Bruno

I think there's two things going on here, the MoVi thing, and Laforet's "short", one is awesome, the other is incredibly terrible. This thing obviously has a lot of potential, it's a novelty and they're charging for that, realistically this thing could be sold for well under $5k. But they were the first to provide it at this level of completion and useability, so let them milk it while they can. Laforet's short however seems to me like a terrible demo. Most people have mentioned the out of focus and poorly framed shots, bad editing and poor filmmaking in general, most shots are totally unmotivated, and worse of all, there's nothing here in terms of camera movement that I haven't seen before. Watch a film like Hannah and and you'll find plenty of fluid steady shots, much better shot, so he missed his chance of showin off the specific skills this thing might have.

  I think it would totally change the thousands of DSLR short films you see on vimeo these days. Instead of being shot wide open, with shallow depth of field and most of the important subjects out of focus, they would be shot wide open, with shallow depth of field, most subjects out of focus and badly framed and feature loads of smooth flying shots.   Just joking here! Kind of...

I hate it when they do (lame) product demos and call it short films, then it's neither one or the other in the end. This "short" was terribly staged, camera was all over the place, crossing the line shot after shot, poor composition... if they had just done an objective and carefully planned demo they'd have spent their money better, but I guess they were paying for the Laforet hype and publicity, not for a good short film.   This equipment is welcome and I'm sure it will find its use, its price is not expensive for high end film making, but in order to be revolutionary as they're trying to make it, it would have to cost a fraction of that.

An external audio recorder designed specifically  for DSLRs.   http://tascam.com/product/dr-60d/overview/

Well, there's also tripod, steadycam, etc. stabilization :) A new kind of steadycam would be extremely handy, imagine something that could balance any camera without time consuming micro adjustments to weight, etc. Could be good. It's probably totally unrelated though.

Maybe a really huge Philip Bloom signature sand bag that lets you shape an entire film set out of it with just a few pumps?

Not too sure what to make of this, but could be cool...   "Video ‘stills burst’ mode 30/60 fps"   http://www.canonrumors.com/2013/03/eos-7d-mark-ii-test-camera-cr1/

  That's a shame, I love the RX100 but would love it even more with a bigger sensor, like the RX1. The fixed lens is kind of limiting, but if the quality (both stills and video) was up there with the price, I could consider looking for a good deal, I guess I don't have that hard decision to make anymore! :)   Maybe they will get it right with an APS-C sensor RX10...

Do you have an RX1 or is that a typo? :) If you do, how's the video like???

  Yes, but we were talking about the 24fps 2D 1080p home version.

  50i is actually shot as 25p in the RX100, so expose like you would for 25fps. The camera captures images as 25p and then encodes them as 50i, the movie file is interlaced and you need to deinterlace it in FCP if it doesn't do it automatically for you (FCP7 doesn't).   Going to 1/25 in low light is not very advisable if you want your motion to look "normal". Stick to 1/50 or close to that (some people defend that 1/40 looks more cinematic, maybe run some tests ans decide for yourself).     Deinterlacing is pretty easy, and since these images are captured progressively, there should be no drawbacks.     I recommended using DRO at setting 2 at the most, it goes up to 5, but the images might start to suffer from it. I'm not sure DRO is creating noise in the shadows, what is probably happening is that since it makes the shadows not as dark, the noise becomes more visible, but it was probably always there in the first place.   The main reason for using this is to make it easier on the encoder. If we were shooting raw we wouldn't need this flat profile, but when shooting compressed video, a flatter image will result in better and cleaner images that will give you more to work with in post.

Stereo/3D works better with deep focus, so you can choose where to look at, so that's yet another factor where the 2D version is suffering from the choices made because of the 3D one.

I think they shot it at 135 degree shutter, it's not as bad as if they had done it at 90 degrees, but it's still very different from 180, that's why it still feels sharp and video-ish.

When dropping from 60fps to 24fps you don't need any extra frames created, you just need to discard the 36 additional frames per second. What optical flow software like Twixtor can do is analyze the motion and recreate the 24 final frames from the original 60, creating smoother motion throughout, without any gaps, but in my experience this is not worth the trouble, as the artifacts introduced by optical flow may look quite nasty. This obviously depends on the shots, in some situations it might work really well, but it won't work all the time, and you'll end up with inconsistent footage, and it requires loads more work and processing time.

