Gone are the days when a few well-placed strobe lights and smoke in the footlights thrill crowds at a concert. Big scale, wrap-around video displays, in sync with the musical performance, are now expected parts of the scenery. ... »
Director Brandon Dickerson just finished a Switchfoot music video that featured painstakingly realized "photomation" scenes — created by inkjet-printing 1224 separate frames of HVX200-captured performance footage, hand-tearing the band members out of each frame, and then re-photographing the performance, frame by frame, on a cardboard-box stage. ... »
With footage shot on location, and stock footage, used essentially just for background plates, it was up to Asylum to show the evolution of the earth in CG. ... »
Mid-way through the animated mockumentary Surf’s Up, one of the penguins faces the camera and asks an invisible camera crew if they’re hungry. We hear a voice answer, “Uh, yeah.” ... »
The History Channel's new hit show, Ice Road Truckers, is all about the men who drive big trucks across frozen Canadian lakes, hauling essential supplies to the diamond mines in the far north by traveling roads built across great expanses of frozen lakes. If it takes nerves of steel for the drivers, who can actually hear the ice cracking under their groaning rigs, it also takes a certain kind of grit to ride shotgun with an HD camera. That's what DP Gavin Brennan found out last January, when he hit the Northern Territories to start the three-month shoot. F&V asked him about extreme cold, frozen pixels, and dangerous driving.... »
When the boards for the Finnish coffeemaker, Paulig Presidentti, came to Stardust Studios in New York, they were instantly attracted to creating animation with the brand’s signature green and gold color scheme. ... »
Editor Robert Bramwell is not using hyperbole when he says that a large majority of editors have been stuck in an archaic, inefficient approach to their projects that cost time, money and possibly their reputations... »
While new Sci-Fi series Sanctuary premiered earlier this month, it wasn’t on any TV network. Rather, the show, which stars several familiar faces from Sci-Fi Channel’s popular series Stargate SG-1 (including Amanda Tapping and Christopher Heyerdahl), made its debut on May 14—as an online-only webisodic series.... »
For a set of high-octane show openers for ESPN's NASCAR coverage, The Syndicate intercut animated races featuring colorful CG cars with super-glossy live-action footage from the Arri D-20. Watch the package, below, then read our interviews with The Syndicate's creative director, David Hwang, on the ideas behind the animation, and with FX supervisor Ben Grossman on the decision to use the D-20 and its implications for the pipelines for TV spots.... »
Ousama Rawi started his career in cinematography in the U.K. shooting newsreels for TV, but soon went freelance and began shooting commercials and feature films out of London. ... »
The post-production gurus behind Next say it's the first studio feature to be edited entirely in HD using Avid's DNxHD codec — and they figure it represents the latest forward leap in post workflow. ... »
After 15 years in the business of cutting episodic TV, editor Farrel Levy has figured out a thing or two about getting inside someone's head. That's her job — making sure an audience understands not just the narrative, but the psychology behind the story. ... »
Chris Keighly, who joined Post Logic Studios last year as a telecine assistant after cutting his post teeth at Technicolor Creative Services, has been named technical supervisor of Post Logic's New York facility. The job gives him oversight over all projects completed at Post Logic in New York — mainly commercial spots that take advantage of color-correction and conform for HD — and charges him with make sure the post and DI pipelines are up to snuff.... »
