Something SCHWEET This Way Comes...

 WOOOEEEW.

Tomorrow I might get my first ever look at a UHD (larger than 1080) camera. Win! Above is Silicon Imaging's SI 2K and it appears to be fairly cool. It's prog scan and even has an optical viewfinder. It also fits standard 35mm film lenses apparently, which is always a good thing.

Just to clarify:

It probably isn't better than a Red One.

However, It does shoot 2K (half Red) which is what most digital screens in cinemas project anyway as far as I'm aware. But the feature I've been doing running for has just hired one in for Sunday.. which suggests it's better than the F900 Cinealta they were using before (I think) ...at something. Perhaps better in low light conditions, although Sony have always been awesome at that. Maybe they just need it so they can crop it in post because there's gunna be like 60 extras who could potentially fail the shot for them.

So yeah - I'll try get a photo to blog up here of the actual camera.

Hmm... intriguing.

Jonathan's Laptop = Fxed

Incredible. Macs aren't supposed to break. But apparently Mooseknuckle desktop destroys all.

After horribly ending it's life in Shetland - Jonathan's laptop has been revived. For all you other linux lovers out there, this is how I solved the problem:

HDD corrupt to some extent. Wont allow Read Write access even when sudo'd to. eventually I tried "sudo mount -t hfsplus -o remount,rw /dev/sda2 /media/Jfro" to remount in r/w but no cigar. Tried chmoding and chowning specific files and folders on the disk (you could see them - just not touch em) and nothing worked.

Eventually I spotted something simple on the ubuntu help forum: "sudo nautilus".

Problem solved - was able to use the GUI file manager to just copy and paste the files to back em up.

So now it's time to nuke the bastard with a reinstall. Win.

I love Chris Hall

I love Chris Hall.

It's been such a busy week I haven't had time to post till now. But last Sunday I got my first ever feature film job!

-- WIN --


I got to meet so many awesome people. Michelle, who I met at an ESP office opening party, just happened to be a runner too so there was someone I knew and could talk to. Having said that, I made friends with all the other runners fairly quickly, which was great. Highlight of the day - I got to see and be near (unfortunately not touch :C - I did ask ) ...A real Sony CineAlta HDCAM (probably an F900) and I got to carry a box for the camera operator. XD YEYAH! At one point the crew were struggling to balance the big bastard camera on the cart mobilator so I awkwardly approached and asked if I could help...

cam assistant lady
"...what?"

me
"er... Can I help at all?"

cam assistant lady
"...Oh. No."

That sucked. I felt like I had offended her :( I'm sure she didn't care at all - but it was really important to me at the time to try get in with the crew and make friends and stuff so I was gunna apologise. But then I remembered all those scenes from "Extras" and thought I'd be best just shuffling away quietly to avoid any further embarrassment. FAIL

Oh well, I met the (carpenter?) set designer guy... He was wearing a "Stone of Destiny" jacket and was really nice. Pointed the DOP and Cam op and focus puller out to me.

Also got to meet E.G.'s driver who was a nice older gent, who reckoned I had a chance of being asked back (I was super polite to him you see) which was probably what caused my extended confidence in asking to help the camera crew.

The other coolest thing about the day was I got to be an extra in one of the scenes! Just last minute stuff the 1st AD picked me and another runner out (Who was strangely about 10 years older than me... but she looked really young. Am I getting old? It feels weird with all the freshers walking about uni.) Anyway... so yeah - I'm gunna be in a montage in the movie. HOW COOL is that!?

The reason I love Chris is because he is a Production Runner (I hope that's the right title?) on the film, and he emailed round and essentially got me the job. Legend.

I can't believe they paid me. I had the day of my life and they paid me to be there. Rediculous! Anyway, I hope there's more where that came from. I suppose until that day, I didn't really know what the film industry in the real world is like. I think now I can say I do know, at least location shooting, and it is exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. I did a whole bunch of surprisingly difficult people traffic control, some odd jobs carrying boxes and traffic cones, radioed about... doesn't sound special at all: but I bloody loved it.

Driving with long exposure

The psychadelic driving of Jonathan.

Shetland

Shetland

Visiting Jonathan in Shetland

Shetland is Beautiful. I like it. It's designed for drunk people, and it came from a volcano at the equator hundreds of millions of years ago. Awesome.

Real D 144fps 3D movie problem

I have come across something that I do not like about 3D movies.

The projectionists.

It has to be them, or at least one of them at Glasgow Renfrew St's Cineworld. It happens once every three films I see there. It's particularly clear during credits or when the scene involves white on black high contrast shots. There is a ghost of the image - displaced about a quarter of the screen down and right. Like this:

At first I figured it was a reflection from the glass separating the projector from the theatre. But it can't be that if the problem only occurs for some films, since they all use the same hardware as far as I'm aware. If you know, then I'd really appreciate it if you commented on this post to let me know, or at least let the guys at the Glasgow Cineworld know they fail and perhaps teach them how not to fail.

Obviously the credits aren't the main concern here. Any time I have noticed a problem with left/right ghosting (where the left image is ghosted with part of the right image) I have also noticed this aliased image offset. Perhaps they are linked by some common problem. I cannot find it under any google search. The left/right ghosting totally ruins the 3d effect for me.

It makes me sad.

- Darren

Screen Test

A funny thing popped up today about an old short film "Dreams by the Clyde" that we shot about 2 years ago now. We entered it into the 2007 Screen Test Student Film Festival.

The funny thing is, I didn't even know, until today, that it was screened there in Bristol that year. Sadly it didn't win anything, but it was selected to be shown there out of hundreds of films which must've been even worse.

Super kool.

Nikon D5000 test shoot

Innes and I are about to do some revision for resit exams. He's also taking his new D5000 over to do some test shoots. So I'm thinking of writing a short story to quickly shoot and put up on my Freelance Media website.

The main testing points are to see if the audio can be synced easily with 48kHz PCM from my miniDV camera. This would be freaking epic, as we'd have to shoot old school with a clapper board. That'd be great fun. It's also 720p HD - which means some lovely progressive video and at a higer res than my miniDV can put out.

In conclusion - full total win.