With the NAB convention taking place in Las Vegas this week, there are going to be quite a few announcements about all kinds of products. This being NAB, it should always be remembered that an announcement does not a product make, and most certainly, an announcement does not a ship date make. Product announcements are, first and foremost, tools to keep current customers interested and engaged, and potential customers intrigued. I’ll have a lot more to say about NAB announcements after I visit Las Vegas later this week, but one very significant announcement did not wait for NAB. The introduction of the Arri Alexa digital camera line took place in Los Angeles last week, in part to allow the many industry people who are working on television pilots at the moment to participate (why NAB always takes place smack in the middle of pilot season is something I’ve never understood), and probably in part to get some direct attention prior to the rather mad, free for all atmosphere that NAB represents. At any rate, the event was very well attended and very well presented, and illustrated the clear differences between Arri – a well established, well regarded and well known industry player for many years – and their primary competitor in the digital cinema camera arena at the moment, which would be Red – a company with a much shorter history, but a lot of interest, a lot of buzz, a very significant product line, and some big sales numbers. continue reading…
Postworld
post production in the file based ageThis week I’m in Mumbai, India, doing some demos for my friends at Assimilate (makers of Assimilate Scratch, a digital intermediate system – among other things – that I’ve used for a few years now, both in Miami and back home in Los Angeles). This is my first visit to this part of the world, and that being the case, I’m still a bit overwhelmed, even after 4 days here. What I do know is that I’ve met a lot of interesting, talented, and for lack of a better term, wonderful people that I’m very happy to call new friends. I’ve seen a lot and learned a lot, as is usually the case when one travels to places with cultures and living circumstances very different from their own. continue reading…
Late this past week, announcements were made by SAG and AFTRA that stated their intention to negotiate jointly for their next Film and Primetime Television deal. These negotiations are slated to begin this fall, although the current contracts – signed by AFTRA in 2008 and SAG many months later, in 2009 – don’t expire until June of 2011. These early negotiations were part of the settlement agreed to by SAG when they finally accepted the current contract. The announcement was not unexpected, especially given the upheaval SAG has gone through in the last 2 years, and the stated intentions of their new leadership under their new President, Ken Howard. But make no mistake. SAG is fighting to maintain relevancy, particularly in television, where their antics of the last year and a half have severely reduced their ability to maintain their representation. continue reading…
Welcome to The New Postworld.
Postworld is created using the WordPress platform. WordPress allows the use of Themes to quickly design and modify the appearance of an individual site. Postworld is now using a theme designed by SRS Solutions called Arjuna. I’ve only slightly modified it for my use here. Since Postworld is primarily a blog, and primarily text based, I felt this particular theme allows it to be read a bit easier than the previous design. At any rate, I hope you enjoy the new look and find it a bit easier to get around.
Yesterday, I attended the Red Day presentation done at Ren-Mar Studios (oops…. I meant Red Studios Hollywood – old habits die hard in this town..). Saw a lot of familiar faces, and met a lot of new ones. I especially enjoyed seeing Assimilate’s use of dual Red Rocket cards to provide live playout of stereoscopic Red material with full debayering in real time. That alone has a lot of potential that I hope to explore.
This morning, a discussion on the CML centered around things Red (and possibly other companies) might be able to do that would be truly revolutionary and useful. It seems to many that most of the talk involving new digital cameras centers around things like improved dynamic range and resolution – important things to be sure, but ones that are really incremental improvements, not revolutionary changes. To be revolutionary, something has to be presented that accomplishes something that cannot currently be accomplished, or at least accomplishes it in a new way that changes the way one looks at the problem. It is very helpful if that change is also useful, in terms of either making a task more efficient, or eliminating costs associated with doing things using the current methods. I’ve got some things to suggest that I think might be revolutionary and useful. All relate to characteristics of the current Red systems that are often criticized, such as its use of a proprietary file and compression format, the need to supply personnel and systems for backing up files at the time of production, the complications involved in maintaining a consistent color path for dailies, the need to constantly transcode camera files, and the lack of a proper archival element. Here are some of them:
Apple iPad
Apple has always been one of the most interesting of technology companies, especially when it comes to new product introductions. They have proven themselves to be so innovative and original that when they don’t hit stratospheric heights right out of the box, it’s a major disappointment. They have also been so responsive to vastly different market segments (consumers, high end professional media folks, and everyone in between) that it’s sometimes difficult to see them as they actually are – which, to me, is a very successful consumer electronics company that also does some products for specialized market segments. And it is from that perspective that I look at their latest product, the iPad.
