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When You're Steven Spielberg, This is How People Celebrate Your Birthday
Ever had the pressure of needing to get a really sweet birthday present for a friend? What if that friend was Steven Spielberg? What do you get a guy who is one of the biggest directors in Hollywood? For his 40th birthday in 1987, John Candy and Dan Aykroyd — with appearances by Robert Zemeckis, Frank Marshall, George Lucas, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson, and many more — teamed up for a clever homage to Citizen Kane chronicling Spielberg’s life and career, and his “Amblin Empire.” The title? Citizen Steve. Check it out below. More »
After years of development, and plenty of changes along the way, RED’s first foray into the 4K display/distribution market is finally arriving. When it was announced (for real this time) back in November, it seemed like it would be shipping in just a matter of months, but like with anything RED — as they themselves admit — sometimes things can take a few detours along the way before finally getting into the hands of buyers. In the meantime, we’ve seen had announcements for 4K-capable consoles retailing for $500 and under, so where does this $1,750 hard drive and network-based device fit in? More »
The recent developments with the Canon DSLR hack known as Magic Lantern have been downright astonishing. At one time these DSLRs were just decent H.264 video/still hybrid cameras, and now they’ve become RAW video monsters with an unbelievable increase in detail and clarity. While the Canon 5D Mark III is the only one capable of taking full 1080p advantage of these advancements, it’s likely every Canon DSLR will be able to shoot RAW video down the line. But how did we get to this point so fast? Was it some sort of Canon conspiracy? Check out the video below to get a better sense of the insane amount of work it’s taken to get to where we are now. More »
Adobe CC, the new Creative Cloud only suite that is replacing CS6, should be launching at some point tonight. But if you’re one of the many who haven’t been happy with the new approach, or you’d like to play the wait-and-see game, there might be some other options down the road, especially for those people who would like indefinite access to all of their files even if they are no longer subscribing to CC. More »
A few months ago Zoom revealed the first details about their new H6 audio recorder, a heavier-duty big brother to the indie and small production workhorse, the H4N. We guessed that it would be coming in at $400 back in April, and that’s exactly the price that Zoom has revealed for the base package. There are a lot more accessories and places for expansion this time around, so check out the introduction below. More »
Every once in a while a company announces a product completely out of left field and it’s unclear if they’d actually asked regular shooters for input. The new HMQ30 is a new 4K camera from JVC that was teased at NAB 2012 and has now finally seen the light of day. We didn’t know much about the camera at that point except that it was going to have a Nikon F-mount and a 1.25″ sensor (which is slightly smaller than M4/3), but now it’s been revealed that it is more or less just a big brother to the GY-HMQ10, another 4K camera from JVC that records to 4 SD cards. More »
Even though the labor laws regarding unpaid internships have been rather strict and specific, employers have either largely ignored them or stretched what they considered acceptable within the law. If you’ve ever done an internship of any kind, whether you were receiving school credit or not, there’s a good chance you performed duties that directly benefitted the company, which is one of the tests meant to help companies and interns decide if the job should be paid. For the first time, a judge has ruled that unpaid interns actually should have been paid, in a case involving Alex Footman and Eric Glatt, two interns who sued Fox Searchlight in 2011, a company they say took advantage of them while they were working on the Academy Award-nominated film Black Swan. More »
Intentional or not, Apple’s new software releases often hint at what may be coming down the line. When they revealed their newly redesigned Mac Pro and their new desktop release, OS X 10.9, which they are calling Mavericks (since they seem to be running out of feline-related names), they also posted a promotional wallpaper to their website which just so happens to be double the horizontal and vertical resolution of current Mac displays — leading to speculation that they are preparing Retina models. More »
Mac Pro AMD GPUs Getting Full Hardware Acceleration Support in Blackmagic Resolve 10 & Adobe CC
While on the surface it might seem like Apple is making a huge mistake not at least offering NVIDIA on their new system, it looks look those dual AMD workstation FirePro GPUs have a few tricks up their sleeve, especially as it relates to OpenCL support on both Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 10 and Adobe’s new CC software suite. Both are major players right now in the video space, and there will be some serious hardware acceleration thanks to these processors. More »
Radically different, but powerful. Even though many video professionals would probably have preferred seeing NVIDIA GPUs, the new Mac Pro is the first professional computer from Apple to support workstation-class graphics cards (dual internal AMD GPUs to be exact). Many were expecting a smaller device with limited expandability, and Apple delivered — and then some. They are definitely going to be reliant on Thunderbolt 2 (which should be twice as fast as Thunderbolt 1) for any PCI-E devices, and the only part of the system that is definitely expandable internally is RAM. If that sounds appealing, click through for an introduction to the fancy new system. More »
