DSLR Rig Suggestions

If you own or are looking to purchase a DSLR, I would highly recommend checking out this article by Peter Salvia.

He covers everything from SD Cards, batteries, and lots of lens choices and suggestions!!

DVD, Blu-Ray, Download or Streaming?

"In what’s become the new “Paper or plastic” question, producers are asking, “Blu-Ray or DVD?”

When DVD replaced VHS, it was an obvious move and choice for us. Better overall quality, more durable, and the players had trays for the DVDs that wouldn’t hold peanut butter sandwiches. But now there’s a new kid in town: Blu-Ray. OK – it’s not new, but it hasn’t become as widely adopted by consumers yet.

Why? I think there are a few reasons: price point of the players, price point of the discs, and the fact that you have to have an HD television in order view the Blu-Ray means you have to buy a new television if you don’t have an HD one. (That would be me. I admit it – I still have a TV that doesn’t hang on a wall, is deeper than 3 inches, and is not HD unless I buy some of those glasses “as seen on TV.”)

That’s the cost-analysis side. Let’s look at the technology side.

Many movies can be downloaded from iTunes now. My family is here for a visit and my nephew has an iPod Touch. He loves watching movies and television on that. He was disappointed when a DVD of some older films he bought didn’t have a digital version he could download from iTunes. If you want to capture the younger generation, it may be time to think all-digital.

I don’t know for sure what the viewing future is for Christian film, but producers have to think about all of these options when they’re getting ready to release a film. Making movies just got a little more complicated.

What’s your viewing choice? Are you HD, Blu-Ray, DVD, streaming, downloading, or still wondering what happened to Beta-Max?" ~Article by Christian Cinema

Celtx Script for iPhone and iPad

Review by: Stu Maschwitz

Kudos to Celtx for figuring out exactly what to include and what to leave out when designing a screenwriting app for mobile devices. Celtx Script (US$9.99) is the first iPad screenwriting app that “just works” in the way that Apple users expect. This is a welcome surprise given how clunky and homely the desktop Celtx application is on OS X.

Celtx Script on the iPad is as simple and elegant as one would hope. You can do most of what you need to just by typing. In portrait view you have a distraction-free view of your script. In landscape, there’s a handy scene list to the right for navigation.

Landscape view has a centering problem where the last character is cut off on the right. I trust that this is an easy bug to fix.

A feature I would love for both the iPad and the desktop version is folders in the scene list. Color-coding scenes would also be nice.

Notice how I praise the app for its minimalism and then request new features. See how difficult life is for developers?

Speaking of which, the developers were caught by surprise with Celtx Script hitting the App Store on a Saturday, so while the free Celtx Sync function would work between an iPhone and an iPad running Celtx Script, there was no way to sync between the free desktop Celtx and your mobile device. One of the developers managed to get the free syncing plug-in posted within a few hours though. Once you get the plug-in installed, you can import a screenplay from the free cloud backup using desktop Celtx’s Script > Import Script > From iPhone/iPad menu item. There’s a corresponding Export option as well. It’s not quite the same thing as a true Google Docs-style cloud sync, but it’s close, and it’s free.

I would love some assurance from the Celtx team about the security of the cloud storage.

I’m delighted that someone finally made a solid and elegant screenwriting solution for the iPad. That it works on the iPhone as well and syncs with free desktop software makes the $10 price a bargain.

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Source Review



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Segregation - TRAILER

The Storyline

The storyline of the documentary follows young Christian film maker, Philip Leclerc, around the nation as he seeks answers to what has happened to the Christian youth in his generation.

Philip’s journey takes him from talking to kids in local youth groups, to documenting popular youth events, interviewing national youth ministry leaders, listening to youth pastors, and finally to meeting with a growing number of pastors and elders who are entirely abandoning the modern method of age-segregated Sunday school and youth ministry.

Along the way, Philip also interviews youth pastors who have come to see the futility of using the world's methods of teaching children in the church. These youth pastors have fled age-segregated youth ministry after realizing that no leader in scripture ever practiced age-segregated ministry and that the practice is foreign to Scripture.

The truth is shocking. Statistics suggest that between 65% and 85% of "Christian" youth leave the church when they enter college. Our interviews confirm this over and over again. And yet, while the gurus of modern youth ministry agree that there is disaster in the church, Philip finds that their response is only to prescribe various modifications to the current model. Realizing the utter brokenness of the entire establishment, he goes in search of the origins of modern youth ministry, how we got to where we are today, and, most significantly, what the Bible says about ministry to youth. The exciting reality is that God has prescribed a perfect model of youth ministry, all we have to do is put it into practice.

Movie Website

Creed of Gold - Trailer

www.creedofgold.com

Monitogo Studios

ABOUT

"Monitogo Studios is a small film production studio located in central Missouri, with a vision to produce clean family friendly films. The studio was started by two of the Tull children, but the whole family contributes to the film projects."

