My November workshops in Malaysia and the Philippines have again confirmed at least in my mind the intense hunger for education and training in that part of the world. Notwithstanding my few days in the typhoon-devastated areas outside Cebu where the hunger of people is more much literal, my workshops in Kuala Lumpur and Manila […]
It goes without saying the FS700 performs very well. At 4K its images have a pleasing organic look that can be honed or tweaked during grading and finishing almost without limitation. In pro-level cameras the SDI output is typically 10-bit but in RAW mode the FS700 outputs a 12-bit proprietary signal via 3G-SDI. Sony has […]
Then why the obsession with tech chatter in the many online forums? What is it about tech talk that we find so engaging and enthralling? In the mid 1980s, the toy company Fisher-Price manufactured a 2-bit monochrome camera that recorded to an ordinary audio cassette. Pixelvision’s cryptic images continue to attract storytellers today, despite, or […]
NAB 2013 has come and gone and the prevailing themes this year were clear: cloud-based storage and collaboration and the advent of 4K acquisition. My question is who needs 4K? If you’re shooting a movie destined for the big screen then 4K origination certainly makes sense along with use of the appropriate lenses and a […]
This week I have been providing basic camera visual storytelling training to staff cameramen at television broadcast facilities in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Having offered such training numerous times in the past for the commercial production community I was informed in Southeast Asia that the news cameramen are particularly lazy, unmotivated, and lacking in creative […]
We’ve seem this before in 2010 and now again in 2013: a renewed interest in 3D workshops and training. This week I am finally out of Dhaka and leading back-to-back 3D training sessions in Singapore, at MediaCorps’ educational academy SMA, and at NYU Tisch Asia. The reason for the surge in interest seems counter-intuitive. The […]
No one was killed in the devastating fire that destroyed half the studio in Hyderabad last week but the substandard electrical practices that led to it will almost certainly ensure more such fires occur in the future. In less than an hour the sound stage and sets at Annapurna Studios were reduced to a pile […]
I’m in Hyderabad this week and working with a joint filmmaking group from Annapurna School of Film and Media and Chapman University. I sometimes forget that India has the largest film industry in the world, and as such has evolved its own style of acting that can only be described as big and over the […]
This month I am leading a series of camera workshops in Kuala Lumpur and am duly impressed by the spirit of my students and overall level of media activity here. While the mood in the US and UK can only be described as glum it is certainly not the case here where aspiring filmmakers and […]
The line between still and moving is rapidly blurring as the latest generation DSLRs become more robust and capable as professional video cameras. The addition of SMPTE timecode in the Canon 6D and Panasonic GH3, in addition to manual audio levels and more extensive control over exposure and frame rates, suggest that that the line […]