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I’m not a Hugh Drone fan either. I enjoyed his earlier work but recently he really started to phone in his performances... and it always seems like he looks down on everybody.

Yeah he really drones on during his long monologues.

If you buy a product from a company I would say you, me whoever, IS sort of a Fanboy of that company. And I sort of like Apple stuff. So I kind of feel offended by Your statement LoL.

Art vs Engineering. When the purpose of something is to please the senses, then Engineering can help to achieve that, but often Engineering runs away with itself and forgets the end-goal. I believe that every decision about a concrete aspect of film-making (the way a sensor responds to light, DR, shutter speed, colour balance, frame rate, audio frequency response, music pace and style, the words in the script, the costumes, the hair / makeup, the objects on set, etc etc etc) has a subjective impression associated with it. The 'art' of a film (or how good it is) is down to how well each of those decisions were aligned with the overall goal of the film. For example, if you were shooting a futuristic sci-fi, using 8mm film, poor audio frequency response, period costumes, classical music, etc would be a terrible choice as these are all aligned with a period piece. Similarly, having loud heavy metal music, desaturated cold colours, overall low-key high contrast lighting, aggressive characters, etc would make a terrible rom-com, but is a good starting point for a horror film. Those who understand the aesthetic associations of their tangible decisions made throughout the creation process will do well in creating a finished product where the elements contribute to a coherent and powerful final experience for the audience. Engineering is providing us with options to control aspects of the process, Art is choosing from those options.

Or over doing gimbal shots. Or overdoing drone shots. I just watched a short film that was 100% drone or gimbal! Why? Because that is what the director had purchased recently...

Be careful that many of these are just a money grab. https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/05-05-2018/waaaait-is-this-the-auckland-film-festival-i-think-it-is/ https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/19-05-2018/mysteries-of-the-auckland-international-film-festival-the-sequel/ https://thespinoff.co.nz/auckland/04-06-2018/david-farrier-goes-to-the-auckland-international-film-festival-and-it-is-total-balls/ I had a meeting with a director a couple of days ago and that was one of the festivals he'd submitted to! Had spent around $2K on festival submissions in total he said! :-o Which must have around doubled what his short film's budget was?!

Most festivals will ask you for a flat 1920x1080 file for projection so you should prep one of those with the black bars at the top and bottom. Some festivals are sophisticated enough to project in anamorphic but I wouldn't count on it, especially for a short where they're programming things in blocks. Most people will be submitting/projecting 1920x1080 so it's best to have a simple file that they can drop right into the timeline. As far as which festivals to submit to, it's always a somewhat scattershot process but I'd take a look at what kinds of films they've programmed in the past as a guide. You wouldn't submit a drama to a comedy festival, etc. Each festival has a personality so you should target festivals that look like your film. The other thing is travel - it's most valuable for your career to be able to actually be there for the screening so you can meet the programmers and festival people. I once won best short film at a festival that I wasn't even there for, so that was a missed opportunity. And that's why it's better to be there. So if you don't think you'd be able to make it to the screening (on your own dime) then that festival might be a lower priority than one where you can. Obvious exceptions are the top tier fests where you'd go regardless... but what difference does it make that your film played the Hawaii Children's Film Festival if you're not there? Ideally what happens is that you get into one or two top festivals and other festivals invite you to submit with a fee waiver - that way you can play Hawaii or wherever without having to pay to submit. Often programmers from one festival will go to others nearby to scout films and filmmakers. And often programmers will move from one festival to another. So getting to know the people who work at the festival will help your reputation over time as those workers spread to other festivals, etc. So, to recap, start applying to places you'd like to go, starting with the top dogs. Prioritize places you can get to on your own. As for festival gems, I had a great time at the Milwaukee Film Festival last October. Really well run, strong audience engagement. I wrote a long journal about the experience here. And I've had great fun at the Los Angeles Film Festival (top tier fest, great staff), Blackstar and Urbanworld, (niche festivals that fit my film), and New Orleans (incredible city, met a lot of filmmakers), etc. They're all fun. Keep plugging away and good luck.