The iPad is not a desktop computer. And it is not a laptop, which in itself has become a physically smaller and more portable version of a desktop computer. It is, for lack of a better description, primarily an Internet portal, plain and simple. Connectivity is its primary purpose in life. And that connectivity is provided in a physically small package with a not so physically small screen. Since there is no keyboard or pointing device (it uses a virtual keyboard, like the iPhone, but it can attach to an external keyboard as well), it is a single piece that does essentially all of its user interaction via a touch screen. For many, it seems that the iPad is nothing more than a much bigger iPod Touch. And to some degree, this is true. It even uses the same operating system and runs the same applications. But to judge what the iPad is by its first incarnation is to overlook the history of Apple as a company, and how it both introduces and evolves its products.
This is the time when you see a lot of reviews of what’s transpired over the last year, but I’m not going to do that. For one thing, 2009 really sucked on almost every level, so why rehash it? But more importantly, I like to look to the future and not dwell on the past. And the future will be, at the very least, well, interesting. And not necessarily in the ways you might expect. So here are some personal prognostications for your profound perusal. And please don’t hold me to any of them – they’re all based on personal opinion with no basis whatsoever in actual fact. That said…
Scarlet 2/3" Fixed Lens
Earlier this week, Red Digital Cinema released information regarding some future products, in particular their Scarlet camera and Red Ray media player. I wanted to take a few days to go over the details and hear others reactions before posting mine.
Scarlet is an attempt to enter a new market segment for Red, who basically defined their own market with their first product, the Red One. The price/performance of that product was something that really hadn’t been seen before and a lot of people in the mainstream production industry really didn’t know what to make of it. But in the approximately 2 years since its release, it has established itself as a strong player in some very specific areas. Independent filmmakers (now redefined not as those who are working for independent studios, but as those who are working for themselves) latched on to the Red One as a device that could give them images that went considerably beyond what was available with “prosumer” video cameras, such as the Panasonic HVX200, which had become quite popular for this type of use. Some more experienced cameramen saw it as something they could afford to own and present themselves as owner/operators on a wide variety of productions, but particularly in music videos and commercials. In fact, in that two year period, the Red One has found pretty wide acceptance in that community. In what I would refer to as the “mainstream” industry, it has been used on a few sizable feature films, as well as a few television series, but it has seen much more success in the commercial world. The Scarlet represents an attempt to move, for lack of a better term, downmarket with a product that is smaller, simpler, and has a much lower price point. Surprisingly, Red plans to endow the Scarlet with a great deal of the functionality and image quality of the Red One and its successor, the Epic, and the ability to share a lot of peripherals with the Epic line, allowing both to be used together in a lot of situations. Like much of what Red has done so far, this is an approach that has never really been tried by the “traditional” camera vendors, and clearly reflects Red’s out of the box thinking.
I belong to an Internet discussion group called the CML, or Cinematography Mailing List. This is a group that was started a little over 10 years ago by Geoff Boyle, a fine cinematographer from the U.K., and has since grown to thousands of members. The membership largely consists of industry professionals, primarily in the camera department, but also some who work in other areas of production and have a personal or professional interest in cinematography and the many things that surround it. There are many, many very informative and lively conversations on this group, and it sometimes gets a bit heated. When that happens, the cause is often (certainly not always, but often) the endless misunderstandings between those working in production, and those working in post production.
There seems to be a trend in recent years towards “do it yourself” post production, particularly on lower budgeted projects. The advent of ever cheaper technology – both on the camera side and on the post side – has helped to bring this about. And for many, the mere presence of these things has helped put them in a position to create projects that they could never have considered in years past. The development of high quality but relatively inexpensive cameras, exemplified by devices such as the Red One, the Sony EX1 and EX3, the Panasonic HVX200, and more recently the video enabled digital SLR’s from Canon (in particular the 5D and 7D models) allows individuals with talent and the right skills to create images that can rival those from much more expensive devices in many ways. And the lowering of the cost of entry for professional quality editing, compositing, and color correction systems allows those same people to finish their projects at a reasonable level of quality. Even sound editing and mixing can now be done on desktop computers with excellent results, given sensible room conditions. So the question isn’t can this be done, because obviously, it can. The question is should it be done?
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