2013 Christian Filmmakers Academy - LIVE STREAMING!

Featuring three days of formal instruction from Christian filmmakers, including Fireproof and Courageous co-creator and producer Stephen Kendrick, for years the Christian Filmmakers Academy has helped train many of the filmmakers who have won prestigious awards at the annual San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

Now you can enjoy that same training at a very special price, and on your own schedule.

With over twenty hours of formal instruction and diverse topics, the Christian Filmmakers Academy is an incredibly valuable training opportunity for students and industry professionals alike who aspire to make films for the glory of God.

Learn to script, cast, act, produce, and direct, and much more — all from a Christian perspective!

Announcing the Inaugural CFA Livestream Experience!

For just $295, your entire family can watch all the CFA’s main room sessions LIVE online from your own living room. That's a huge savings over the in-person CFA registration fee of at least $525 per family member, not to mention all the travel expenses you save.

And if your schedule won’t permit you to watch every session live, don’t worry! We will archive each livestream session for you so that you can go back and watch anything you missed at a later date. And if a session is so good that you want to watch it over, you can do that, too!

Christian Filmmakers Academy Faculty

Academy Faculty includes a powerful cast of Christian Film industry leaders:

• Doug Phillips, President of Vision Forum / Founder of the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival
• Geoffrey Botkin, Veteran Writer, Director & Producer who has written and directed some of the most controversial and widely watched public affairs films of the last twenty years
• Justin Tolley, Production Manager, Assistant Director and Producer (Fireproof, Letters to God, Courageous, October Baby; Lost (TV series)
• Stephen Kendrick, Writer/Producer of Fireproof and Courageous
• Tryg Jacobson, nationally-recognized branding expert and the founder of the Jake’s Café
• Isaac Botkin, Director & Associate Producer, Visual Effects Technician (including with WETA Workshop), author of Outside Hollywood
• The Leclerc Brothers of Leclerc Brothers Motion Pictures, multiple Jubilee Award-winners
• Curtis Bowers, former Idaho state representative, businessman, producer, director, Winner of the 2010 SAICFF "Best of Festival" Jubilee Award.
• Colin Gunn, Best of Festival Award Winner 2007, and Best Political Film Award Winner at the 2004 SAICFF
• Benjamin Botkin, Christian composer, composed the soundtracks for Ace Wonder, The Mysterious Islands, and for the documentary Return of the Daughters, among other visual media projects
• Pat Roy, Writer & Producer, Jonathan Park ,Christian radio and media expert.
• Chad Burns, Director of Pendragon, Sword of His Father, and winner of multiple awards, Chad is founder of Burns Family Studios.

Register for the 2013 CFA Livestream Experience — Just $295!

Beyond the Mask - New Year’s Update

"With principle photography behind us, you might have been wondering what the BTM team has been up to. Other than catching up on a little reading and sleeping over the Christmas holiday (along with a hotly contested game of Axis & Allies), we’ve been working to wrap out the sets and locations used during the filming, and preparing for the next major phase of the project: postproduction.

“Postproduction” is the process of taking the footage that was shot (in our case, over 17 terabytes of data!), and turning the raw images into a final film. The first and perhaps most important step is the editing. We currently have three editing systems in operation, each with their own copy of the footage. We estimate the editing will last into the early summer of this year. Once we have completed a locked edit, we can release the film to the music, visual effects, and audio teams who can work simultaneously toward completion of the project.

As we are diving into the editing, we are reminded again of how God directed and provided in ways we could never have expected through every detail of the project. We were blessed and honored to work with an unbelievably talented and dedicated cast and crew.  We couldn’t be more pleased with the footage that was captured.

In the coming months, we plan to post weekly or bi-weekly updates to keep you in the loop with how things are progressing. We would appreciate your prayers for guidance, protection, and provision as we face the significant challenges represented in the final half of the project. We are excited to see where the Lord leads next in this journey, as we seek to point a generation of young people to hope in Christ through this action/adventure film."

BeyondTheMaskMovie.com

Black Magic Camera Review

Article by: Stu Maschwitz

Deadlines are good.

I only had the camera for a week. And for that entire week, there it sat, unused except for a few test shots. I should shoot something nice with it, I kept thinking. Something pretty. Before the day comes that I have to send it back.

And then that day came, and I had a shipping label in my hand, and zero footage. Meanwhile, my wife and her sister—who, as a company of two people, have a less developed procrastination method than my lone enterprise allows—asked if I could take a few behind-the-scenes photos of them testing new scents for their line of handmade candles.

“Sure, but how about we shoot a video too?” I said before I’d thought it through.

I jammed the borrowed Blackmagic Cinema Camera onto my Redrock Micro EyeSpy rig, attached my Canon 50mm f/1.2 L, and got to work.

