IronFilm

Blackmagic made a bold attempt to appeal to the mid-market that sadly kinda doesn't exist. It's exceptionally hard in 2025 to sell any non-ARRI camera in any price bracket that's above US$10K. Sony with the VENICE is the only one who has been successful. RED kinda has their little niche. Panasonic? Gone. Canon? Only their sub $10K cameras are successful-ish. Thus BMD made the decision to move their price back down into the sub $10K region, where I suspect/hope they'll find a lot more success. The URSA Cine 12K LF still has very high media costs, however there are ways to work around that, you could for instance record most formats directly to a connected USB drive over USB-C (like you can do with most other BMD cameras). Love how I got my OG BMPCC back in the day when it went on sale for just US$500! (plus the NZD was strong then too against the USD than it is today)

Here you go, a f/0.38 lens! Go nuts with filming this extremely super ultra fast lens for your next project. Take that Stanley Kubrick and your puny slow f/0.7 lens!

They will indeed say nothing about Panasonic. But we all know the SL3S is just going to be a rebadged Lumix camera. That it's relatively easy to reverse engineer the logic to conclude we'll probably see the Panasonic version of the SL3 released six-ish months later.

I guess for audio the Amish won't be allowed to use a carbon fibre boom, and it has to be a wooden boom?

Whoops!! My bad, I got one totally batsh*t crazy cult mixed up with another totally different and only somewhat less crazy cult. Think I just had Mormons on my brain during that moment I was writing that post, as they just opened up a massive new temple (biggest in the entire country! Did you know our former Prime Minister was a Mormon? And Jacinda Arden's uncle was in charge of Mormons for the entire Pacific Region) right across the road from where I grew up and my family is. Yup, doesn't change at all my conclusions in my previous post at all.

I am very skeptical about the claim that all the labour is fully donated totally "for free". I highly doubt there are any Mormons in Australia who own a Sound Devices CL12 or a technocrane of that level. And even if there is one (again, doubt it), would they necessarily give up for free weeks/months of their time each year to work for free on a production??? And on top of that, they're each bringing along six figures worth of equipment! (or even more!) Doubt it! That's why I suspect they're hired professionals they've brought onto the production, and at the very least most of the HoDs are pros who have joined on for this. (sure, the LX Assist or 3rd AC or 3rd AD or whatever, then they'll quite possibly Mormon members who are volunteering their time. But not most of the HoDs) A final possibility, but a pretty wild one if true, is that the local Mormon organisation has purchased outright this equipment. That they (the local Mormon organization) own a Sound Devices CL12 (and the rest of the six figures worth of sound equipment that would go with this type of sound package!) and that they own a technocrane (one of this type is very very easily six figures worth, could even be a million dollar grip package), and so on ditto for all the other gear we saw in that BTS. Then the local Mormon members are then working "for free" using this equipment?? I mean, maybe when you consider they fact they likely have a full time in house AV team that's employed by them on regular salaries, then this possibility starts to become a little less wild. Maybe the person who does the live sound mixer each Sunday, who they have on a full time salary, is also the person who is during the week doing these film/tv productions when they're shooting it.

VR is fun! I've worked on a number of VR projects over the years. I've got my own 360VR cameras and an ambisonic microphone, so if you ever wish to get together to collaborate on anything then I'll be keen to join in and help.

That's brave! I wish you the best of luck in 2025 with your new path. What non-video things will you be exploring?

good grief, they have a techno crane on set, that's not cheap at all. $$$$$$ Shooting with an ARRI. ARRI WCU4 focus controller. Jealous, they're using a Sound Devices CL16!!

As freelancers we certainly do get paid very well on a per day / per hour basis. But yes, we don't get to work the same number of days per year as a regular Monday to Friday person does. Last year though I was looking at the rates that IT Contractors get, who are always freelancers (thus on a per hour / per day basis should be earning higher than those who have the perks and stability of normal full time employment), for the bottom couple of rungs in the IT sector (i.e. fairly inexperienced newbies, we're not talking about high qualified people here with decades of experience) then it's not too different from what say a Boom Op or AC in the film/tv world would also earn as a freelancer. Really puts it into perspective how well (or not) we get paid relative to other industries as a freelancer / contractor.