Why not Panasonic? (Or BMD) As you're not using Sony now, so you've got no lens investments in Sony to lean you in that direction. Personally I'd strongly avoid the a6300 due to how easily they overheat Also if you like Nikon, maybe give a second look at the D7500? Or perhaps even hold out and wait a little longer for a "D5700" which surely will get 4K

out of likes /thats important. context

Of course, plenty of worthy films don't make it into Sundance (ahem, mine), and plenty of people have success independent of what film festivals they play. And there are a good many people who've blown up after their work took off on Vimeo just as a good number have done the same through the festivals. Causation is almost impossible to prove in any of those cases so I'm not sure the point of bringing it up here. The film Pariah that I mentioned earlier was rejected the first time they applied to Sundance and it was only after premiering at Women in Film and Video and word-of-mouth building over several months that they were invited to the next Sundance, which (to me) is a great story of the perseverance that is necessary to go far in this world. But since we're talking about film festivals, I guess the best part of what they do is create the context for the artistic side of the work. There are infinite numbers of channels broadcasting the latest reality tv competition shows and a lot of good filmmakers hone their craft working on them, etc. But those types of shows don't provide a platform for filmmakers who want to be making feature films and aren't quite there yet. Film festivals (the good ones, at least) do. They help both the audience and the creative workers, albeit through imperfect means. I spend a lot of time on Vimeo, have found a great many projects I love and have learned a ton from that platform, too. But one of Vimeo's limitations is that it's not designed to stoke the shared viewing experience that is one of the foundations of our industry. Film festivals do that, too. (again, the good ones). It's up to each of us to decide how we want our work to be seen and how to make sure we're making work that can reach it's audience. I think of film festivals as a critical piece of infrastructure in that process, just like Vimeo. For me a film is complete when it is seen by its audience, the better if that process can happen in a dark room with hundreds of people watching at the same time. Film festivals do that. The good ones.

Not sure if it was posted already, but this might interest some, a 20 minute interview with Bob Caniglia of BMD. A lot of it is quite obvious and standard questions, but they do talk about choice of a few design elements. Audio options, recording media etc. SPOILER: Perhaps the best info comes right at the very end, Bob is proud that BM haven't charged for an update to Resolve in a decade. If you bought the software in 2009, you can still update for free to Resolve 15. I remember some people weren't sure if they can update from v.14. It also likely means that people who buy the camera will have Resolve for life - certainly a lot cheaper than Adobe's suite ?

Finally did the update for the new X-H1 firmware yesterday. Here are my first impressions: Autofocus in AF-C is leaps and bounds better. My test shots on some birds and physically walking up to and away a moving subject were very good. Using the 16-55mm zoom lens it was able to accurately track my wife walking around the yard watering plants while I slowly walked from one end of the yard to another. Auto ISO transitions are super smooth and almost imperceptible. While I rarely use the Auto setting for video, it's nice to know I could use it in a conference or presentation situation and be okay. IBIS is slightly improved. Using the fuji 16-55mm, a 45mm minolta and 55mm super tak I didn't find as many huge jumps and shifts while panning. I'm sure this will be the focus of their next update. The overall system stability seems to be worse. I had 3 write errors happen while just messing around with the camera. All three happened while shooting in manual with peaking turned on. I'll be testing this more. Here is a link to the firmware if you're looking to upgrade http://www.fujifilm.com/support/digital_cameras/software/firmware/x/xh1/index.html Overall a really good firmware update, looking forward to the '2.0' update that is rumored for September

The director Dee Rees had a short film, Pariah, that played in Sundance in 2007. Then a kickstarter. The feature version of Pariah played in Sundance 2011. The Director of Photography of both, Bradford Young, won the cinematography award at Sundance that year. A few years later he was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Arrival in 2017. Rees' most recent feature, Mudbound, received four Oscar nominations. You can't do much better than that. Here's the trailer of the feature version of Pariah. I went to a screening of it last weekend in NYC.

Out of likes. Nice find.

Hmmm... passed on the last deal, its back and so tempting... Chris

If I remember the DVX100 hack started on the DVInfo forum (in the Alternative imaging section), then they got their own website and it was named Andromeda. There seem to be a lot of desperate stuff going on in those days - I was one of a handful of people trying to use industrial camera heads for video, RAM-recording about 20 seconds at a time of Bayer video to a laptop, great times!

honestly i watched ten seconds of that video and i was like "hire a supermodel" lol

Couriers are bastards! And in other completely unrelated news.... Time to go to bed, as getting late, and I'm getting up early tomorrow to work as a courier.

