Editor's View: Cause for Celebration

In this issue, we congratulate our 2012 Digital Video All Stars, a group of video professionals we’re recognizing for their passion and creativity, as well as their ongoing commitment to the production community. The editors of Digital Video magazine and DV.com agree that the creative efforts of these pros consistently produce innovative, uncommon results, and you can read about their accomplishments and achievements starting here.

TimeScapes: Treat Yourself

You know there is little I find more wonderful and wondrous than a time-lapse video. If it’s something celestial—aurora borealis, annular solar eclipse, Venus flying past the Sun—I will predictably practically go out of my mind. Here on DV.com, I’ve compiled videos from some of my favorite time-lapse cinematographers—Terje Sorgjerd, Randy Halverson, Dustin Farrell, Shawn Reeder and Don Pettit (Pettit is capturing his imagery from the International Space Station)—so if you like a whorl of stars like I like a whorl of stars, treat yourself to a video or two.

If, however, you would like to practically go out of your mind, treat yourself to Tom Lowe’s TimeScapes, which was just released and is available on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download from www.timescapes.org. Shot with RED EPIC and Canon DLSR cameras, edited in 4K in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, and graded at 16-bit 4K at Light Iron Hollywood on a Quantel Pablo system, TimeScapes is beautiful and mesmerizing, and you will not be able to stop watching it. (You can read more about Tom and his work here.)

Lady Power

Also, I’d like to recommend to you a documentary airing next month as part of PBS’ POV series. It’s called The Light in Her Eyes, and it follows a group of girls at a Qur’an school in Damascus. The film examines the challenges these students face, living according to Islam without giving up their dreams. It’s on PBS July 19 and is co-directed by my friend Julia Meltzer, who I have known since I was 6 years old—see the photo taken by her father, David, at right. Julia is second from the left, I’m second from the right. (Despite the Victorian porch and the use of black and white for the photo, let me emphasize that I did not live in olden times!)