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  • Fearless Forecast v2.0 – 2011 Edition, Part 1

    Posted on January 1st, 2011 Mike 3 comments

    In doing another Fearless Forecast for the coming year, I re-read my previous forecast (posted exactly a year ago) just to see how I did. In a nutshell, not bad. Here are some things I predicted and how they actually turned out:

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  • A Golden Age of Choices

    Posted on October 19th, 2010 Mike 3 comments

    It often seems that nearly everything I read about the production and post industry today involves some sort of choice. Film vs. digital. PC vs. Mac. Red vs. Arri. Sony vs. Panasonic. Kodak vs. Fuji. Resolve vs. Baselight. Lustre vs. Pablo. Scratch vs. Speedgrade. The list goes on and on. But the very use of the term “versus” is a good indicator of just how far off the mark all of these things are, because the fact is that choice is a good thing, and making a choice based on particular circumstances is something that is done by every producer, cinematographer, and director on every project they undertake.

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  • Who’s Shooting With What – And Why

    Posted on July 5th, 2010 Mike 2 comments

    As another television production season begins (most network shows begin shooting shortly after the 4th of July holiday), the question of whether to shoot on film or digital formats has become almost an anachronism in 2010. The fact is that the SAG actions a year ago solidified and accelerated a now unstoppable march towards use of digital formats for all but some legacy shows that are still shot on film. New shows are almost universally choosing (some might say being compelled by the studio, but I digress…) to put the cast under AFTRA contracts and shoot with digital cameras of various types. Under the umbrella of “digital formats,” there are numerous choices available: compressed and uncompressed, videotape based and file based, HD formats and higher resolution formats, large format and small format, and price ranges for equipment ranging from ridiculously cheap (the Canon DSLR’s) to if-you-don’t-have-a-network-level-budget-you-probably-can’t-afford-it (F35, Panavision Genesis, etc.). This season, you will find network shows shot on equipment from Arri, Panavision, Red, Panasonic, Sony, and possibly some others as the primary, or “A” camera, but on the same sets on any given day you might very well find cameras from companies like Canon, Iconix, Woodman Labs (the Go Pro line), and even Apple’s iPhone being used, sometimes on the same scene. If it all sounds like a bit of a free for all, well, to some degree it is. On the down side, the presence of all of these devices, each one seemingly with its own specific file format, has made life much more difficult for post production, both in editorial and in final finishing. On the up side, the viability of all of them for specific purposes has given production more tools than they’ve ever had to explore visual creativity. Every show must ultimately decide what to use as the “A” camera, regardless of what other tools they might bring to the set on any given day. And the reasons behind those decisions are not always what people outside the mainstream television industry seem to think they are. Read the rest of this entry »

  • Collaboration

    Posted on November 26th, 2009 Mike No comments

    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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