Scott Farrar received his first Oscar nomination for best achievement in visual effects for Cocoon, and went on to win the Oscar in 1996 for his work on that film. At that time, he was a visual effects cameraman at Industrial Light & Magic. Since then, as a visual effects supervisor at ILM, he has stacked up five more Oscar nominations, the sixth for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, an award he shares with Scott Benza of ILM, Matthew E. Butler of Digital Domain, and special effects supervisor John Frazier.... »
On Friday, February 3, indie rock band Saint Motel will perform at the Soho House in West Hollywood, accompanied by what World War 7 (WW7) Creative Director Josh Ferrazzano describes as "a multimedia, stereoscopic, psychedelic spectacular."... »
This morning Apple announced Final Cut Pro X v10.0.3, an update that should close the gap on key features previously found in FCP7 but still missing in FCPX, notably multicam editing and video out support for broadcast video monitoring, both promised last September. The update went live in the Mac App Store this morning at 8:30 am ET/5:30 am PT. It is free to existing users and remains a $299.99 download for new users.... »
As Home Depot Television moved toward a tapeless workflow in mid-2010, it pulled the trigger on a Harmonic Omneon system that included a four-channel MediaDeck server, 12 TB of MediaGrid storage, the Media Application Server (MAS), and the ProXplore clip-and-metadata management system. The final piece of that puzzle has just fallen into place thanks to a front end from XenData that integrates the Omneon system with an 80-tape Qualstar robotic library. We talked to Dave White, manager of HDTV, and Bruce Covey, manager of business TV engineering for HDTV, about the installation.... »
With last year's introduction of the Thunderbolt interface, the mobile editing workstation really came into its own. Some observers speculated that the super-high-speed jack, which makes incredibly powerful peripherals truly portable, was a signal of the impending demise of the decidedly non-portable Mac Pro tower. And when it came to portable power in 2011, more editors and VFX artists than ever started eyeballing solid-state storage as a potential win for their mobile workstations. The drives remain quite expensive compared to spinning disks, but with hard-drive prices sky-high in the aftermath of major floods in Thailand, they didn't seem quite so extravagant by year's end. Curious how the makers of increasingly mobile desktop software packages were seeing their user's experience changing, we asked reps from the big three makers of nonlinear editing software — Adobe, Apple and Avid — about Thunderbolt, SSDs, and what other storage trends they expect to make the difference for their customers this year.... »
The Surrogate was shot on the Red One MX and edited on a software-only Avid Media Composer system by Lisa Bromwell, an Avid veteran who took on the film as a rare unpaid gig because she believed in the material. When we spoke to her this week, she had just returned from the film's world premiere in the cavernous Eccles Theater in Park City and was already back at work cutting two episodes of Criminal Minds, but she said The Surrogate represented a satisfying departure from her normal mix of editorial jobs.... »
Defying some expectations that awards powerhouse The Artist might dominate the proceedings, director Martin Scorsese's Hugo earned the most nominations of any film honored by the Oscars this morning, nabbing a spot in categories including Best Picture, Directing, Cinematography, Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects.... »
Wiseman may be best known as a pioneer of the cinema vérité school of documentary, which minimizes the director’s presence, but here, he comes close to Busby Berkeley territory, as he acknowledges in the following interview. Working for the first time in HD, he shows new possibilities in the medium, asCrazy Horse matches the color and beauty of 35mm.... »
GoPro today announced a new version of its CineForm Studio lineup that it hopes will help build a bridge between professionals and enthusiasts who use its rugged $300 HD cameras.... »
Dealers in the U.S. started taking pre-orders for Canon's EOS C300 and C300 PL digital-cinema cameras today at price points significantly below the $20,000 announced by Canon. The camera is available in either EF- or PL-mount versions for $15,999.... »
The biggest news for editors when Avid began shipping Media Composer 6 last November was the NLE's transformation into a very modern, 64-bit application. Along with that came other great updates, including the support of third-party hardware options (several of which I tested with this review). This is a big release in terms of the software's overall internal plumbing, though it may or may not be a big release for users in terms of overall functions, depending on what features they need. I still think it may be one of the most important releases of Media Composer ever, as 64-bit lays the foundation for every upgrade to come.... »
Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is an unconventional look at American violence. The first 20 minutes of the film are a radically nightmarish montage. While the rest of We Need to Talk About Kevin is somewhat more conventional, it never loses its dreamlike feel, enhanced by a combination of 35mm and Canon 5D Mark II DSLR video.... »
