDM folders.
• "Don't Print Bad Takes"
• NEVER DELETE - You may need some of these files later.
• DO NOT RENAME ANYTHING THAT THE CAMERA GENERATES
• NEVER save or add ANYTHING to your original files:  Make a Backup, and LOCK IT.
• Transcode in RedRushes
• Step 1 - Add Clips
• Add ONLY the RDC files you marked from your camera reports
• Step 2 - The Render Tab
• Debayer Quality: 1/2
• Timecode: External/TOD
• Look Source: Camera
• Color Space: CameraRGB 
• Will be editing Digitally/MOST LIKELY for Digital Distribution (For Digital Delivery)
• Gamma Space: Redspace
• VERY Close to the way you monitored on-set.
• Step 3 - The Resize Tab
• [Check] Scale
• Preset: 1920x1080 (For HD Delivery)/2048x1080 for 2k Delivery (56 pixels on each side)
• Fit/Stretch: Fit Width
• Step 4 - The Output Tab
• Output Format: Quicktime Movie
• Quicktime Codec: Apple ProRes 422
• OUTPUT FOLDER!!
• Set to a New, SPECIAL folder on your Hardrive.
• Step 5 - Click Start     
• Import Into FCP
• File -> Import File
• Cut Your Film
• Repeat as Necessary!

*From RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera by Noah Kadner

** From Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut 7 by Diana Weynand

Triton Festival, September 3-5, 2010

VampireFreaks & Audiolust Present: TRITON FESTIVAL, 9/3-9/5, 2010

Aksel Stasny vDSLR Time-lapse

It Seems Like Fate - Timelapse test in Chinatown from Aksel Stasny on Vimeo.

Shot with Canon 5DmkII, in Chinatown, Manhattan.

40 Minutes on DSLR Filmmaking with Shane Hurlburt (The Christian Bale Freak-Out Guy)

I stumbled across this over on PvC. . .


I haven't watched it yet, but I figured it was totally up our alley; here's the tag from PVC;

Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut and his collaborators at Bandito Brothers in LA have been shaking up the industry as they embrace the DSLR filmmaking revolution. We sat down with Shane, Bandito’s Jacob Rosenberg, and publicist Hesh Rephun at their amazing LA-area facility to talk about DSLR filmmaking. You can watch this 40-minute interview in two parts here.

-OR-

You could just click below and watch them here. :)

Conversations - Bandito / Hurlbut 01

Conversations - Bandito / Hurlbut 02


PS. I love you, Pro-Video Coalition, even if you ARE wrongly skewed in favor of Premier.

EDIT: HA! I knew Shane Sounded familiar. From his Wikipedia article;

In 2008 Hurlbut again worked with director McG, as director of photography on the film Terminator Salvation. During shooting for the film in July 2008, Hurlbut faced an expletive-ridden tirade from actor Christian Bale, who berated Hurlbut for walking into a scene involving Bale and actress Bryce Dallas Howard. Hurlbut responded calmly and apologized several times to Bale, and continued shooting for seven hours after the incident. On February 6, 2009 Bale told KROQ radio that he and Hurlbut talked after the incident and "resolved this completely". Bale acknowledged the two worked together for several hours after the incident, and "at least a month after that", and noted "I've seen a rough cut of the movie and he has done a wonderful job. It looks fantastic".

Here's the recording. . . this thing will NEVER die. . .






You gotta love the Internet!!

Build Your Own 16tb NAS!!

From Engadget:

. . . Meet the Black Dwarf, a custom network-attached-storage device from the mind of video editor Will Urbina, packing 16TB of RAID 5 magnetic media and a 1.66GHz Atom N270 CPU into a completely hand-built Lexan, aluminum and steel enclosure. Urbina says the Dwarf writes at 88MB per second and reads at a fantastic 266MB per second, making the shuttlecraft-shaped 12.7TB array nearly as speedy as an SSD but with massive capacity and some redundancy to boot. . .

Here's the build videos. . . I totally want one. :)








IF anyone would like to donate a 16tb NAS to their Favorite Post-Tech, feel free to email me at SCREWFILMS[at]GMAIL.COM

Archiving Film for the NEXT 2000 Years. . .

The Library Of Congress Unlocks the Ultimate Archive System

I saw this over at Gizmodo today, an it really tripped me out. . .