Just noticed they were using the Blackmagic Micro (not sure if the Cinema version? Then again, given it's for streaming.... perhaps the 4K version? Or even the G2 version?) for the US Chess Open Championships: https://x.com/STLChessClub/status/1847779295860838789

This forum is about filmmaking? He's doing literally the biggest scale filmmaking there is right now in some aspects (such as the most cameras ever). Of course people might be naturally curious about how it works behind the scenes. Yes, it's very normal for productions to rent equipment. (although they do such a high volume of productions, I'm sure there is a lot of equipment that they also own in house themselves)

ah, a new UWA lens just came out: https://www.newsshooter.com/2024/12/26/pergear-12mm-f2-ii-wide-angle-lens-for-x-e-z-and-m4-3-mount-cameras/ At US$169 it might be the cheapest f2 UWA lens there is.

Don't think my old Fujifilm X-A3 counts as "reliable autofocus"! 😭 Never too late to start a new YT channel! I might just start up a YT travel channel myself if/when I move overseas next year. The 7artisans 12mm f2.8 lens I've got would be a good choice for vlogging, although I went for this 7artisans largely because I got it for next to nothing secondhand. If you're buying brand new then the Meike 12mm f/2 is only slightly more expensive than the 7artisans 12mm f2.8, but the Meike is a full stop faster which might be handy sometimes. Ahhhh.... so you can't get them in any rangefinder mount? (such as M mount) But rather than need to be removed from a fixed lens camera then get a mount added to it? (such as M mount) When I was looking through eBay beforehand, I did come across those with mounts already added to them, but they're at least a couple of hundred dollars! (if not even double, or tripple, or even quadruple that price) Seems a bit pricey, when I could get vintage / dead mount DSLR lenses for a similar cost, or even far far less.

YouTubers making drama up about Bigger YouTubers. Normal par for the course, been going on since day one of YT history. So far nothing seems that unusual such as you'd expect from any massively large scale reality tv series (especially survival / sports contestants) or even working on a normal AA narrative film title. (some of them just need to harden up, it's as if they've never worked a day before in their life as an Extra?!) Seems like she's got a vendetta against Mr Beast, she's made a tonne of videos against Mr Best: https://www.youtube.com/@RosannaPansino/search?query=beast I bet if we heard the other side, such as from the 1st/2nd/3rd ADs, the story would be very different. In the early years it seemed like he just poured close to 100% of whatever he'd make from a video right back into making the next video. Yeah I greatly admire him for what he's achieved with his YouTube videos (and now in the conventional mainstream media space too, doing a series for Amazon), he clearly has got it dialed right in and understands the YT algorithm better than anybody else on planet earth, but in the non-YouTube space I feel he might have done some kinda sketchy things. It is curious why they wouldn't use Sony FX3/FX30 cameras for handheld cameras instead? (or were they already? Maybe they simply ran out of them and were trying to get their hands on as many cameras as possible!) Wonder what the ingestion process was for those thousand GoPros? I wonder in particular about how they handled timecode on those, if at all. And likewise, what did they do for the handheld cameras such as the R5C? Did you see a TC box on them? Honestly with a budget like that I'd even think about handing out a few Sony RX100 (or RX0??) cameras to key cast members, to act as their handheld vlogging cameras, as an RX100/RX0 on their budget level is so dirt cheap they're basically almost disposable cameras. But perhaps the footage gained wouldn't be worth the editing time. Am a bit tempted to get a Sony RX0 mk2 myself before I move overseas next year, as I reckon a Sony RX100 with a wide angle prime lens would be awesome. Which is kinda like what the RX0 is, has a 24mm FF FoV prime lens, with a "big" 1 inch sensor (same as the RX100 has). Makes it super small and pocketable, even though it has a selfie screen! While watching the video again, I saw this: As they're rechecking the date at 6am I have a theory that they're not using Time of Day TC, but rather they're using Time Elapsed since call time each day (6am). I see they're recording onto a tonne of these: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1834930-REG/aja_ki_pro_go2_ki_pro_go2_multi_channel.html Is quite sad that Video Devices / Sound Devices completely gave up on this market, and never made an updated replacement for the Sound Devices 970