IBC Wrap-Up Report

The 66 page report on new products, ideas and trends from IBC is ready both as a low-rez PDF directly from our home page or as a high-rez PDF in the MEMBERS section (subscription required).

Cinematographer Style Volume 2

The long-awaited completion of the Cinematographer Style trilogy is now ready. Along with the full transcript of Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC are the remaining 54 interviews conducted from 2003 and 2005 for the feature-length documentary Cinematographer Style. As with Volume One, the pages are packed with advice, anecdotes, lessons and history from some of the world’s top cinematographers. Available from the ASC Bookstore.

As promised, at 12:01 AM, Jannard posted information about RED Rocket, a PCI-Express card for Mac, PC and Linux workstations. RED Rocket will enable those working with native RED R3D files to decode, debayer and playback high quality, 4K (at 30fps) and 5K (at 25fps) files in realtime. RED Rocket will also accelerate Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Assimilate Scratch, RED Alert! REDCINE, RED Rushes and any application using the REDCODE SDK. The card will sport Quad-DVI and Quad-HD-SDI and will sell for under $5,000.

Jannard and RED decided to skip the NAB conference in Las Vegas this year, opting to deliver this news about the company’s latest product directly to the faithful via the RED user community boards at REDUSER.net.

Director, Stu Maschwitz, founder of legendary VFX shop, The Orphanage, creator of the Magic Bullet software suite and author of the DV Rebel’s Guide, spoke on a panel this morning at NAB entitled, Independent Filmmaking — A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget: 2009 Edition. He was joined by Rodney Charters, director of photographty on Fox’s, 24 and Charles Papert of Instant Films.

Recently, Stu directed a short film, more of a camera test as he describes it, with a Canon 5D Mark II HD camera. I thought it would be fun to show you what someone with some talent can do with this amazing new camera. Take a look and be sure to check out Stu’s new blog, ProLost.

Canon’s original 5D Mark II Microsite

More excellent resources from Canon

From Press Release

LAS VEGAS. Today, Panasonic announced a new line of P2 solid-state memory cards designed to significantly reduce the cost of the P2 file based workflow. Available starting this May, the new E-Series includes 16GB (model AJ-P2E016X), 32GB (model AJ-P2E032X) and 64GB (model AJ-P2E064X) P2 memory cards, which provide superior quality recording for an average of five years of normal operation. Visit Panasonic’s NAB Press Release site for more new product info.

From Studio Daily

Sony added to its XDCAM HD line-up at its NAB press conference, announcing the PDW-F800 ($41,990), a 24p 3-chip (2/3-inch) camcorder with variable frame rate capabilities, and the PDW-F1600 ($27,990), a deck with insert/assemble editing capabilities that allow it to perform like a conventional VTR. Both products are expected to ship in June.

From Silicon Imaging Press Release

Hollywood, CA – Silicon Imaging, the company that enabled the digital shooting of this years Oscar winning Best Picture Slumdog Millionaire, is now changing the face of stereo-3D cinematography and production. The company unveiled the world’s first integrated 3D cinema camera and stereo visualization system at NAB 2009. The SI-3D shoots uncompressed raw imagery from two synchronized cameras and encodes directly to a single stereo CineFormRAW QuickTime file, along with 3D LUT color and convergence metadata. Read the rest of this press release at Silicon Imaging’s website.

(Executive Producer John) Wells went to a party and got into a conversation with director Steven Soderbergh, who had just shot the four-and-a-half-hour Che with the Red One camera. “He was raving about it, and that piqued John’s interest,” says associate producer Dieter Ismagil. When Wells shot the pilot for his upcoming series Southland, they used the Red camera to shoot a test for interiors and exteriors. “They liked the image, and they liked what they could do with it handheld, so they used it for the Southland pilot,”. “They were happy with the results and with not having the added expense of film processing.” The decision was made to give it a try for the last few episodes of ER.

Next was a cryptic, yet intruging post on REDUser.net from the man himself, Jim Jannard, CEO and Founder of RED courtesy of Studio Daily and Pro Video Coalition blogger Scott Simmons via twitter:

We have just made a number of final changes to our program. It has become clear that our competition is finally paying attention to what we are doing so this time we will NOT announce what the changes are.

I will say the following:

1. No negative price/performance changes.
2. Only positive feature and system changes.
3. No additional slip to the target schedule.

If our competition is shooting at us, they will be shooting at where we were and not where we are going to be.

Speculation is dangerous because people post what they think or hope and others read it as fact. Just know that every time we change something, it gets better.

See you in Las Vegas.
Jim

Looks like it’s shaping up to be an interesting spring in the digital cinematography world.

Alex Proyas has never shied away from utilizing the latest digital technology to make his films. I remember getting a call from him back in 1994 when I was cutting “Civil Wars” for Steven Bochco Productions, one of the first network shows to be edited digitally on the Avid. The company had given the director my name to give him some feedback on what is was like cutting long-form on the Media Composer as he was considering using the system on his first American feature, “The Crow”.  So it came as no surprise to me when I heard he and his cinematographer, Simon Duggan were shooting his latest film “Knowing” with the RED ONE digital cinema camera. The film, which opened last week, is the largest budget film to date to shot with the RED.

From Wired

Alex Proyas has made plenty of films in traditional fashion, shooting Dark City, The Crow and I, Robot on old-fashioned celluloid.  For his new sci-fi thriller Knowing, the Australian director decided to go digital for the first time and put the ultrahigh-resolution RED camera to the test.  Now that he’s worked out the kinks, Proyas says, “There’s no going back.”

ASL Gear is a company that designs and manufactures accessories for the Red ONE and other HD camera systems. The Remote Interface Box, or RIB Kit is comprised of two of the company’s products, RIP and RIB (remote interface breatkout box) designed to provide crews using the RED some more robust interface options for getting video, audio and timecode signals in and out of the camera.

From the company’s website.

Now you can finally plug full size XLR’s and BNC cables directly into your RED ONE® without the need for adapters. You also get Genlock and Timecode functions via the BNC panel. The ‘RIP’ provides quick and easy access to the RED’s I/O interface. The RIP easily attaches to the connector side of the camera and can be used in Stand Alone Mode, or with the ‘RIB’ Break-Out Box

In the video above RED user Jay A. Kelley reviews and explains how this product came about and how it can be used to make camera crews lives a bit easier when shooting with RED  in the field.

As editors, who often live with a film for an extended period of time, it becomes like one of your children. In this segment I ask Chris about sequences from Slumdog he is especially proud of, or ones that hold a special place in his heart. We talk about some of the directors he admires who have influenced him, his fondness for stories told in a non-linear way and how his director Danny Boyle encouraged him to take risks and try new ideas while cutting the film.

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