Apple didn’t just take the wraps off their new revolutionary Mac Pro mini-tower – they also made some serious internal improvements to their Macbook Air line. While the Macbook Air has always fallen somewhere in the middle in terms of being a fully featured laptop and a beefier tablet, the new models certainly make a case for their existence based on battery life alone. More »
Today at the WWDC, Apple took the wraps off the new Mac Pro they’ve been working on that will be released later this year. It’s certainly a departure from anything we’ve seen before at the professional level — so read on for more photos and details of the new machine. [Update]: Be sure to check out the newest post detailing more of the features. More »
[Update]: the new “R2D2″ Mac Pro is here. By the time some of you read this, we may already know whether we are getting a new Mac Pro at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Put aside for a moment if it even makes sense to keep investing in Apple on the pro end. A new Mac Pro, in whatever form it takes, is going to fill a specific need for specific people, whether you think people are crazy for being loyal to Apple or not. The Mac Pro has been a workhorse in the creative industries for some time now, but the lack of updates has sent many people in many different directions. There has been some information floating around that points towards a very different design with limited expandability. If Apple decides to go in that direction, however, will any professionals — the market Apple would target with this computer — actually want one? More »
They are coming. Gyro-stabilized camera rigs, that is. Some of you are officially not impressed, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t about to be inundated with stabilizers. So what’s the big deal? Should you even care? The answer probably depends on the kind of work you do, but in the next 3-5 years, gyro camera stabilizers like Freefly’s MōVI are going to be as ubiquitous as sliders and jibs. Don’t think so? Read on for more and check out some exclusive footage from NAB 2013 using the MōVI. More »
Easily Convert Magic Lantern RAW to CinemaDNG with RAWMagic
There have been a few programs floating around to convert the .RAW files from Magic Lantern on the PC and Mac, but getting the files into a usable form takes a little bit of effort, as these programs were turning the files into DNG first, which aren’t compatible with programs like DaVinci Resolve (since DNG is a stills format). Now we have a better solution as Thomas Worth from Rarevision (who created 5DtoRGB) has created a program called RAWMagic to get After Effects and Resolve-supported CinemaDNG files straight from the .RAW camera originals. More »
Referring to him by his work on Saturday Night Live is easy shorthand, but it’s only a small part of Academy Award-nominated DP Alex Buono’s toolset. He has shot features, docs, shorts, commercials, and everything in between, and he’s decided to take what he’s learned and go on a workshop tour of the US (including stops in Canada). The difference with this workshop series is that it’s not just about learning to shoot, but about everything that goes into the creation of a shot, including the theories behind why shots are design visually in particular ways. Check out his introduction below: More »
Which Canon Cameras & Resolutions Are Currently Supported with Magic Lantern RAW Video?
If you’ve been following the Magic Lantern RAW video news, you have probably seen quite a bit of material from the Canon 5D Mark II and the 5D Mark III. The hack, however, is working on many of Canon’s cameras, including the 50D (a camera that never shot video before), 60D, 6D, and more. Even if a camera is supported, that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to get full resolutions while recording continuously so Roman over on the Magic Lantern forum has put together a list of the Canon cameras and max burst and continuous resolutions currently supported. Check out if your camera is currently supported below. More »
Though it’s been available on the Mac for some time, there has been quite a bit of demand for a Windows port of PluralEyes 3. That support is now a reality, as Red Giant has finally announced the Windows version of the popular audio syncing software. It contains all the same features and fast syncing of previous versions, except, of course, it now works on the PC. Click through for more on compatibility and pricing information. More »
It has been relatively quiet on the RED front regarding their fire-breathing beast known simply as DRAGON. We saw the first actual images from the camera back in February, and there was mention a few weeks ago that some internal power supplies needed to be redesigned as they were getting additional noise in the shadows. While development seems to be edging towards completion, Jarred has finally posted our first glimpse of the monster in the wild: More »
Micro 4/3 Blackmagic Cinema Camera Shipping Soon, Plus Low-Light Footage from the Pocket Camera
If you are in the US, and you’ve had a pre-order for the EF-mount version of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, they are currently in stock at places like B&H. While there aren’t infinite quantities, if you’ve been looking to buy, you can get one right now at a number of different retailers. If you switched your pre-order to the Micro 4/3 version, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel for shipping on that model, especially as it has been some time since the Beta testers got a hold of that model. We’ve also got more footage shot with the Pocket Cinema Camera from John Brawley (which shares the same sensor technology as the original BMCC). This time he takes the camera into some serious low-light situations and puts the camera through its paces. More »
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