If the Golden Globes are still to be considered a harbinger of Oscars to come, consider this morning's announcement of nominees by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association an indication of many future plaudits for Atonement. The World War II-era period drama directed by Joe Wright led the field with seven Globe nominations, including Best Motion Picture (Drama) and Best Director (Motion Picture).... »
Each year the VIEW conference in Turin, Italy, focuses on Computer Graphics, Interactive Techniques, Digital Cinema, 3D Animation, Gaming and VFX, attracting high-level Hollywood experts as well as key people from Italy and the rest of the world. There’s also an afternoon in which some of the best animation schools in the world give overviews of their programs and show clips of their productions.... »
The U.S. film/TV community just learned that bicoastal post production/DI facility Post Logic Studios, with offices in Hollywood and New York, and Frantic Films visual effects company with offices in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Winnipeg, have been acquired by Prime Focus Group for an undisclosed sum.... »
Starting in January, Cooke Optics will offer four standard Cooke S4/i lenses for the Red One camera that provide focal lengths from 15mm through 100mm and are engraved with red lettering. Called the Cooke RED Set, the new digital-cinematography lenses incorporate metadata capture technology that can be read directly by the contacts of the RED camera lens mount. ... »
They are not exactly Christmas stocking stuffers, but—as high-definition routers go—Sigma’s economical new Dagger series routers are very compact and affordable. Ranging from 8x8 to 32x32 configurations that fit in a single modular frame, the Sigma Dagger Series enables users to route high- and standard-definition video along with AES and analog audio. ... »
TV Pro Gear, a Los Angeles systems integrator, has created the multi-camera HD-SDI FlyPak, a customizable mobile production studio designed around the needs of production crews wanting to produce high-definition content at remote locations. ... »
These days it seems that lots of manufacturers are offering a way to capture a still frame from moving video. The challenge is finding one that can do it in real time and with the proper amount of sophisticated compression to save space and preserve image quality. (HD video is very data-intensive, requiring lots of storage.) Otherwise you’ll find yourself chained to the computer for hours, when you could be done in minutes.... »
Sony’s HVR-DR60 Hard Disk Recorder makes it convenient to record an HDV1080i video stream directly from an HDV camcorder. However, while you’re busy shooting the video, where do you store this important storage device?... »
Redrock Microsystems is now taking reservations for its microMattebox and microRemote production systems. Maker of the popular M2 cinema lens adapter that allows 35mm motion picture lenses to be used on HDV cameras, Redrock said the microMattebox is the first affordable cinema-grade matte box made with independent feature budgets in mind. This universal mattebox works with a variety of video cameras, 35mm lens adapters, and film cameras. It’s also compatible with the Red One camera.... »
Following a trend in 2007 towards multi-function PC hardware cards, Crystal Vision’s Q-Down, an economical broadcast downconverter and distribution amplifier, can be used in a variety of ways. It can be an HD or SD distribution amplifier, an HD to digital SD downconverter, an HD to analog SD downconverter, or a standard-definition D-to-A converter.... »
Sony today disclosed new details of its newest generation of HDV camcorders, including a new form factor — it takes full-size DV cassettes — designed to win the hearts and minds of longtime DV users. Officials also responded directly for the first time to the drum-beating that’s been going on over the claimed higher efficiencies of AVC encoding versus MPEG-2. (In a nutshell: reports of MPEG-2’s death have been greatly exaggerated.)... »
For those looking for lots of storage in a compact rack, CalDigit, a media storage provider, is now shipping its eight-bay HDPro RAID storage array. It’s available in configurations of 2.0 TB to 8 TB, at under $2 per GB—including host interface card and accessories.... »
It’s designed for medical imaging, but a new four-ounce 3-CCD HD camera from Microcast is so small it can provide a variety of heretofore-impossible POV shots. ... »
Magicsoft’s UltraRed graphics software can handle simultaneous previewing, creating, displaying and controlling of projects for logos, tickers, crawls, image sequences, analog and digital clocks and playback of AVI DV clips.... »
For Modern VideoFilm, it boiled down to a lucky break. Cinematographer John Toll was a regular customer of Modern’s for digital dailies, so when he started work on Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, he referred executive producer David Crockett to them. Modern’s VP of sales, Marcie Jastrow, wasn’t sure whether the studio would eventually pony up for a DI, but she knew she wanted to keep Modern close to the project. “I knew it when I had the dailies,” she tells Film & Video. “I knew there was something special about this film.”... »