One of the Supers over at the Library of Congress wrote an article for Creative Cow, outlining their archival methods. A GREAT read for ANYONE in our industry.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Queens Blvd,,United States

A Movie A Day - MAy 6th, 2010

Phantasm

Dell Mini 10v Hackintosh

Dell Mini 10v Hackintosh

They DO exist! Now, if it would only run FCP. . . :/

SNES Emulator running on an Ipad. . . FTW

What? Did you think all I did was work on movies?


/me wants

Behind the Scenes with ARRI Alexa

ARRI Alexa Camera Test Behind the Scenes from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.

I can't wait to train on this camera. :)

Triton Festival - NYC -September 3rd-5th

Looks like the SCREWFILMS crew is gonna be shooting. . . see you there!!

The NIN Drive Project - NIN Drive [Live recordings from 89-09]

Here's a link to something I'm looking forward to contributing to:

http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?25,1066910,1070390#msg-1070390

Here's a quote from the post:

NIN DRIVE READY FOR LAUNCH!!!!! - 04/29/2010:

After Dassarri recieved the NIN Drive he worked crazily on it to get the first inital drive ready to start this project. Very excited to get this underway, here is a message from Dassarri, it covers the whole project for more info check out the drive page as well;

Dassarri: Hello all!

I haven't posted anything in a long while, in part because I've been so actively busy with all things NIN Drive. Bad news for my free time, but hopefully good news for all of you! The initial NIN Drive is just about ready and consists of roughly 300 gigs of live audio recordings from 1989 to 2009. Ryan and I have been spending a lot of time thinking about and talking through the finer points of the Drive and we'd like to share some of those with you.


1) Regarding videos: We absolutely plan on having video recordings be an integral part of the NIN Drive, but are holding off on that part of the project for now. The reasons are numerous, including that it will take much more time to accurately determine generation between various VHS and DVD copies. We would like to launch the project as soon as possible and thus will be only launching audio for now while we work on video.


2) Regarding membership: By no means do we intend to create an "@#$%&" network in which the privileged few get to enjoy an archived collection of all circulating NIN sources, but we also do not intend to spawn a group of leechers who simply wait for the next update and never contribute to the mission of the Drive Project. To balance these two extremes, there will be membership requirements which must be met to join the project and to remain a part in it. The details are still being worked out, but essentially come down to being an active part of the NIN collecting community. All members are expected to contribute to the drive by tracking down new sources, finding upgrades to existing sources, or finding evidence for correcting source information for recordings already on the drive. This will be done by a point system and, occasionally, we plan on posting "bounties" for especially slippery sources that need to be added to the drive. BY NO MEANS do you mean this process and these requirements to the be prohibitive in any way: anyone can join and remain a part of the NIN Drive Project. All you have to do is put in some work to keep it active!


3) Regarding torrents: The Drive wouldn't be where it is now if it weren't for torrents. It was great to see how many tapers decided to share their recordings through such sites as Dime A Dozen and Demonoid and torrents remain the fastest and easiest means of getting new sources. Torrents also, however, tend to alienate a lot of tapers and stress otherwise happy trading relationships. We highly (HIGHLY) discourage torrenting sources on the Drive unless YOU are the taper of the source (in which case you can obviously do as you please!). The Drive is intended as a live archive and trading tool, not a quick means to fix your Dime ratio. Any and all sources on the Drive should be used to trade for new items and upgrades: that's how the project grows.


4) Getting a drive: Seeing as the video part of the Project is on hold for now, the NIN Drive will take up approximately 300 gigabytes. As such, we would recommend you send in at least a 500 gigabyte hard drive to allow for substantial updates before needing to increase the size of your drive. For starters, Ryan and I will have identical copies of the NIN Drive and will be able to make copies for others. Simply send us the drive with return shipping and we'll get them back to you in a timely fashion. Conveniently (not so much for the initial drive, but it'll work out well for all of you), Ryan runs a Mac and I run a PC - thus you will simply have to ship your drive to him or me depending on your operating system and all will be well!

That's about it for now. We look forward to launching this project soon and hope you guys will enjoy it. And yes, to settle inevitable apprehensions, if you already contributed to the drive or are the taper of one or more sources on the drive, you will be given "credit" for the membership requirements. Like I said, we're still working out those details and just want to make sure that everyone stays active and involved and uses the NIN Drive as a trading tool to collect as many NIN sources as possible!

Best,
Chris/Dassarri

Look out for some SCREWFILMS video contributions!

A Movie A Day - May 3rd, 2010

Invictus

A Movie A Day - May 2nd, 2010

The Lovely Bones

A Movie A Day - May 1st, 2010

Iron Man 2