Monday, August 13, 2012

2012: The Year of 4K



I just found the BEST thread about our 4K future over at Reduser 
about our 4k future, started by none other than Mark Pederson, founder of Offhollywood (full disclosure, I worked in their lab. They're fucking rad.)





Here's Mark, from the post:

2012 is shaping up to be the year of 4K. 4K Projectors for the home from more than one manufacturer - 4K TVs from 6 manufacturers that I am aware of. (5 confirmed - 6th is an exciting wild card rumor) http://smarthouse.com.au/TVs_And_Lar...ED_TV/T8A4B6T8 You can talk all you want about the slow and poor transition to HD - and you can sit there shooting 1080p content and claim that it will be many, many years before we are watching TV shows in 4K - but .... you'd be DEAD WRONG. Things are VERY different now. TV is the internet. HBO GO has better compression in HD than some carriers. APPLE's VOD numbers for indie films are insane (in a good way). There's COMPETITION to deliver content - Google, Amazon, Apple, Hulu (with more than twice as much as the combined total of video streamed from the websites of ABC, CBS, the CW, Fox and NBC) - so .... delivery platforms will need to differentiate themselves with QUALITY. I'm aware of one early start-up company already working to be the first all 4K broadcast channel. 2012 the 4K dominos will fall. 1080 is the next Black and White. (and yes - you can still make a good movie in black and white ala "The Artist" - but harder when it comes to financing and selling the content)


Check it out HERE: 2012: "The Year of 4k" (from Reduser)

Friday, August 10, 2012

RED DRAGON: About Official as RED gets until it ships. . .



This came across my feed reader today. . . Looks like we've all got some 6K coming up in our future. . .


I, for one, can't wait to see some footage from this. . . here's hopin' I can import 6k into FCP7!!

Click here to go to the Reduser forum post!

From the Engadget Article:
Red Camera's bombastic CEO, Jim Jannard, says that internal testing of the new 6K Dragon sensor proves that it's the new "resolution and dynamic range king." He also claims it will be "the cleanest sensor you have ever seen, ISO 2000 looks better than MX [the current sensor] at ISO 800." The imaging chip was first outed at NAB in April, promising 15+ stops of DR and 120fps at a full 5K of resolution, with $6,000 upgrades for Epic customers by the end of the year. Owners of the $9,700 (brain only) Scarlet-X will also get the Dragon, though no price or date has been given yet for that camera. Needless to say, some independent testing will be needed to substantiate his claims, but Jannard sure does sound confident.

Monday, August 6, 2012

How to Train your Mountain Lion.


So, I took the plunge on and installed Mountain Lion on my Macbook Air. . .

Right now, everything seems to be running pretty smooth (Instead of doing a fresh install, I just upgraded my Crufty Lion install). . . and while I wait for my copy of David Pogue's New Missing Manual to show up at my door, I'm just gonna bang on it until it breaks.

Here's some neat tricks that I've found to jazz up your MLion Experience:

Open Notification Center with a Keyboard Shortcut in OS X Mountain Lion (from OSXDaily)
Notification Center keyboard shortcut
Mountain Lion 101: Notification Center in a hot corner (from TUAW)
I've been seeing this ping around the Blogowebz for the past day or so. . . it's kinda a no brainer, but still pretty neat. Also, a 2 finger swipe left from OFF the track pad will activate notification center, as well.



Customize OS X Mountain Lion’s Notification Center Background (From Lifehacker)

Install Java in OS X Mountain Lion(from OSXDaily)

Keep your Mac from sleeping in Mountain Lion (From Macworld)

Restore RSS Visualizer screen saver (From Macworld)



Also, looks like Candybar is free now. . . so check that out.
CandyBar, Mountain Lion, and Beyond
Panic's Candy Bar is now free, goes to Iconfactory (from TUAW)
Mac Tweaking Tool CandyBar Is Now Free, Updated for Mountain Lion (from Lifehacker)

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Patton Oswalt is Awesome.