CURRENT PROJECT

"Our current project, under the working title “Zathen and Nathan”, is a 60 minute stop motion brick film. The story tells of Zathen, a bitter young man who has alienated himself from his family, and his loving younger siblings, Nathan and Abigail. When the children discover that that their older brother is now a captive in the hands a traitor soldier from Zathen’s garrison, they set out on an adventure to rescue him. Along the way they face one difficulty after another, and begin to uncover hidden secrets from the their family history. Now, it’s up to Zathen’s siblings and a wise but fun loving guardian to rescue the embittered brother from the hands of a wicked lord.

A film with interest for adults but suitable for children as well, “Zathen and Nathan” is sure to provide good discussion topics and fun for the whole family."

www.monitogostudios.com

Seven Fetishists And Why They Should Relax

Articles written by Stu Maschwitz

Article 1: Seven Fetishists And Why They Should Relax

Mike Seymour: Bit Depth Fetishist

Mike Seymour of fxguide and fxphd loves his Canon 7D, but on the splendid Red Centre podcast he bemoans one shortcoming of its video mode more than all others combined: 8-bit files. Line-skipping, heavy compression, weird form factor? Mike’s not concerned about that nearly as much as he is the noise, banding, and crunchy chunky nastiness that he knows is lurking within those apparently lovely images, just waiting to pop out and bite him when he’s keying a sky or brightening a face.

Why Mike should relax: It’s just not that bad. It’s the compression more than the 8-bit recording that makes HDSLR video fall apart under stress. Get a good noise removal plug-in and watch your bit-depth magically appear to increase. And not every shot needs to be keyed. More professional photographers than will ever admit it shoot JPEG instead of raw. 8 bits is plenty if they’re the right eight bits.

Vincent Laforet: Gear Fetishist

Have you ever seen a photo of Vincent Laforet without something really, really expensive in the shot with him? Something black-anodized and wireless? Vincent loves the toys. He’s been using them to make awesome images before he fell in love with making moving pictures—he’d use film cranes to place SLRs in precarious positions on New York landmarks, for example. Now Vincent is reliably the guy who will strap a $4,000 camera body to about $300,000 worth of camera support gear.

Why Vincent should relax: More than anyone I know, Vincent could make a beautiful film with nothing more than a camera, a 50mm lens and a tripod.

Philip Bloom: Boke Fetishist

Sorry Philip, there are so many shallow-depth-of-field mavens out there to choose from, but your fanaticism for it combined with your keen eye and willingness to approach complete strangers on the street with a giant Zacuto rig sticking out of your chest like a spinal surgery patient have probably sold more Canons than their own marketing department has. Philip has made focus hunting into an artistic choice rather than a technical failing. And really, on a medium-close shot with one nice, sharp eye, who wants to be distracted by a crisp eyelash?

Why Philip should relax: Most movies are shot on 35mm film (roughly equivalent to the 7D’s sensor size) at about f/4. Some of my favorite shots of Philip’s have literally several things in focus.

Jim Jannard: Resolution Fetishist

Jim Jannard, founder of RED Digital Cinema, recently wrote “If 1080P is really ‘good enough’… then there is no reason for RED.” He’s bet everything that people care a lot about spatial resolution. Not satisfied to make a 4K camera, Jim announced a complete line of cameras for the pixel reductionist ranging up to a 28K monstrosity. To Jim, quality comes from sharpness and detail.

Why Jim should relax: The highest-grossing film of all time was shot in HD and then cropped for projection on screens the size of football fields. If you see a ‘scope movie that was shot in HD, you’re looking at an image only 800 pixels tall. Movies move. They have tons of motion blur, are rarely perfectly in focus, and they are watched by people who don’t have perfect eyesight in theaters that are manned by “projectionists” who focus biannually.

Roger Ebert: Frame-Rate Fetishist

Roger Ebert hates that wagon wheels go backwards. It drives him nuts. Years ago he saw a demo of Maxivision 48, a system that shoots and projects 35mm film at 48 frames per second, and he’s never forgotten how smooth it was. Like many, he decries 24 fps as a technological dinosaur, a holdover from a bygone era.

Why Roger should relax: With the advent of HD, it became easy to create digital moving images of high enough spatial resolution to pass for film (unless you’re Jim Jannard, see above), but at first we could only do so at 50 or 60Hz. HD video at 60 images-per-second inspired no filmmakers and no audiences—in fact, at the very Sundance I met Roger, a 60fps HD test shot by Allen Daviau was booed off the screen. It wasn’t until we hobbled our HD cameras to 24 that we could start making movies digitally. More frames-per-second is indeed smoother and more life-like. Just like video. Who would have imagined that audiences don’t want movies to feel more like daytime soap operas?

Jim Cameron: Depth Fetishist

I’m taking the hard road here by picking on a filmmaker I idolize, rather than the studio execs who see “3D” as just a longer way of typing the dollar sign. Jim uses the word I hate—immersive—to describe the effect 3D has on an audience. 3D is more “real” to him, more life-like.

