Lighting on the Fly

Keeping things simple and minimalist not only lowers the barrier to entry to making a video; it also makes our video style more accessible to a wider audience.

This minimalist philosophy has a major influence on how I choose to light videos. We've dubbed this minimal, flexible technique "Lighting on the Fly".

When I'm setting up lighting for a video at Wistia, I follow 4 terrifically simple rules:

1. Make the shot (and the people in the shot) look pretty.
2. Kill any and all shadows on faces.
3. Don't intimidate the person on-camera.
4. Use the most convenient lighting option (it's often best).

Join me on a journey through space and time as we hack lighting and turn the world of traditional "3-point lighting" upside down!

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Stopping Time with Canon 1D X

Tight budgets mean Matrix-style montages for public-broadcast documentaries are rarely done. But somehow the team at DokLab did it – and they tell CPN writer Mark Alexander how they used 50 EOS-1D X DSLRs to pull it off...

There is a childish glee that overtakes us all when we set eyes on a new piece of kit. As pristine packaging carelessly falls to the floor and a spotless lens or gleaming camera body emerges, our anticipation gives way to unreserved delight. It is a wonderfully gratifying – and unashamedly geeky – moment...

© Daniel Rihs/Pixsil

As with all big productions, preparation is the secret...

If unconditional joy is the consequence of opening one new box, imagine what Dodo Hunziker and Pierre Reischer went through as they unwrapped 50 EOS-1D X DSLRs and 50 EF24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lenses ahead of what would turn out to be a momentous day’s filming.

“We approached Canon to see if 50 cameras and lenses were available to do this shoot,” explains cameraman Reischer, who didn’t specify which DSLR he required when he first enquired. It was lucky they made the request when they did, as usually Canon does not have this number of bodies and lenses available. But in this case, there were a few days of opportunity for the shoot, before Canon's preparations began for the World Athletics Championships in Moscow. “It was like ‘wow’. This is the top model. We were going to shoot with 50 of them - it was just crazy,” Reischer recalls. The enormity of the task, and the challenge of getting to know Canon's flagship DSLR intimately, was dawning... (Read More)

Vid Angel

You can now stream movies...with unique and flexible filters that take out the "Bosoms, Blood and Bad Words."

VidAngel's approach to filtering is legal and explicitly protected by the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005. This law protects your right to remove "limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing, from an authorized copy of the motion picture.

Imagine being hit with 3192 paintballs in 5.3 seconds. That is what this family endured just to prove a point about swearing in modern movies.

Sign-up is FREE, you only pay for the movie rentals.

CLICK HERE for more info!

Koh Yao Noi

FULL BLOG POST with everything you need to know here!! gopb.co/koh

Beyond the Mask - Visual Effects

Get ready to be blown away. I definitely was when Aaron took me on a VIP tour. Tour of what? The Beyond the Mask classified visual effects archive room. “We built some awesome sets for the film. Now we’re just making them awesomer,” Aaron told me. He didn’t notice that I had sneaked my smart phone into the room and I snapped a few photos to show you.

Ok, so we weren’t in an archive room; what he showed me was all on his laptop . . . but it was incredible! But let me tell you about it so you can be as excited as I am.  And I do have some top secret pictures to share. Don’t ask me how I got them. . .

The highwayman rides into Philadelphia.

After I had seen what the visual effects team is creating, it was time to do some investigating. So, I decided to talk to one of the expert artists on the team to find out just how this all works.

Meet Chris Arnold. He’s the lead 3D artist on the Beyond the Mask visual effects team. I was planning to set up a telephone interview with Chris, but switched my plans to involve Skype when I realized that it would be an international call. Chris lives in Ontario, Canada, and is a skilled artist in his field. Chris describes his job this way. “A 3D artist is a generalist set builder and animator that can create a virtual world. My role with a lot of the visual effects shots is to create building assets in CGI.”

Chris works on the prison ship sequence.

Beyond the Mask will employ visual effects to enhance its story, as most films do today, but I wanted to know what the scale of this project was. How many visual effects shots are there in the film? I asked Chris. “I know that we have over seven hundred visual effects shots in the film, but you should talk to Luke, he could get you the exact numbers,” Chris says. Luke is the Visual Effects Supervisor and has been working out of the Beyond the Mask postproduction command central near St. Louis since August. So, I contacted Luke to find out just how large this project was. “We have 741 VFX shots currently, which totals around 65,000 frames of visual effects.  This equals approximately 50.1 minutes of play time on screen.  We have 27 artists on our internal team and are outsourcing some larger sequences to two other VFX post houses as well.” Obviously Luke likes numbers, and as his statistics might show, he is a bit of a computer whiz. Wow. The team is definitely taking this film up another level in excellence.  That’s more visual effects shots than there were in the film Inception!

