Zach NeSmith's short film "Versus" was shot on an iPhone 4S and also did not start out its life as a piece of narrative filmmaking. NeSmith filmed bits of his life over a two year period and then used the editing room to craft a fictional story out of the footage.
He tells The Creators Project, "Working this way presented many creative challenges, difficulties and long-awaited solutions. Using my iPhone 4S to film most of the movie, I was able to shoot easily at any time in any place and had culminated days of footage by the time editing and plot development began.”
Watch "Versus" below and read more here.
The beautiful 15-minute short "Mountains in Motion: The Canadian Rockies" brings a real sense of narrative to its timelapses. The stunning photography is interspersed with narration and footage depicting an early mountaineer.
The film has already won cinematography awards in several film festivals, including the Banff Mountain Film Festival. The entire thing was made on a tiny budget and includes an original score by Michael Wynne. Photography was done by Doug Urquhart and Paul Zizka on a Canon 5D, 7D, T3i, 400D and a RED Epic.
Watch below.
Watch below as AbleCine takes a first look at Zeiss' first Compact Zoom, the CZ.2 70-200 T2.9. They write, "This lightweight lens is a sister to the Compact Prime lens family, which means that it shares versatile traits such as Full Frame 35mm coverage (it’ll cover the Canon 5DM3 and 1D C) and professional cine style gearing and marking. Additionally, it features interchangeable lens mounts (PL, Canon EF, Nikon, Sony E and Micro 4/3), and is quite affordable. It is also a Zeiss, which means that it is sharp with excellent contrast."
Read more here.
This behind-the-scenes video interviews Digital Bolex creator Joe Rubinstein and the manufacturers at Candian company lenso who are actually putting the camera together.
Says lenso's VP of finance, Joe Bornbaum, "You're running toward a cliff and you're hoping that you can build a bridge by the time you get there. And that's what we've literally committed to doing here is we're betting the company on making this work. It's cause Joe has bet everything he has on this."
Watch below.
Watch the trailer for "Yosemite HD II," which promised to bring us spectacular timelapse footage from the famed Yosemite National Park. The piece is a collaboration between The Muir Project and Project Yosemite.
Watch below.
Nearly a full year after it was announced at NAB 2012, Definition Magazine reviews the actual production model of a Blackmagic Cinema Camera. They write, "At NAB 2012, when the Blackmagic Cinema Camera was launched, someone on the BM stand asked me if I thought it would sell. Then, as now, I believed that it would sell very well, though I’m not sure to whom. It’s cheaper than a high-end DSLR, but a very different beast. It isn’t easy to use for fast paced documentary shooting, or events, or anything else you would expect in that £2000 bracket. It’s a cinema camera. Like the Canon 5D MkII, and the RED One, I suspect it will be a game changer.
In the below video, the guys from Filmtools go over some things to know about the Canon C100. They say, "First off, this camera has the same magic 4K chip that you find in the C300 and C500. Now, what that's going to get you is an incredible low-light performance and the ability to get light and dark in the same shot and get them both right. Physically, the camera is about 15% smaller than the C300."
Watch below and read more here.
NewBay Media, the leading integrated media company in the entertainment technology market, with celebrated print, digital, and event brands that include TV Technology, Digital Video, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News, Next TV, Tech & Learning, and more, will launch Video Edge in May. The brand will serve content producers and business professionals in the rapidly expanding online video market.
Get a first look at the Canon 100D and 700D, the latest additions to Canon's DSLR line. The 100D is the world's smallest and lightest DSLR camera and designed for entry-level DSLR users. See both of their main features below.
Robert Rodriguez has teamed up with Blackberry to crowdsource parts of his branded short film "Two Scoops." Rodriguez filmed the short with certain pieces missing and is giving fans a chance to fill in those holes.