Here's a letter from Patton Oswalt to Comedians in 2012. Stolen from /Film



Dear comedian in 2012:
How are you? I am good. In answer to your last letter, the mozzarella sticks at the Irvine Improv do taste weird. I’m taking your advice and sticking with the nachos.
Hey, ‘know what I was thinking the other day? Everything I know about succeeding as a comedian and ultimately as an artist is worthless now, and I couldn’t be happier about that.
I started doing comedy in the summer of 1988. That was a different time, wasn’t it? Joe Piscopo was president, Mary Lou Retton won the Cold War, and Andy Kindler turned 50
If I hadn’t popped that goddamn ‘P’, the Piscopo joke would’ve annihilated.
When I say everything I know about succeeding a comedian is worthless, I know what I’m talking about because everything I know became worthless twice in my lifetime.
The first time was the evening of May 22, 1992. I’d been doing standup almost four years at that point, and that was Johnny Carson’s last ever Tonight Show.
Up until that night, the way you made it in comedy was very clear, simple, straightforward. You went on Carson, you killed, you got called over to the couch, and the next day you had your sitcom and your mansion, and you’re made. Just ask Drew Carey and Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres. And Bill Clinton. That’s how you did it.
But now, Johnny was gone and he wasn’t coming back.
All the comedians I remember starting out with in D.C., all the older ones, told me over and over again ‘you gotta work clean, you gotta get your five minutes, and you gotta get on Carson.’ And it all comes down to that.
And in one night, all of them were wrong. And not just wrong, they were unmoored. They were drifting. A lot of these bulletproof comics I’d opened for, whose careers seemed pre-destined, a lot of them never recovered from that night. You’ll never hear their names. They had been sharks in a man-made pond and had been drained. They decided their time had passed.
Keep that in mind for later. They had decided their time had passed.
The second time everything I knew about comedy became worthless has been petty much every day for the last three years.
I know that’s not an exact date. Some other younger, not yet famous name in this room – you are going to pinpoint that date 20 years from now. But for now, every day for about the last few years will have to suffice.
I just want to give you a brief timeline of my career up to this point, when I knew it was all changing again. Listen to my words very carefully. Two words will come up again and again and they’re going to come back later along with that phrase “they decided” and people are going to carry me around the room.
I was lucky enough to get hired onto King of Queens in 1998. I had nine years on that show. Money, great cast, even better writers, a lot of fun. I bought a house. Then I was lucky enough to get cast as a lead voice in a Pixar movie in 2007. Acclaim, money, I got to meet a lot of my heroes. Then I was lucky enough to get cast on The United States of Tara on Showtime. I got to watch Toni Collette work. I got to perform Diablo Cody’s writing. After which, I was lucky enough to get cast in Young Adult, which is where I got to make out with Charlize Theron. I will use that as an icebreaker if i ever meet Christina Ricci.
I’ve been lucky enough to be given specials on HBO, Comedy Central, and Showtime. As well as I’ve been lucky enough to release records on major labels, and I was lucky they approached me to do it. And that led to me being lucky enough to get Grammy nominations.
I know that sounds like a huge ego-stroking credit dump. But if you listened very carefully, you would have heard two words over and over again: “lucky” and “given.” Those are two very very dangerous words for a comedian. Those two words can put you to sleep, especially once you get a taste of both being “lucky” and being “given.” The days about luck and being given are about to end. They’re about to go away.
Not totally. There are always comedians who will work hard and get noticed by agents and managers and record labels. There will always be an element of that. And they deserve their success. And there’s always going to be people who benefit from that.
What I mean is: Not being lucky and not being given are no longer going to define your career as a comedian and as an artist.
Remember what I said earlier about those bulletproof headliners who focused on their 5 minutes on the Tonight Show and when it ended they decided their opportunity was gone? They decided. Nobody decided that for them. They decided.
Now, look at my career up to this point. Luck, being given. Other people deciding for me.
In the middle of the TV shows and the albums and the specials, I took a big chunk of my money and invested it in a little tour called The Comedians of Comedy. I put it together with my friends, we did small clubs, stayed in shitty hotel rooms, packed ourselves in a tiny van and drove it around the country. The tour was filmed for a very low-budget documentary that I convinced Netflix to release. That became a low-budget show on Comedy Central that we all still own a part of, me and the comedians. That led to a low budget concert film that we put on DVD.
At the end of it, I was exhausted, I was in debt, and I wound up with a wider fanbase of the kind of people I always dreamed of having as fans. And I built that from the ground up, friends and people I respected and was a fan of.
And I realize now I need to combine both of the lessons I’ve learned.
I need to decide more career stuff for myself and make it happen for myself, and I need to stop waiting to luck out and be given. I need to unlearn those muscles.
I’m seeing this notion take form in a lot of my friends. A lot of you out there. You, for instance, the person I’m writing to. Your podcast is amazing. Your videos on your YouTube channel are getting better and better every single one that you make, just like when we did open mics, better and better every week. Your Twitter feed is hilarious.
Listen, I’m doing the Laugh Trench in Milwaukee next week. Is there any chance for an RT?
Your friend, Patton Oswalt