I don't know whether they have designed them to do this but here is how I use the mounting clamps they provide with Amaran M9s as a bridge to connect my two together. Being able to break them down into singles (two of them will just about fit in the carrying pouch for one) and then use them individually or combine them to make something bigger makes them even more useful. You could definitely extend this out to connect four if needed.

He was marvellous in Phantom Of The Opera but yes his latter work has lacked that same Spark and failed to Inspire.

I like them too. I have the smaller one of those and also bought two cheap eBay LED ones that also charge off USB. The Aputure one has a high CRI and the others are a bit blue in comparison so they make nice kicker / hair / background lights with a bit of colour contrast. Also, they all fit into the little pocket-camera sized case that the Aputure comes in, so I have a (low power) three point lighting setup that fits in a pocket! It's what I used to take this photo: A good addition to those is the smallest Gorillapod and then you can easily mount them places like doorframes, backs of chairs, etc.

I wouldn't expect it to be the same quality as the SmallHD Focus. But if the monitor is 85% as good at much less than half the cost, then that is good enough for me!

Well... yeah. ? To me SmallHD is the Apple of field monitors. A lot of fanboys that love the intuitive and neat package, but wayyy overpriced. #notforme

Why don't they offer anything remotely like that price outside of the US? There are enough people with M43 lenses kicking about that might be tempted at that price to pick one up as a B cam. It would also do the company a world of good in laying a foundation for the brand to the potential buyers of their new camera.

Also pretty much any one who gets into one of the "big" festivals like Sundance for the first time will see a massive boost to the future of their careers.

It's... adequate. Everything is fit together just fine, my NP-Fs engage and disengage nicely, and the HDMI jacks seem sturdy. But I doubt it'd survive a drop onto cement, and the 1/4-20 mounting sockets wiggle a bit in the casing so it's a bit wobbly when you grab it to reposition it, and the Velcro on the sunhood is not all that velcro-ey... but come on, it's $150, none of this surprises me. I haven't handled an A6/F6 or an F570 so I can't compare directly unfortunately. Whichever one of those has the metal casing is almost certainly better built than the A5, but they're also larger and heavier, which were minuses for me. I shot with it again tonight and it's doing all that I need from it for my A7iii, meaning mostly just a higher-res display with better peaking. LUTs, a touchscreen with a nice UI, and a brighter screen would all be real nice, but even if those were available in a 5" 1080p monitor right now, I don't think I'd want to spend for it anyways (assuming it would be at least $300-400), as it would depreciate so much once the NinjaV comes out. Even if I can only get $50 for the A5 at that time, it's worth it. And for $50 I'll actually just keep it as a backup.

They can also be a good place to network. Film-making is a team sport after all

Well, none really, but that's not the only reason to go to good film festivals. They can be fun too. I know ours is a pretty good time. Simple, maybe... but fun.

I also feel like right weather / right time of day is playing a role in the look of this footage.

So many film festivals out there are such baloney. The worst are the ones wherein your film gets "selected" but never screens. A close second are the ones that screen their selections, but decide to do it in a conference room on a DVD player. Many out there are nothing more than money grabs. Some doofus will set up a "festival" on FilmFreeway --and then never does anything irl. It's just online nonsense. As they say, "Pics or it didn't happen." I've entered 'em all as a doc filmmaker. Been there and done that. And because I've been burned, frustrated by the process, and want to do it right, I now help run a small legitimate film festival in my SoCal hometown. If you're interested in submitting, our "Early Bird" window is still open and here's a discount code: PROMOBSFF33. It's basically a cheap $14 submission fee right now. Once you're in, and if you attend, we go out of our way to try and make the experience a special one. Check out the BSFF here. You'll see all the films we've programmed over the years and you can even delve into our blog for more info. It's all there. If you think it's a good fit, send in your work. As for the tech question, many will take only 1080p. DCP or otherwise. You'd probably have to letter box to fit. I know that's what we do for the BSFF. We've also screened 4K files starting in 2018, but I think we're still kind of the exception.

People that own a Canon C100 would KILL for 50mbps! the Codec on one is 24Mbps and it looks pretty damn good.