BMC: Befuddling, Magnificent Camera

As perfectly expressed by Vincent Laforet (the generous loaner of this particular BMC), the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is a perplexing mix of unmatched bang-for-the-buck, along with some maddening shortcomings and inscrutable design decisions.

Upon picking up the camera body, I was immediately impressed with its build quality. It’s solid, pleasingly minimal, and made with high-quality metal, rubber, and plastic. What it is not, is light. The body alone weighs 3.75 lbs, and this one had the Wooden Camera BMC Kit (Advanced) grafted on with a sense of permanence that a gracious borrower would balk at challenging, adding nearly three pounds. Slap on a lens and you’re in an awkward zone of too heavy to hold, too small to stop trying.

Hold Me?

The large touch LCD built into the camera body is a big part of why you’ll keep trying to “hold” this camera in your “hands.” The built-in focus peaking is wonderful to use, and major reason why so much of Let’s Cook, the result of my hasty shoot, is in focus. You can also double-tap the display to zoom in for precise focus. But unless you’re on a tripod and operating at CWH (Comfortable Working Height), you will find the touchscreen difficult to use as a viewfinder. Red’s design of a detachable, adjustable Touch LCD may not be pleasingly minimalist or comfortingly DSLR-like, but it’s significantly more useful.

Despite the LCD being precisely where you’d put one on a camera meant for your hands, the BMC is not actually designed to be held. It lacks any kind of hand grip, and its ziggurat shape wants to fall out of your grasp, even as you try to place your thumbs over the buttons that cry out to have thumbs placed over them. The DSLR-esque shape of this camera is, unfortunately, more of an aspiration than a practical design feature.

Identity Crisis

The way I tried to make the BMC behave like an HDSLR was by mounting it to my EyeSpy rig. It fit on with only a few modifications, but the counterweight was not nearly enough to balance out the front-heavy rig. For hand-held work, this camera really wants to be directly over your shoulder, like an Alexa or an Epic, with an EVF or small LCD monitor extended in front. Bear that in mind if you’re considering the BMC as a graduation present from the school of HDSLRs.

I love a good deal, and the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is a great one. But the touchscreen would be more usable, and would save BMC customers substantial money on accessories, if it was detachable and/or adjustable to a position that better acknowledges the reality of this camera’s size and weight. Even if the camera had to cost $1,000 more to accommodate this, the net would be a savings to the owner.

Now, about those buttons crying out for your thumbs. On the right is the Focus button, which toggles the super-helpful-on-the-rare-occasion-that-the-touchscreen-is-usable-as-your-EVF focus peaking. It’s really good. I wore myself out hefting my imbalanced rig around just so I could keep using it, and as a result, I did a better job pulling focus on Let’s Cook than I’ve ever done before.

The button on the left is labeled Iris, and it is stupid. Press it and the iris—on a compatible EF-mount lens—is set automatically, according to rules that require a glance at the manual:

When shooting using the Video dynamic range, the exposure will set using an average of scene similar to what you’re used to on a stills camera. However, in Film dynamic range, the IRIS button adjusts your exposure to ensure that nothing in your scene is clipped.

That Dynamic Range setting of Film or Video affects the recorded image when using ProRes, but not, of course, when recording raw. There’s a separate Film/Video setting for the LCD, which toggles a non-destructive Rec 709 LUT for the display. I shot raw, but used the Video setting on the LCD for a nice contrasty image. I wondered why, in raw mode, the Dynamic Range setting remained available—maybe just to control this Iris button behavior?

Anyway, back to this stupid button, that is stupid. Who exposes this way? Not camera people. Did I mention that there’s no display for f-stop?

There’s no display of your f-stop. Yet.

This Canon-mount camera prominently places a single button called “Iris” that allows the camera set your Canon lens stop auto-magically, and then not inform you of its choice.

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that Blackmagic Design was not able to start shipping the BMC in quantity until they could address this insane shortcoming with a firmware update (pseudo-announced December 18th).

Back to the present: You can set your stop manually. But you won’t figure out how without another trip to the manual:

You can also manually adjust the iris of your lens by using the forward and reverse button on the Transport Control panel.

Of course. You use the (unlabeled) playback buttons to do the single most basic thing about shooting images. And even when making this adjustment manually with these repurposed buttons, you (for now) get no visual confirmation of your setting.

This is Blackmagic Design’s first attempt at making a camera, and the iris control situation is where you’ll notice that.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that you’ll be using EF-mount glass that has a manual iris ring, which renders this limitation meaningless. But a major selling point of this camera is its smart EF mount—yet to use it currently requires abandoning traditional control of the one setting that every cinematographer’s forefingers are born to adjust.

