Ok so first you have to win some festival awards or at least be an official selection. Then you have to be on Windows. That said here's a very cool application that will make the creation of festival laurels for your movie's poster, DVD box, etc very simple.
EZLeaves is a FREE application that allows to quickly and easily generate custom festival laurel leave images. Features include:
Choose from four different laurel leave styles
Use any system-defined font
Export to JPG or BMP
Define up to 10 lines of custom text
Full control over the height and font settings of each
line, or you can use one font and color for all lines
EZLeaves runs on Windows and requires at least 1024x768 desktop resolution. For more information, visit this site:
Here's something interesting. An app that gives you native MXF in all QuickTime applications including FCP. Calibrated Software's unique solution successfully joins the separate video and audio P2 MXF files so that Final Cut Pro sees them all as ONE file - complete with TimeCode and Reel Name. PullDown can also be removed or added for select frame rates. And you're not just limited to Final Cut Pro, you can also natively import files in Compressor, Motion and Sound Track Pro.
Not only that but they have also unveiled a DVCPROHD decoder for Windows. This is something our friends across the aisle have been requesting for a long time. Calibrated{Q} DVCProHD Decode is a multi-threaded DVCProHD QuickTime Codec(Decode Only) that enables you to view QuickTime DVCProHD Movies in QuickTime Player and other 3rd party applications that support QuickTime. Check out both at Calibrated:
This question comes up a lot- how does one label a DVD-R? I would never use a print on inkjet disc- because they smear with just a droplet of moisture nor stick on labels because they peel and jam. Instead- I'd go for one of three technologies- depending on budget and how professional the labels need to look:
1. Sharpie. This is cheap as dirt and works like a charm for sending to replication houses and for internal backups. But not so much given to clients- looks decidely ghetto for that...
2. LightScribe- this is a type of DVD burner than works with special media and lets you burn a monochrome image directly onto the disc surface. Looks a lot more pro than Sharpie for clients and has no issues with peeling off.
Now here's something interesting, the folks over at Silverado Systems have partnered up with Vuze to create a different kind of contest. OpenCut is a completely open-source film competition designed to encourage people to take professionally shot material and edit it in their own way. As there is no "one way" to tell a story, so too can stories benefit from being re-edited and re-told from many different vantage points and perspectives.
They have a short film shot on the RED camera with dailies they'll copy over to your hard drive. Then you cut it altogether any way you want using Final Cut Pro. It's a good way to get your hands on RED footage if you haven't already and maybe even get credited as the editor on the final version as they submit it to festivals.
Here's a tool for anyone working with the solid-state and tapeless workflow, for example the Panasonic HVX200 and Sony EX1. If you've been dragging and dropping footage from your folders to your hard drive you could be a bit more at risk than you realize.
ChronoSync is a data management tool that allows you to efficiently synchronize files and folders from one disk location to another with full verification and resume capabilities. In other words, it's perfect for copying footage from your SxS card or P2 card onto your hard drive.
About the only real drawback with ChronoSync is that it doesnt generate a checksum for the files. So verifying can be a a bit slow.
For more information and to order, visit econtechnologies. Here's the link:
If you're having any problems with Sony XDCAM EX footage the latest version of the XDCAM transfer software might be a big help. It has some new error correction built in that can recover corrupted material.
The PDZ-KP1 XDCAM Transfer Software is an import plug in for Final Cut Pro. XDCAM Transfer Version 2.5 supports the current XDCAM HD and SD optical products, the new PDW-U1 optical XDCAM drive, and the PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX camcorder which records on SxS flash cards.
Once we have the actual shot, we can then control the downloading of footage from the camera using Vision Research’s software. Thus far they’ve only released a version that runs on Windows. In order to preserve the Mac-loving image of Simplemente, we decided to run it on a MacBook Pro with Boot Camp. We can then select the ins and outs of any particular shot. Typically the exact moment you want to save is a tiny fraction of that 6 minute take and the rest is a lot of frames with no activity you can delete. The selected portions are then saved out to a hard drive using Vision Research’s proprietary Cine file format.
I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine. Here's part one of the second article looking at Simplemente's work with the Phantom HD camera:
Rune Hansen and Monica Reina at Simplemente in Mexico City recently acquired a Phantom HD Digital Cinema camera from Vision Research. We got to shoot a bunch of slow-motion footage and then worked with it in Final Cut Pro to create demo reels for theatrical projection. We needed to accomplish all of this in the space of about 48 hours.