Despite owning it for two years I've never done 120 fps with it, and I don't have it near me right now, but I'm guessing the 120 fps is slowed down in camera, so 50 mbps isn't actually being used for true 120 fps but the slowed down version that plays at 24/30 fps because 50 mbps would definitely be too little for actual 120 fps video. It'd be 1/4 the quality of 30 fps at 50 mbps and 1/2 the quality of 60 fps at 50 mbps.

Noooo..... that would be a bad idea! As for my other team, I can't share their film just yet because..... we made the Auckland Finals! Being one of the very select few to beat out over 150 other teams in Auckland :-o Am a little surprised we made the finals, because the standard was so very high of some of the other teams, but I'll take this! It keeps my streak alive of going to the Finals for now three years running. (with a different team each year! As I keep on changing... the one constant is me! ha)

Yeah but if you are using the A7s with a min ISO of 3200 in SLog 2 you need all the extra stops you can get! Yikes. And I am pushing it 3 stops over to boot.

Really a different beast ... light easy to use but will take a bit of time to get used to the flip out screen ... find it a little disorienting with respect to vertical alignment where walls noticeable if it is not flush with the camera back. I think that the 4K image is sharp enough when on tripod ... the 1080 with DPAF makes me miss that on this camera in 4K ... and the AF with the Sigma is a bit marginal in 4K ... perfect in 1080. Peaking is great and with the mic input I can add another Nanolockit and sync both the 5D4 and the M50 to my SD recorder. So this camera will cover my travel light needs, gives me video with Leica M lenses and EF lenses, and will allow for another angle of capture along side of the 5D4. Colors seem very close ... but I would like a profile that mimics the Canon Log as closely as possible so that workflow looks consistent. I may play with my Video Color Checker Passport(?) to see if I can minimize differences in the two. It is interesting to look at file sizes as it uses a different codec from the 5D4 ... much smaller and not as chopped up ... 5D4 has a 4Gb limit to file which on that camera is 2 minutes in 4K. I was pleased to find that Tethertools has a battery insert for the camera so my large battery banks and AC for the 5D4 will work on this also. Looking at the RAW files ... it has enough resolution and DR for almost any of my needs at this point. Still use the 5D4 for macro as HeliconFocus will allow automated focus stacks which are wonderful ... set near and far focus points and it drives the camera through auto stacking ... then in post will align and paint the layers for the stacks. I think the big drawback of the EOS M is native lenses ... most think the 22 F2 is the only adequate one at the present time. Without the Canon EOS - EF M adapter I probably would not have picked up the camera. I will be trying the 24-105 and 16-35 today to assess the IS functions. And I hope that the AF in 4K is a bit better. Not so much with the 40 Pancake.

Nice! Loved that blood splat.

Jesus Christ I had to take a Sea Sick pill after watching that video! Talk about camera movement. He must have taken 4 Black Mollies before he shot it. I think the video sucks ass to be honest. My pointer is delete the damn thing LoL. Some people really Love Fats Chicks. not me, but it seems the skinnier the guy is the fatter the women is he is with in my experience. The old "there is a lid for every pot" thingy.

Considering the subject matter and people in this 'film', I'm guessing whoever's 'film' this is is a 13-18year old and in that regard I don't mind it and willing to cut the person some slack. You could say it's lowfi, and I don't love the heavy cyan cast but I remember sitting in cinemas and watching 35mm projections of blockbusters and art house films alike and loved the fact that things were never tack sharp. I loved the softness, and the grain.... These days, more and more people expect images to be clinical, super sharp and noiseless all the time.

Your lowlight test in the church with posted framegrabs shows enough of a basis to say: there are a lot of GH4 videos showing much, much, much better low light quality than that. Same sensor is not enough at all, if implemented badly. EM5 Mark 1 has the same sensor as GH4 and its HD material is even much worse than GH1 quality. GH4 has better lowlight than a A6000 or a Nikon D5300 has, to compare it with cameras of its time.

Yeah but what is crazy is that this film is in a way is so bad it is good. it's up there getting looks. So hey, what the hell LoL. I am not sure where to put this lighting video. But I guess here is not the worse place. I found this video using 2 damn small Aperture LEDs. I don't see how a person can be without them to be honest. They are that handy for something you can have in your pockets.