Why Jim should relax: Jim has made some of the most immersive movies I’ve ever seen, and none of them needed an extra way to remind me that some stuff is in front of other stuff. 3D is an imperfect technology that has failed to win the love of moviegoers twice before. Movies work because they are larger than life. If you succeed at making them life-like, you run the risk of faithfully recreating the mundanity of the real world. Who would have imagined that audiences don’t want movies to feel more like plays?

Stu Maschwitz: Accessibility Fetishist

I flatter myself to be in the company of the above luminaries, but fairness demands that I turn the lens on myself. I am biased against expensive things. I’ll talk your ear off about how After Effects runs circles around Flame, and then instantly forget all your scathing rebuttals of all the things Flame can do that AE can’t. I get off on accessibility, even if I don’t actually access it. I bought a Canon HV20 the week it came out, calling it the no-more-excuses camera. Well I must have been wrong, because simply owning the camera didn’t cause a film to get made by me with it. Filmmaking is hard, and I sometimes get too preoccupied with finding ways to make it easier.

Why I should relax: Usually you do get what you pay for. A cheap, crappy follow-focus is just a non-refundable down payment on the good follow-focus you’ll eventually buy. And it’s the fact that filmmaking is difficult that makes it worth doing. Movies capture the efforts of a few and turn them into an experience for the many. Try hard, then try harder, then try harder still—and then look next to you at a filmmaker who’s trying even harder. Chances are you have a favorite director whose work has never been the same since they got famous enough to stop killing themselves making their films.

I kid because I love. In case it’s not abundantly clear: I admire every single one of these fetishists (well, except that last punk). But we can all use a little reminder now and then that movies work. They’ve transported us, fooled us, moved us, terrified us, and turned us on for a hundred years, all without any yet-to-be invented bells and whistles.

Movies aren’t broken, Stop trying to fix them and go make one.

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Article 2: Couple Things

After my Fetishists post, I was invited by Mike Seymour to join he and Jason on Red Centre to discuss in greater detail the points I raised. It was a welcome opportunity both to drill down on each of the specific issues, and to clarify a few things that some of the many comments seemed to miss—namely, that I chose my “fetishists” out of respect (so please, those of you with the pitchforks, put ‘em away), and that as crowd-pleasing as a “shut up and shoot” post can be, this actually wan’t meant to be one. The truth is, all your favorite filmmakers are fetishists, and you should be one too if you want your films to be their best.

Technology and gear are not the first things I think about when I think about filmmaking, but they do tend to be the first things I blog about. If “none of the tech matters, just make a movie” was the end of the conversation then that would be the end of ProLost. Talking tech is great, and nobody does it better than Red Centre, so please subscribe if you haven’t already, and give a listen to episode 66.

If you’d like to play the home game while listening, here are full-size stills of the image of Mike from the post, before and after color correction. These stills are pulled from 5D Mark II footage I shot of Mike in the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, and you can decide for yourself if it’s compression, 8-bit-ness, or an insidious combination of the two that makes it tough to brighten Mike’s face.

Click for full-res camera original imageClick for full-res, graded image

Click for full-res, graded image with some preprocessing

On the show Mike also mentioned that he’s embarking on a new fxphd DSLR Video course as a follow-up to the popular-but-aging session that he and I shot in Japan. This time, Mike has nabbed someone who actually knows what he’s talking about, none other than Tyler Ginter of the 55th Combat Camera Company. I look at a helicopter and think, “how can I put this in my movie?” Tyler looks at one and says “I think I’ll jump out of that with 90 pounds of gear strapped to me (including a 5D Mark II). Check out Tyler’s videos on Vimeo and stay tuned to fxphd for more updates.

In my last post I made a barbed remark about the Sony NEX-VG10, based on early reports that it only shot 60i (NTSC) and 50i (PAL). Turns out it may actually have a progressive mode, which would make the PAL version an option for filmmakers in PAL countries, or those in the U.S. willing to jump through the 25/24 speed-change hoops like we old fogies once did with the first DV cameras. Personally, I’ll wait for real 24p, the importance of which Sony, unlike Canon, cannot pretend to be unaware. Now that so many camera manufacturers are fighting to give us DV Rebels exactly what we want, I won’t be expending any energy on cameras that don’t.

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Original articles by Stu. Source Article1 - Source Article2

Courageous - Behind the Scenes

I came across a few videos that finally show some in-depth footage and info about the making of Courageous!

1) The Process Trailer - click here
Ever wonder how they shoot all those shots of people in a moving vehicle? This is a great video that explains the work that goes into filming a car!

2) The Heart of Courageous - click here
This is a fantastic look into the heart of the story and the team behind the movie. Lots of fun footage and interviews!

3) USA Today News Report

www.courageousthemovie.com

Ace Wonder - Teaser and Website!

New Website! www.acewondermovie.com

Teaser!