Quintessential Studios' Weblog

Chris Hart, an L.A. area editor and shooter, sends out a regular email to his industry contacts met through various events. Usually you get one reminding you about upcoming events that he might attend and sometimes one after events he’s attended to share information from the event.

Both Chris and I attended the April LAPPG meeting and here are our email notes from it:

Chris Hart:
“At the LAPPG last night I learned a lot about all the latest digital cameras, a little of which I share below, and I won the Duck. That’s right, a free Automatic Duck plugin with which to translate all my FCP timelines into AE timelines with a keystroke. WHOOOOOO!!!! I’m still stoked, as you can tell.

…

“Aaron McNally of Moviola gave a breakdown of all the latest cameras. Here are various interesting tidbits from what he said: The RED camera, on which Knowing was shot, can use a 16G card that will store 9 minutes of its 4k footage; it can also use a DLT tape which can store more. It produces 32-bit raw files that probably require serious color adjustment. In a discussion of cards vs tapes, Aaron remarked that some cameras can record and transmit the data wirelessly to a capture device! No card OR tape! Also, some 2k and 4k cameras can simultaneously record a low-res proxie on an SD card.

“Panasonic’s HVX200, which uses P2 cards, is getting a fair amount of professional usage: studio footage in Dancing with the Stars and certain Biography channel docs use it. It records @ 480 but can enhance that signal to 1080 @ 100 mbs. On the other hand, Discovery channel requires all its docs to be shot with a 1920×1080 native 3cc camera or better. Project:Runway shoots with 10 cameras simultaneously, using the HVX900 DVCPRO50, which uses cassettes, at 24p. An HVX900 is a $20,000 camera.

“Wes Plate then spoke about Automatic Duck, which translates timelines from FCP to Avid or Avid to FCP or Avid or FCP to AE, depending on the plugin. An awesome product, which as I mentioned I now own. Sweeeeeeet!”

My reply:
“WTG Chris! I was there too but all I won was a mouse pad…. lol

“I’d like to add a little more to that camera part you wrote, Chris. Here’s something else that I learned from last night’s talk. This is in regard to the compression rates Aaron spoke of. He basically compared Sony to Panasonic (as well as others) but it went basically like this. Sony can capture at full 1080 but it compresses the file down to like 30mbs and you lose a lot that way. Panasonic HVX200 is like you said and you lose less with the 100mbs compression of the file, but it captures at a lower (res?) and computes the rest to make up the HD.

“So, either way you lose something, it just depends on where you want to loose it. He also said that the Panasonic Cine-gamma developers were really good and in the computing of color for your shot came up with some nice end results.

“That’s where RED is different because it doesn’t compute any color to save to the image. It’s just raw and you have to create the color you want in post. (basically) The other cameras have to compute to create the color data to save to tape/data card or what have you.

“Also, the wireless transmitter still has to send to some sort of recording device but that it’s not on the camera.

“The other part I learned was that sensor size, 1/3″ or “2/3″ etc. determines depth of field. The smaller the sensor the less depth of field there is and the larger the sensor, the greater the DOF. And RED with their “Big Ass” sensor has a depth of field like film cameras, very shallow. (Which I have heard at various RED demos too.)

“Sorry to get all technical on you. I just really learned a lot from that part of the talk and sure wish I had recorded it for future reference! I definitely will call Aaron up at Moviola if I need to know any camera specs!

“I’ll just add that Wes Plate was very cool and funny and I did learn a lot about FCP and Avid and AE workflows from him. Good stuff.

“Also, shameless plug here. I was on the Digital Production Buzz tonight, should be archived soon for all to hear. Read my blog to get more of the info I wanted to say: http://wordpress.quintessentialstudios.net”

LAPPG is the Los Angeles Post Production Group and they meet every second Wednesday of the month at Allied Post Audio in Santa Monica. RSVP is required as space is VERY limited.

