» Posts Tagged ‘alexa’
Apple has been losing its grip on the professional editing market ever since Final Cut Pro X was launched in 2011 to much skepticism. With Avid and Adobe welcoming a lot of FCP7 refugees, Apple is now once again targeting those customers with its latest free update to FCPX. The major features include support for Sony’s new XAVC codec up to 4K resolution, and the option to display ProRes Log C files from the Arri Alexa in Rec. 709. Also included in the free update are various fixes to both Compressor and Motion. Get the full details after the jump. More »
You might have already seen the previous behind the scenes that we posted for the Roger Deakins-lensed and Sam Mendes-directed Skyfall, but now we’ve got a more traditional video blog/making of that goes beyond raw on-set footage, and actually gets into the entire process for the production of the film. While the videos are short, they’re a little under 30 minutes in total, so sit back, relax, and catch up on some Bond, James Bond. More »
Some of you may have noticed something very, very interesting about the body designs of Sony’s upcoming F5 / F55 Cinealta cameras (they are, after all, nearly identical). These newcomers display something that the still rather-young F65, and for that matter, pretty much any other Sony cinema camera before now, has never featured (yes, aside from being shoulder-mount-friendly) — true modularity. Since its big announcement last week, Sony posted a video featuring Cinematography Product Specialist Richard Lewis demonstrating the level of modularity and extensibility built into the New F series — read on to check it out. More »
Have you you ever wondered what a twenty minute montage of making a James Bond film (and the first digital one at that) would look like? Fortunately, the web provides. I’m usually rather apathetic towards Bond movies before the fact — but this raw, unnarrated behind-the-scenes footage has got me pretty intrigued about the upcoming Skyfall. For one thing, there is some really exciting stunt-work going on in these clips, even with all the wires and safety cushions still un-rotoscoped away. And for another thing — actually, on second thought, we’ll get to that later — these videos have been going on and off-line, and being so clearly unstable, there’s really no time to waste. If you want to check them out, read on. More »
Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption, No Country for Old Men) is arguably one of the greatest cinematographers of the last 20-30 years (if not one of the greatest all-time). His work is timeless in a way that is hard to describe, but much of it comes from his ability to paint with light. Deakins had shot all of his work on film up until Andrew Niccol’s In Time, which he lensed on a prototype Arri Alexa. We covered back in February of 2011 an interview with Deakins where he stated that “film had a good run” and that he wasn’t sure if he would ever shoot film again. Now he’s taken on a much larger project with the camera, the new James Bond film Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes. Mr. Deakins recently sat down with Franz Kraus, the Managing Director of Arri AG at this year’s IBC trade show. More »
For all of the stellar spec sheets and newfangled doodads coming out of the RED camp at NAB this year, one look at the active production landscape will show you that one camera is absolutely everywhere: the ARRI ALEXA. From feature films like Drive to TV shows like Game of Thrones to seemingly every TV commercial in existence — seriously, almost every commercial is shot on an ALEXA these days — the camera is as ubiquitous on high-end productions as HDSLRs are for low-end shoots (though the latter is changing with the advent of “real” large-sensor video cameras). Why is the ALEXA everywhere? Because of its stellar imagery, ease of use, established workflow, and fast turnaround time. It is not a stretch to say the ARRI ALEXA is the camera that killed film, not anything from RED (or anyone else for that matter). More »
I’m a bit uncomfortable with how camera-focused this site has been over the past couple of weeks, but there’s so much going on it’s hard to keep up! That’s one reason I’m hiring more writers (I’ll be closing down the application in a day or two). Here’s some more camera news, though: ARRI has released Software Update 5 for their ALEXA, which brings 120 FPS recording to the camera along with several other new features (list below). To help ARRI demonstrate what 120fps looks like, I decided to grow my hair out and take up juggling. Check out my favorite vest: More »
I’m not going to go into much detail on Sony’s new F65, which I covered at launch, or the new offerings in the ARRI ALEXA lineup, because cameras that run six figures aren’t exactly the purview of DIY filmmakers (though they’re nice to think about, at least as a rental). Briefly, here’s what I saw at NAB about the latter: the ALEXA has gotten a number of new features, upgrading it to Plus status — 3.5K ARRIRAW codec, 120FPS shooting mode in 2K (which was working fully on the camera I toyed with briefly), and iPad wireless camera control. There are also two new models — the ALEXA M, which separates the camera head from the recording body, and the ALEXA Studio, which has a mechanical shutter, optical viewfinder, and 4:3 sensor with anamorphic de-squeezing. And of course, Sony has their new F3. More »
We’ve taken a look at RED’s High Dynamic Range mode, dubbed HDRx, in the past. But now that over a hundred EPIC-Ms are out in the wild, shooters are putting the camera through its paces in the real world. According to most tests the ARRI ALEXA has around 1/2 to 1 full stop more dynamic range in native mode (14.5 to 13.5), but with HDRx RED is claiming up to 18 stops total. Here’s a shot that wouldn’t be possible without HDRx: More »
Roger Deakins, ASC is up for a cinematography Oscar this year for lensing the Coen Brother’s masterful True Grit, and according to Deakins himself, it might be his last movie shot on film. Deakins — whose other credits include The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and The Shawshank Redemption — has been nominated for nine cinematography Oscars but has never actually won one (really?). Coming from the legendary cinematographer, who up until now has never shot digitally, it’s not just another “film is dead” quote. More »
Well, I should say, “what your DSLR is missing — among other things.” But one of the less obvious shortcomings of our DSLRs (other than aliasing, lack of good sound options, etc.) is the lack of dynamic range that DSLRs exhibit in video mode. And what better way to demonstrate this lack than by putting a Canon 7D side-by-side with a high-end ARRI ALEXA, and do a comparison video? More »
The forthcoming RED EPIC and ARRI ALEXA cameras both claim 13+ stops of dynamic range, which is just about equal to that of 35mm film. To me, dynamic range is a more important metric than resolution (others would disagree). Regardless, for those of us who own a 5D Mark II, how does our DSLR fare when measured against these high-end cameras? More »
When it comes to shooting a DIY feature, one of the foremost questions for DSLR owners will be, “rent a camera or shoot with what I own… and know?” I own a 5D Mark II and I’m honestly not sure if I’d rent a RED, even if the latter came in at the same cost. I happen to think that the importance of resolution is overstated; that is, similar to the megapixel war with still cameras, people tend to focus on resolution because it’s a simple metric. One number is larger than the other, so it must be better, right? But there are many characteristics more important in a moving image than just resolution, and while RED is offering greater resolution than the forthcoming ARRI ALEXA, does the latter camera offer advantages that aren’t measured in resolution? Here’s a quick side-by-side video: More »
In the battle of large CMOS-based cameras with capitalized names, ARRI is looking to steal RED‘s lunch money. Earlier this month, RED’s Jim Jannard announced the high-end EPIC and less expensive SCARLET cameras have been delayed due to a major bug, for which “the fix could be tomorrow. Or not.” Meanwhile, ARRI today announced they are shipping their ALEXA camera, which in the words of 24 DP Rodney Charters, “will probably be the [camera] that transitions us away from film and towards truly electronic capture on large features.” More »
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