With Magic Lantern, most of them, if not all.

  It depends on what you shoot and what your needs are. A 550D camera body may be inexpensive, but you can't shoot with just the body. Also, if I rent I can get a C300 or 5Dmk3, instead of sticking to a more fragile 550D, and if it fails they'll give you a new one. What's the point spending all the money on a camera and accessories if you don't have a backup when it fails? Cause you definitely don't want it to fail when you finally gathered your small cast and crew to shoot your film.   It's all very relative, but the point is that the quest for the perfect camera to own is an endless one, and while you're on that quest you're probably not making your movies, which should be priority number one.   If you're renting a camera for a specific project you're not worried about the camera not being future proof or not having those features you thought would be really cool but will actually never need, or the endless accessories you need to buy so you can actually use it properly, and then a new model comes out. Repeat.   Digital technology is not future proof, period. Old cinema cameras could be nice and even valuable collectibles, but old digital technology is just worthless junk.   With the price of a 5D and a couple extra lenses you can rent a 5D and save at least $2k for the actual film production. If you have a story worth telling, $2k can take you a long way when doing a short film. And if you do it right, you might not need to buy a camera ever again.   Geeking out on cameras is all very cool, but maybe avoiding camera lust just for the sake of it could turn out to be a good thing...

  We should be thankful if projects like Life of Pi actually PAID for such work, it's what you need to understand if you care to listen. VFX companies are putting their resources and companies at stake finishing projects like this at cost or loss, they should be considered co-producers and get a cut of the profits. Most stars do, and VFX is the star in most blockbusters you see out there, why not treat those companies accordingly?

  That's right. The same 5 clients, and the exact same 5 for every other VFX facility.   Commercials are usually different departments, sometimes even different companies from a legal standpoint, but the present VFX issues we're talking about are mostly directed to the film side of the industry, though the artists are probably the same and get affected by the same conditions.

  That's not the point, but at the same time you contradict yourself. You're probably right, the film would probably turn out exactly the same regardless of who the DP was, THAT'S WHY IT'S NOT WORTHY OF A CINEMATOGRAPHY OSCAR. No one here criticized his work on it, but the academy's choice to award him, and his failure to mention the VFX team.

  You show a huge lack of understanding regarding the VFX studios' situation for someone who won't stop speaking about it.   The main VFX facilities only have 5 clients (Warner, Fox, Sony, Paramount, Disney), they don't need marketing people telling their own 5 clients they exist. The fact there's only 5 serious clients in the industry is also one of their problems, since they obviously don't want to upset any of them by denying to work with them or asking for extra money to pay for the extra work they hadn't bid on.   If you only had 5 possible clients and they all worked with you regularly, would you create a "sales and marketing" department to tell your 5 clients about the work you do for them? Don't be ridiculous.

  Sales and marketing at VFX houses? Seriously?

Rental prices are not what they used to be, you can rent a 5D for a weekend for $100, or a BMCC for $250, with batteries, monitor, drives and shoulder mount, ready to shoot. Not only the price is accessible, but you get options to choose the best kit based on what you're shooting, instead of having your shoot limited by the gear you own.   It's great to own a nice camera kit that you can use for no budget projects or just to practice and shoot random stuff, but when it comes to proper work, rental might be a better option.   Ownership is becoming a thing of the past in so many areas...

  That's a massive waste and not environmental friendly at all. They do that with consumer products and offer no real benefits with it. If they were to give us the best possible cameras on their professional range, followed by proper firmware updates, I don't see why they couldn't last for at least 3 years.   We should spend our time and money making movies, not buying cameras.

Watch "The Fall" and remember there are no VFX in it, it's all real locations shot in camera, and then explain to me why Life of Pi got an Oscar for best cinematography and "The Fall" wasn't even nominated when it came out...

  I agree with the DSLRs not being up to par, but regarding the November announcements, at the time everyone dismissed Canon's C300, and it turned out to be a huge success, way more than the Scarlet. The C300 is the most rented camera at the moment.