Or maybe you’ll opt for the Micro Four Thirds version of the camera. Certainly this mount makes more sense for the size of the BMC’s sensor. With the Canon mount, you’ll struggle to find fast, wide glass. But with the MFT mount, you might struggle to find glass that allows you to set your stop at all. If you’re a Panasonic shooter (you know you are if you’ve stopped reading long ago to leave a long-winded comment about how much better the GH3 will probably be than the BMC, especially with a firmware hack, ermahgerd), you’ll find that the “dumb” MFT mount won’t control your sealed-up, no-manual-iris-ring lenses. So the MFT BMC will only work with the subset if MFT glass that has a manual iris ring. Or, more likely, you’ll use the MFT mount as a permanent home for a PL-mount adapter. At which point you will be back to selecting among lenses optimized for a larger sensor. Exhausted yet?

I Gripe Because I Love

It takes a really great camera to earn this kind of criticism from me, and this camera is really great (if you were looking for the five words in this post that no one will read or remember, there they are). That it is available for a mere $3,000 is a miracle—in fact, a miracle that has yet to come true. I have every confidence that Blackmagic Design will work out their production kinks, about which they are being quite candid, and start shipping this thing en masse, soon.

But one has to wonder how many of these cameras, announced at NAB 2012, will be shipped before NAB 2013—an event at which, given the trend, we should expect to see 4K Super 35 digital cinema cameras being 3D-printed on demand from vending machines in hotel lobbies...

...READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE

Mary, Mother of Christ

Release Date: (Theaters) December 2013

COMPANY

Aloe Entertainment

DISTRIBUTION

Lionsgate, Noori Pictures

CAST

Julia Ormond … Elizabeth
Odeya Rush … Mary
Ben Kingsley … King Herod
Gary Oldman … Lucifer
Peter O’Toole … Symeon
Jay Willick … Rabbi
Kellan Lutz … The Angel Gabriel
Andy Garcia … Joachim

Film Synopsis:

This film is considered the biblical prequel to the story of “The Passion of The Christ”.

Under the reign of terror of Herod the Great and against all odds, Mary and Joseph survive as young parents in one of the most treacherous times in history. From Mary’s youth to her struggles as a young mother caring for her child, Jesus, up to the age of four years old. We will peer into Mary’s life at ages 8, 15, 19 and 27. (Written by Aloe Entertainment)

We are determined to make the familiar story new to our eyes and our hearts. It’s as if in the past we were taught to love this family, rather than sharing their lives in big and small ways and letting a natural empathy develop. One of the visual leitmotifs we are intent on is seeing the tiny fragile element of Mary who is essentially up against doubters who want to stone her to death, a fallen angel trying to harness all his persuasive power to try and get her to doubt her faith, and a mad King named Herod who will unleash rivers of blood in his intent in finding and killing her son. We must think of Mary as this very young, very vulnerable warrior. For the first time we will see how she has to stand on her own to protect her assignment in a way that reflects the legendary courage mothers are known for protecting their own.

We know what happened, we know the history, but there has not been a movie yet that brings us close to the story of a humble girl who was chosen to give birth to a Being that would change this world’s history; to live with her through her struggle of survival and the choices she had to make in order to protect and bring this child to life.

For whatever myriad reasons, none of the often-told cinematic portrayals of the birth of Christ really features Mary as the extraordinary, pivotal, indispensable center of the majestic drama. Certainly she has been recognized for her saintliness and her devotion to God and the mission he has chosen for her. What has been less focused on is the reality of Mary as a young girl of very modest means, who before a certain point in her young life is totally unprepared as to what her destiny is to be.

The story of Mary is one that has never been told to a wide global audience. Mary’s humanity transformed into the realm of the divine. Artistic representations of Mary usually depict her as a mature woman, comfortable and experienced in her raising of an infant. What we must assume, despite relatively little writing of the period, is that Mary was a young village girl who must have suffered the human burdens and delighted in the sublime pleasures of bringing up a child, particularly this child touched by godliness, yet human as any other.

One of the great triumphs of the script is Joseph coming to turns with the truth that the real engine of faith is love. Though what transpires is beyond his ability to literally understand, it is the power of his love for Mary and the fact that Mary prayed so intensely that Joseph be her companion that they come together in a unique love bond that is essential to the raising of the child.

The ticking clock rhythm and pace to this epic journey, in a vibrant canvas of great scope, is the key. The film will be shot wide screen to capture the vast landscapes and take the audience into these times, not as a distant period picture, but as if this story would be happening in the immediacy of the present.

Audiences should come out of movie theaters feeling they have come to know a part of history they thought they knew, but have understood and experienced now in a much more immediate and human way.

We will come to know these characters in a new and more accessible way that draws us to them as flesh and blood in their own right, not just depending on what we know of them as historically religious figures. There will be a reality to the violence within mainstream standards, but the ideas of which, (especially the slaughter of the innocents) are anything but familiar. We will FEEL the horror, FEEL the joy and suffer the threat of the unknown, along with the family.