There are several sequences that Chris is directly involved with. “We have the rooftop chase sequence. We have the prison ship sequence and quite a few others,” Chris said. “We can make it feel much bigger and epic and photo real. For the rooftop chase, we have created over fifteen different 3D models for actual buildings of the time period that are then placed in the scene to create these massive city shots so that we can render them out and populate this 18^th Century Philadelphia world.”

I got to preview the rooftop chase sequence, so I followed up on it to see how the visual effects add to this one piece of the film...(continue reading)
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Canon 70D

Article by Stu Maschwitz

Canon has announced the Canon 70D, availble for pre-order at Amazon and B&H for $1,199.

On one hand, this camera, with its flip-out LCD, new sensor technology that allows better live-view autofocus, and built-in WiFi, seems to be the heir apparent to the APSC HDSLR throne.

On the other hand, it’s hard not to feel that Canon is updating their DSLR line as slowly as they feel they can get away with.

I like what Mike and Jason had to say on the RC podcast #132—essentially, one has to hope that we’re nearing the end of hoping for accidental improvements to the video capabilities of low-cost stills cameras.

The Canon 70D looks to be the best camera you can buy for DSLR video, and yet it’s impossible to get to excited about it.
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Article Source

Canon reinvents video focusing

Review from Engadget - Looking to capture professional-quality video on the cheap? You've probably considered a DSLR, but for many users, an interchangeable-lens camera might not be the best pick. Camcorders and higher-end video rigs typically offer far more powerful autofocus capabilities, and while Digital SLR footage can look great, if you're not tweaking the lens manually, things might not go as smoothly as you'd hope. Canon's setting out to change that, with its brilliant new EOS 70D. On the surface, this 20.2-megapixel camera doesn't venture far from its 60D roots, but internally, it's an entirely different ballgame.

At the core of the 70D's modifications is what Canon's calling Dual Pixel CMOS AF. Essentially, the sensor includes twice the number of pixels in an (very successful) attempt to improve focusing. There are 40.3 million photodiodes on the sensor, and when they're all working together, "it's like 20 million people tracking the focus with both eyes," as Canon explains. The result is camcorder-like focusing for both stills and video, when you're shooting in live view mode. During our test with a pre-production sample, the device performed phenomenally, adjusting focus instantaneously when snapping stills, and quickly but gradually when recording video.

Canon's expected to ship the EOS 70D for an estimated $1,199 in September, body only. It'll also be available with two lens options: an 18-55mm STM kit will likely retail for $1,349, while an 18-135mm STM version should come along with a $1,549 MSRP. Pricing is unconfirmed at this point, hence the noncommittal phrasing, but reps seemed fairly confident in those figures. The 60D will be discontinued, but the 7D will remain on the market -- for a while longer, at least. Still, if you're looking for a DSLR primarily for shooting video, the 70D is where it's at.
....click here to read the full Engadget article.

Apple - Mac Pro

"A sneak peek at the future of the pro desktop."

When we began work on the next Mac Pro, we considered every element that defines a pro computer — graphics, storage, expansion, processing power, and memory. And we challenged ourselves to find the best, most forward-looking way possible to engineer each one of them. When we put it all together, the result was something entirely new. Something radically different from anything before it. Something that provides an extremely powerful argument against the status quo. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s next for the pro computer.

Even if you aren't interested in the Mac Pro, it's worth visiting the website (and scroll down) to experience the creative and amazing sneak peek they've put together!

Click Here to read more!

Apple - Mac OS X

Mavericks - (releasing this fall)

"Craig Federighi, head of OS X development for Apple, unveiled OS X 10.9 Mountain Lion at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2013 keynote. He highlighted three key features found in the forthcoming operating system update: new tabs in Finder, the ability to tag individual files, and enhanced support for multiple displays."
- [source: AppleInsider]

Click Here to read more!

Apple - iOS 7

iOS 7 (releasing this fall)

iOS 7 started with a desire to take an experience people love and make it better. To make it even simpler, more useful, and more enjoyable — but still feel instantly familiar. The design of iOS 7 is beautiful because it’s all of those things. And it’s the start of a new chapter for iOS.

Click Here to learn more

Apple - New Updates

Apple has announced it's next lineup of updates for Mac OS, iOS and more! Despite all the negative speculation regarding the tech giant's ability to stay ahead of the pack, Apple appears to still have a bit of "the sweet sauce" that keeps users coming back.

Here is a new ad they created about the mission of Apple.

Click Here to watch the full keynote from Apple CEO, Tim Cook.

Click Here to read about the annoucements on Engadget!