Film and Digital Media @ Messiah

Alas this blog has suffered since I started using Facebook in a daily way. I now find myself posting things to my Facebook page rather than here.

One of the reasons is that Facebook has a built-in audience, whereas this blog is only rarely scanned. Another is the ease with which one can maintain a Facebook site, while it takes genuine effort to create the blog posts as I do them (lots of CSS and sometimes a bit of javascript, video posts with special html tags, etc.).

An alternative to all this would be to switch my blog to Sakai, but I’m not sure how searchable those pages are unless you are logged into the Sakai system. But whatever tune you whistle, Lyceum (the Messiah College blogging server) seems long in the tooth at this point …

[Excerpted from David English, Studio Monthly, January 1, 2009]

The first thing you have to do is overcome your fear of rejection. “For every film festival we get into, we’re probably rejected by four,” says Zimet. “For every critic we write to try and get a review, most don’t write us back.” At first the rejections can be overwhelming, but the more you do it, the more you take it in stride. “Today we wrote to a sailing magazine because our main character sailed the Atlantic on a raft made of junk,” he says. “Another film site has had our film for a while, and I was wondering when the review is going to show up. Every day, it’s what baby steps can we take to keep moving this along.”

Zimet recommends two Web sites for independents looking to promote their films or videos. The first is Film Specific (filmspecific.com). “It’s run by Stacey Parks, who has a lot of experience on the distribution and marketing side of the business, but is totally accessible to people trying to fight their way into the marketplace,” he explains. The second is Brave New Theaters (bravenewtheaters.com). “Through that, we got an art house in Indiana to play the film for a night,” he says. “Through word of mouth, the film played a night at another art house in Phoenix.”

Read the whole article here

Solana Beach, CA, April 7, 2009 – CineForm®, Inc., creators of high-fidelity compression-based workflow solutions for the post production marketplace, today announced it will unveil the industry’s first 3D editorial workflow solution for Apple Final Cut Pro users this month in its booth (#SL11605) at NAB 2009 in Las Vegas, NV.

See the full press release here

Video:

by Melissa Lutz and Daniel Jamara

If you’re looking for an internship or job in the film and media industry try looking at these sites:

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/tfr/

http://www.mandy.com/

http://www.ifp.org/

http://www.reelchicago.com/

http://www.screenmag.tv/

http://www.filmstaff.com/

http://www.media-match.com/

http://www.entertainmentcareers.net/

http://www.showbizjobs.com/

Also check with your college’s internship center. Here at Messiah we have an outstanding internship center! Take a look: Messiah Internship Center

Bye for now!

Many naive people believe this. Of course, anyone with any knowledge of film can’t. But younger folks often have very limited experiences of films other than what they’ve seen in the last 6 or 7 years of their lives. If you’ve only ever read Harry Potter novels, then of course one of those novels will be your favorite. The same is true of films. If your knowledge of film is limited to the last ten years, then only newer films will make your top ten. Simple ignorance makes this true.

We live in an age of such “ignorances”. And knowledge of film is a small area to be concerned with. Much more concerning to us all should be knowledge of history intertwined with political economy and ideology. Film has a part in all this, increasingly so in the 20th century, but if I am only aware of the films released commercially in the last 10 years [and then only in their “stories” not their underlying ideologies and economics], then I am doomed to an ignorance of the true nature of film …

Todd Ulman Associate Producer on ABC Family Channel’s hit show GRΣΣK is responsible for designing the post workflow and making sure that it remains efficient. He explains the workflow: Cast of ABC’s GRΣΣK Todd Ullman “GRΣΣK shoots on 16mm [using Kodak’s Vision 2 stock] because it enables us to create the look that the executive producers are going for. Transferring to HDCAM allows us to continue the process and take advantage of the efficiencies of a standard HD workflow and delivery. Our production team shoots the film footage, Laser Pacific develops and telecines to an HDCAM master, and then we have them digitize the dailies using Avid DNxHD 36 onto a portable hard drive. The dailies are loaded, at the editing offices, into our Avid workstations (three Media Composer Soft 2.8 seats, a Nitris DX 3.0, and a Mojo SDI 3.0) using a Unity 5.01 storage array with 8 TB of capacity. After picture lock, we output via the Nitris DX to HDCAM with the DNxHD 36 source material. That tape is used as a chase cassette by Laser Pacific during the online process, where they assemble from the original HDCAM Masters via their supercomputer assembly. We color-correct on a da Vinci system and do final layback to Sony HDCAM SR tape so that we have the 12 audio channels available for audio layback from the final mix.”

See the full article by Michael Grotticelli at HD Studio here

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers is starting a significant initiative that could help to propel the stereoscopic 3-D home entertainment industry forward. The international standards-setting body will create 3-D mastering standards for content that will be viewed in the home — for all devices and delivery methods. An audience watches a 3-D film in China. (Getty Images photo) According to the SMPTE plan, the society will first establish an industry task force to define the parameters of a mastering standard for 3-D content distributed via broadcast, cable, satellite, packaged media and the Internet, and played-out on televisions, computer screens and other tethered displays. In six months, the 3-D Home Display Formats Task Force will produce a report that defines the issues and challenges, minimum standards, and evaluation criteria. The society will then form a standards committee, which will use the report as a working document for standards setting efforts to follow. This is a complex process that takes time, and Aylsworth — who is vp, technology at Warner Brothers Technical Operations — estimated that the standard is at least a year and a half away. A 3-D home entertainment market has the potential to impact 3-D digital cinema. Numerous executives believe that such a market might prompt increased 3-D production at the studios, which would benefit digital cinema stakeholders. “If the studios saw that the cost in creating 3-D — which is more expensive than a 2-D movie — could potentially bring in more revenue in the later market, I think it would help to develop more movies in that genre,” explained SMPTE engineering vp Wendy Aylsworth. What impact it might have on the perceived advantage that 3-D gives digital cinema theater owners would remain to be seen.

See the full article by Carolyn Giardina at The Hollywood Reporter here

The Dark Knight is a stellar example of how both the “old world” of film [photochemical] capture and the “new world” of digital finishes can combine creatively in service of the best imagery possible. Director Chris Nolan is on the record as a big fan of Imax films.

Cinematographer Wally Pfister (left) and director Christopher Nolan (right) with the IMAX camera on location in Hong Kong for Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action drama The Dark Knight, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

He first dipped his toe into the narrative film possibilities of the format with Batman Begins, which underwent an Imax DMR (Digital Re-Mastering) “conversion” from 35mm to the Imax large-screen format. In fact, said David Keighley, executive vp of Imax Corp. and president of its post subsidiary DKP 70mm Inc., three minutes of that film was scanned at 6K (on the company’s 70mm FilmLight Northlight scanner). “It’s the clip when Christian Bale falls out of the truck and walks up to the monastery,” he revealed. “We wanted to do it to see how it looked. And Chris noticed it and seemed impressed.”

See the full article here