Yes, you are right. I was unclear. It does boot into OS X without a Mac card or any special firmware. I run a dual boot system and without the Mac card the screen where it shows what you are booting into doesn't show. Good idea or not, having it flashed would remedy that. Though certainly not a good option for a 6k quadro.

You can kit out the old silver towers. I have a 980 in mine. The PC Cards don't have the firmware to boot so you have to run a mac gpu alongside, or pay someone to flash the firmware onto the card. Not sure if the drivers are updated for 1080s but no doubt will be. The trash cans are trickier because of the form factor but I think there are external solutions, but they're expensive.

I'm really talking about this:

"By now it's clear that making a well-crafted short with great dialogue and acting is going to get you less attention than a proof-of-concept film with lots of effects."

You're saying that Whiplash sort of doesn't count because it won Sundance, and obviously, Sundance. But the reason it won Sundance is because it is precisely the thing you said would get less attention than a flashy proof of concept. Whatever happened to it after the festival, whatever powerful exec or ally Chazelle had moving toward the feature, at the beginning of the day it was "a well-crafted short with great dialogue and acting."

And the proof of concept was a necessary step for that film, if he'd been able to secure funding he would have gone straight to production on the feature as most movies do.

Live action shorts being optioned into features nothing new, the VFX thing is new. But there's an element of "why even bother, all they want is CG" in the article, and I just don't think it's warranted.

Whiplash got a different kind of attention than the above movies, and it found it through a different avenue, but in no way was it "less."

I recognize the trend you're talking about here, but to say that a flashy high-concept short will get you more attention than an artistically well executed traditional short is really not the case, and you could really only get there by cherry picking examples.

Whiplash was a well acted and written short film at one point (with an accompanying feature script). I think it's fair to say that it received more attention than any of the shorts above, and when all is said and done will almost certainly be the more successful project.

It's just a lot easier to come up with vfx of this caliber than it is to find writing/directing skills like Damien Chazelle's. So when you can't find that extraordinary script with the incredibly well acted short proof of concept, you buy something with some flashy effects in it. Studios have to make a certain number of movies, they just have to.

But still, they'd buy Whiplash ten times before they bought The Garden if they could.

I find the business model frustrating too. It seems like since you are offering an a la cart option, they should offer the option to upgrade to the function of the HD for the difference between the HD and the X, or maybe the difference plus 10% (less the money paid towards upgrades thus far). As it stands, making the decision to upgrade later would cost a lot more for the X than the HD, and that feels like punishing your customer.

But....

Where did you get the impression that creating software was free? How exactly do you think they compensate the programmers, are they paid in software? Making a magically free circle?

Absurd.

I understand all the spec comparing, and frustration with Canon, but there's really nothing like this at this price point to my knowledge. I was at this very second looking for a camera for a project coming up, and have exactly that much money. After this my next best option was a used FS700, and I have always hated the image from that camera (just one man's opinion).

I have an A7S and love it but the fact is that it doesn't have XLR's, and doesn't have ND's, both of which are strictly required for this job. My client will never want slow-mo, doesn't care one bit about specs, and will like that it says "canon" on it. It doesn't solve all the world's ills, but if you are looking for a camera to buy today, and you have a certain type of project, the cost/quality/functionality ratio on this camera is about as good as it gets.