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

Watch out, Blu-ray: Apple is now offering high definition movies for sale—including the big-buzz “Twilight”—to iTunes subscribers for $19.99.

As a follow up to our series of interviews with John Leonetti, ASC about his experiences shooting one of the first feature films with the RED Digital Cinema Camera, here is a clip from the soon to be released film, “Hybrid“. The film was produced by Oliver Hengst and Elizabeth Wang-Lee, directed by Eric Valette with cinematography by John Leonetti, ASC. Hybrid was also the first feature film in Canada to be shot with the RED.

Thanks to Jakob Boersch at Stallion Media, LLC for helping us get this clip online.

Link to Interview with John Leonetti, ASC Part I
Link to Interview with John Leonetti, ASC Part II
Link to Interview with John Leonetti, ASC Part III

The Complex and often arcane world of digital cinema mastering just became a bit more accessible as QuVis Corp. of Topeka, Kansas has announced the availability of a $699 digital cinema mastering plug-in for Final Cut Studio. The QuVis “Wraptor” enables FCS users to create professional-quality DCP’s or Digital Cinema Packages, the digital equivalent of a traditional film based “release print”, directly from a Final Cut Pro project. The plug-in uses the same QPJ™ encoding technology available in the company’s high-end, real-time mastering servers. QuVis developed the product in conjunction with Apple, who strongly supports the product.

Wraptor is actually a plug-in for Final Cut Studio’s Compressor. Considering Compressor’s distributed rendering capabilities, producers looking to take advantage of the plug-in’s low cost, will be able to do so without having to deal with endless render times.

The significance of this product should not be underestimated. To this point digital cinema mastering was one of the few areas of the digital filmmaking process that was not only difficult to decipher, but it was also very expensive. The cost of mastering a feature length film to a DCP typically runs in the 20K range, a stretch for the majority of aspiring and independent filmmakers. The Wraptor plug-in from QuVis seems like it has the ability to change all that and be another paradigm shifting tool that will help usher in a new era of digital cinema.

I had a chance to go over to ARRI in Burbank, California recently and spoke with Eric Johnston, Product Manager for their Professional Camera Accessories. Eric gave me a demo of their new MMB-1 Matte Box, MFF-1 Follow Focus and MBP-1 Baseplate designed specifically for the new generation of lower cost, lightweight HD cameras. People shooting with Sony’s EX-1, EX-3, Panasonic’s HVX-200 or soon to released PD-170 can now outfit their cameras with these accessories, which can be purchased individually or together as a kit.

iPod/iPhone/iPod Touch – Small
Windows Media Format

For those working on the Mac version of Avid’s Media Composer 3.0 with XDCAM EX footage shot with Sony’s new PMW-EX1 camera, there is an issue with importing that you should be aware of. This video Quick Tip will walk you through it. Take a look.

Today we sit down and talk with Jeff Youel, President of Wafian Corporation about his HR-F1, Direct-to-Disk digital field recorder. This is truly one of the new tools with the potential to change the face of digital film and HD video production. The HR-F1 is the “Field Unit” version of the company’s complete line of D2D recorders so it’s smaller, lighter and can be configured with a shock-resistant enclosure. It’s also the first portable D2D recorder that captures and plays back up to 10 hours of 24p footage at 10-bit 4:2:2 HD-SDI utilizing the Cineform Intermediate Codec.

Jeff and I also get a chance to talk about Wafian’s other products including their HR-1 mirrored studio unit, their HR-2 Dual-Link (2K) 4:4:4 unit and their newest product the HR-2-DS, a 10-bit, dual-stream stereoscopic HD-SDI recorder for 3D digital film workflows. Take a look!

Click Here if you would like a Window Media version of this segment.