He explains, "People are constantly writing me on Twitter, saying, Put me in your movie! Now they can! We have a whole blank screen waiting for them....[When I'm collaborating on a feature film] I give them a sense of what I want--a huge monster--then they go and design it. They run it by me and I give them notes. [With this project] I would say, 'Yours is one of the finalists; I love what you did here but now I want you to give me, say, three heads instead of two.' I’m going to respond to whatever they send me. That’s what’s so fun. You take what people bring to you and figure out how to make it work."
In Tony Goss’ creative vision, you can go home again. On horseback.
In his latest feature, Welcome to Happy Valley, two estranged sisters are forced to reconcile after they inherit their father’s struggling horse farm in upstate New York.
Tony Goss, writer/director/director of photography on the project, shot the movie with Panasonic’s AG-AF100 large imager HD cinema camcorder on location in Middleburgh, NY, last summer. Welcome to Happy Valley, currently in postproduction, will debut in nearby Cobleskill this spring.
A major portion of director Todd Robinson’s submarine thriller Phantom was filmed in the confines of an actual Russian submarine. “While Todd and I spent a considerable amount of time establishing the look and feel that we wanted to accomplish in Phantom, I have to credit gaffer Steve Lundgren with the innovative lighting approach,” says cinematographer Byron Werner. “He built a lot of custom lights, but Litepanels bricks were the best and only movie lights we could use in many parts of the sub.”
The bullet-time effect just got a whole lot more portable thanks to GoPro and an array created by Marc Donahue of PermaGrin Films. Donahue uses 15 GoPros arranged in a semi-circle to create the Matrix-style effect. He plans to use his array soon to create a music video.
Watch the array in action below. (via Mashable)
EOSHD forum user Javier Sobremazas made an interesting discovery recently: he could shoot 4K video in 1-second snippets with his $220 Nikon V1. Explains PetaPixel, "It can only shoot 4K for one second at a time; and secondly, it’s actually an extension of the camera’s burst mode Sobremazas discovered the feature when he realized that the V1 — by using some special Aptina sensor magic — uses a fully electronic shutter in burst mode, shifting all of its up to 60fps 4K output to a small buffer."
Watch a 4K compilation Sobremazas made below and read more here.
Wired has collected some timelapses which show the comet Pan-STARRS streaking through the sky. They explain, "The comet is named for the Hawaiian telescope observatory where it was discovered in 2011, has made its way through the inner solar system in recent weeks. During its pass, the object could be seen in the night sky with the naked eye or a good pair of binoculars... Pan-STARRS first peeked over the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere on Mar. 7 but shortly thereafter it disappeared when it went too close to the sun. Since Mar. 11, though, it has reappeared each night in the west a bit after sunset for a short time. Particularly stunning views came on the evening of Mar. 12, when the comet flew near the thin crescent moon. The object will continue to shine, getting fainter and fainter, through the end of the month."
Watch below and read more here.
Earthbound timelapses are a beautiful thing. But when you take the concept of capturing time itself in a series of photographs into orbit, the results are truly out-of-this-world.
We've long been fascinated by the beautiful videos that have been coming out of the International Space Station, most notably by astronaut/photographer Don Pettit. Here is a round-up of some we've come across lately.
Timelapse, Animation and More Tell a Beautiful Story About Space, March 12, 2013
Astronaut Chris Hadfield Photoblogs from Space, January 25, 2013
Watch a side-by-side comparison of footage from the Sony F55 and Canon 1DC courtesy of Cinema 5D. The 4K footage is shown in its log outputted format as well as color graded. (via RedShark News)
Join Adorama for a free in-depth tour and hands-on demo of the new Sony PMW-F5 CineAlta camera; food and drink will be served.
What: Adorama Presents: Sony PMW-F5 CineAlta 4K Digital Cinema Camcorder
When: Thursday, March 21, 2013, 6 PM
Where: Adorama’s new event space at 55 West 17th Street, between 5th and 6th avenue, NY, NY
Cost: FREE