The Phantom HD’s claim to fame is the ability to shoot uncompressed, high speed footage at up to 1,000 frames per second (fps) and up to 2K (2048x2048 pixels) resolution using a special CMOS imager. It accepts standard PL-mount 35mm cinema lenses and is also capable of capturing in standard and HD resolutions from 1 fps all the way up to 1,000.
I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine(which I named btw). Here's part two of the first article looking at an Apple network system that is being used at the Beijing Olympics this summer in China. For part one click here.
Simplemente chose to work with Gallery Software, a UK-based company that has been making QuickTime-compatible applications for over a decade. For the Beijing project, Simplemente selected Gallery’s SIENNA, a complete integration suite for connecting Final Cut Pro workstations to the traditional newsroom broadcast workflow. SIENNA was developed in response to the huge demand for Final Cut Pro integration from the world's leading news broadcasters. It brings compatibility to existing newsroom equipment for workflows based around native QuickTime and enables single media shared storage with Apple's Xsan.
I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro Supermeet at NAB this year. Here's part one of the first article looking at an Apple SAN network system that is being used at the Beijing Olympics this summer in China:
Last NAB, we visited Simplemente, a production/post-production house and Apple Authorized Training Center/Dealer based in Mexico City. They’ve been working hard alongside one of their biggest clients, Televisa, the world’s largest Latin American broadcaster. This year Simplemente embarked on its most ambitious project yet, a complete post-production solution for Televisa’s coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.
Here's one last little NAB item from RED. Interesting little device, essentially it's a 4K media server in a $1,000 box. You encode your 4K footage to REDCODE, burn to a standard dual-layer DVD-R and voila you have a 4K file you can playback directly to a projector. This could prove to be revolutionary to theatrical and festival presentation. Or not... Let's let time, actual delivered product and reality tell us!
SPECIFICATIONS:
* PLAYS 4K, 2K, 1080P, 720P AND SD FROM RED DISC AND RED EXPRESS
* ALSO PLAYS NATIVE RAW R3D FILES FROM COMPACT FLASH
SPECIFICATIONS, DELIVERY DATES AND DESIGN ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.
I mentioned this briefly in my series on how to get your film distributed and I wanted to expand on it just a little. I cannot emphasize this enough, get photos of your movie as you're making it. Now there are two basic types of photos you need and both are important: behind the scenes and production stills.
Behind the scenes photography are the photos where you can see the movie crew and the gear being used to make the movie. Now of course you'll be tempted to photograph your cool crane that you managed to borrow or steal for a day or the Steadicam operator running after your actress. Or maybe you have a car mount or maybe a really nice Panavision or RED camera. These are all great to have but not the most important.
The most important behind the scenes photo, as least as far as the success of your movie is concerned is a shot of you, standing with one of your actors or near a movie camera pointing. Now this is silly, but read just about any movie magazine like Entertainment Weekly, US, Maxim, Moviemaker, etc and you'll see oddles of the directors, "directing." Now of course some of us might actually direct like this but probably not. Anyways it's a must.
There has been a lot of fuss over the use of the Duel Systems Duel Adapter (PC-express to PCMCIA card adapter) in conjunction with the Mac Book Pro. New users and others migrating up from their older PowerBooks with a built-in PCMCIA slot have posted many entries expressing frustration with the integration of the Duel Adapter with the Mac Book Pro. Mostly this comes from failure of P2 cards to mount on the desktop after a previous card has been ejected. Users experience this problem whether or not they are using a program like HD Log or P2 CMS, or just plain old drag and drop for offloading. This might lead one to believe that the problem lies with the adapter itself and not with the P2 workflow, but my experience is that this is probably not the case.
Here's the first bit of info out the gate from RED about their new Scarlet Pocket Pro Camera:
Not confirmed but rumor is under $3,000 SRP. Take that AVCHD.
* NEW 2/3" MYSTERIUM X SENSOR
* 1-120 FPS (180FPS BURST)
* UP TO 100 MB/SEC REDCODE RAW AND RGB RECORDING TO DUAL COMPACT FLASH
* 4.8" LCD
* 8X T2.8 RED ZOOM LENS
* FULL AUTO OR FULL MANUAL SHOOTING MODES
* HDMI and HD-SDI
* FIREWIRE 800 and USB2
* STILL MODE
* COMPATIBLE WITH MANY RED ONE ACCESSORIES
* WI-FI CONTROL
This is a really impressive chart from Gizmodo, that shows the difference between standard definition and HD and then goes on to compare it to 2K-5K including the Scarlet and EPIC cameras they introduced at NAB. Those are some really big frames. Of course that needs to be backed up with really excellent optics in front of the sensor.