The ending will give us a grand feeling of who this special boy has come to this world, and of the heroic struggle this mother and father have gone through with Faith as their ally.

The film will be visually beautiful with a studied re-imagination of every element including color palette from hair to costume to make-up from that which has come before. With historical documentation always at our side, I want to make that which we have never seen before. To show a side of the world’s most familiar story, which humanizes the biblical characters and brings us closer to understanding how love truly is the underpinning of faith. By the end of the film, if we haven’t before, we will come to believe and be inspired by these human examples.
- - - -
Source Article

New 70mm Panavision / NASA camera!

In a surprise unveling at the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Camerimage 2012) in Poland Panavision has indeed signalled their intention to join the market and have shown the first fruits of their labour with a new prototype.

Aimed at bettering the Arri, Sony and Red. It has a huge by cinema standards 70mm sensor (similar in size to full frame 35mm).

Here’s what we know about Panavision’s beast…

• The sensor is 70mm, it also has a crop mode for 42mm and Super 35mm lenses.
• An Alexa-like form factor, but the body is made of titanium and lighter than the Alexa
• It records to a SSD on board in DNxHD, ProRes and likely raw though details are still shrouded in secrecy – it will likely be 4k
• There’s speculation that Panavision are going to offer a new open codec format, rather than use a current open standard for raw like Cinema DNG.
• Due to the size of the sensor and the amount of data being read out there’s still some work to be done around cooling and there’s no firm specs on frame rates yet
• The sensor Panavision was working on with NASA’s JPL had a global shutter, 12bit raw in 2K and 120db of dynamic range (13 stops is 88db). This specific sensor was however destined for industrial applications so although the technology will go towards the cinema camera, the spec will likely be different and likely better

Good to see yet more competition and innovative technology in the high end digital cinema camera market. The trend here, like with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera seems to be that more and more technology from the scientific community is being picked up by cinema camera manufacturers and put to artistic use.

If the full force of NASA’s technology is brought to bare on a Pavavision designed camera we could be in for something out of this world.
- - - -
Source Article: Here

SAICFF 2013 - Alone Yet Not Alone & Lost Medallion

World Premiere of 'Alone Yet Not Alone'

On Friday night, as part of the opening ceremonies of the 2013 SAICFF, attendees will be treated to the World Premiere of ‘Alone Yet Not Alone.’ This historical drama is based on a true story. The full-length feature film recounts the faith and courage of a German-American immigrant family as they face hardship, loss and sorrow during the French and Indian War.

Pursued by a relentless and cunning warrior, Barbara and her three fellow captives must cross over two hundred miles of raw wilderness in their effort to reach friendly territory. Will their courage and trust in God be enough to see them through? And if they do succeed, will they find their family? Will Barbara ever see her sister again? ‘Alone Yet Not Alone’ depicts the riveting true story of a family at a critical juncture in our nation’s history.
- - - - -
Source

The Lost Medallion: The Adventures of Billy Stone

...has been selected as a semi-finalist this year!

"When Daniel Anderson (Alex Kendrick) visits a foster home to drop off some donations is is quickly roped into telling the kids a story. The story he tells transitions into a heart-racing adventure of Billy Stone and Allie. These two teenage friends uncover a long-lost medallion and then accidentally wish themselves back in time. The only way for Billy to save Allie’s life is to surrender the lost medallion to the evil warlord, Cobra. The adventure to gain back the medallion sends the children jumping off waterfalls,climbing cliffs, zip-lining across canyons, hiding from warriors, and sneaking into the grand hall of Cobra himself. In the end they regain the medallion.

Daniel finishes his story to the foster children with the truth about their tremendous value to God, who loves them and created them."

- SAICFF Entry

Screenplays on the iPad mini

Article by: Stu Maschwitz

"John August responds to the question of whether the iPad mini is good for reading screenplays:

It is. It’s really good.

I agree completely. Even without a retina display, the mini is a thoroughly pleasant device for reading. And dictating script notes via Siri feels enough like living in the future that I barely miss my flying car.

John’s feelings about the inexpensive but unpretty GoodReader app match mine, and my recommendation hasn’t changed since I wrote about reading screenplays on the iPad Maxi: Spend a few extra bucks and get PDF Expert. It syncs with Dropbox, exports annotations as text files, and won’t hurt your eyes. My only complaint is an old one: with no ability to offset page numbering (to account for page 1 of the PDF corresponding to the unnumbered title page of a screenplay), your exported annotations will be off by one page.

Small price to pay for a hundred screenplays in your pocket."

Source Article: Here

SAICFF Semi-Finalists 2013

The San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival has been updated their website with some of the semi-finalists for the upcoming festival in 2013! (more semi-finalist info still to come)

 

I'm pleased to have the "2012 Lamplighter Guild Promo" accepted as a semi-finalist! 

See the full line-up here: SAICFF.org