P.S. Don’t forget to call HD Expo to get a 20% discount on one of their two upcoming P2 camps:
Either April 19-20 in Las Vegas or August 6-7 in Los Angeles. Info here: http://wordpress.quintessentialstudios.net/?p=44

Okay, okay.  I know I promised you a Norm Hollyn bit on this next blog, but I just wanted to slip another entry in here before that one.  So stay tuned.  How’s that for a “lean forward moment”?

Being active in whatever field you’re interested in will more than likely garner your own fair share of free stuff.  But if you seem lacking in accouterments, read on.

Free movie screenings for writers

Some years ago, I joined the mailing list for Creative Screenwriter magazine.  With this email list, you get invites to many film screenings throughout the year, usually on Tuesday nights.  These are very special screenings because they have a Q & A afterwards, usually featuring the screenwriter(s) of the film.

I’ve been at screenings featuring Rob Zombie, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Seth Rogan Evan Goldberg, Michael Davis, Zach Helm, Nancy Oliver, Gustin Nash, Garth Jennings, Nick, Goldsmith, Jason Reitman, Guillermo Arriaga, Scott Frank, Zoe Heller, Patrick Marbel, Phillip Glass, Chris Rock, Louis C.K., Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Fredi M. Murer, Don Payne, Drew Goddard, Ari Sandel, Peter Billingsly, John Fusco and Collin Chou.  These have been very entertaining and free!

So if you are interested in the craft of screenwriting, I think you’ll like these too.  But seriously, if you aren’t going to stay for the Q&A, don’t sign up to go.

Conferences Seminars and Expos

Conferences, seminars and expos are great places to learn more about your desired profession and to learn the upcoming changes that could affect the future of what you’re into.  Not only that but also they are great places to network and meet new people.  I make it a point to meet at least one new person besides the booth personnel or company reps whenever I attend a conference or expo.  And what else is important here?  Free stuff!

Filmmaking:

The following film making events were all free via sign up on the web.  Usually you have to register by a certain date to get free admission.

Apple Final Cut Server World Tour 2008 – I attended this event in Los Angeles May 13, 2008.  This was a great event that covered the new Apple product Final Cut Server.  They also went into some great detail on using Motion and Soundtrack Pro too.  At the event they had product booths from about ten vendors.  So mainly they just had fliers and brochures to hand out, but there was free sodas and coffee.

And then the raffle…  my wife wins the iPod nano!

DV Expo – Nov 5th, I went to the DV Expo.  It wasn’t as good as the HD Expo I attended earlier and will talk about later but there were a couple of good seminars and cool stuff to look at/drool over.  There was also some free magazines to pick up.  No free refreshments here though.

At one of the seminars, I won a $210 Viper book.  I have no use for a $210 Viper book so anyone that does, let me know.

HD Expo - Oct 29th, I went to the HD Expo in Burbank.  (This year it’s at the Universal Hilton, March 5th!)  I attended a RED presentation (will again this year too) where we got a great preview of what’s going on at RED as well as a very cool preview of Che, the Steven Soderbergh flick.  Their were TONS of free magazines and a really cool exhibit area.  Parking was validated.

Post Production:

FCPUG SuperMeet – (10.99 and a drive to SF) — This San Francisco version on Jan 7, 2009, was really a lot of fun and covered in an earlier post, so read that one.

LAFCPUG – ($5 suggested donation) — I have attended all of these meetings since March 2008, but was very late to one because I was at another seminar on lighting given by Birns & Sawyer (where they had free beer and snacks!)  They have a great raffle there and if you don’t win, you can most likely get an Automatic Duck keychain!

LAPPG – (Free) — I have recently found the Los Angeles Post Production Group.  Last month I attended their meeting and it was very cool.  It’s a small group only and you have to RSVP right away or else you won’t get in, as I found out the first time I tried to attend.  But last month’s meeting was a presentation by Jay Miracle, award-winning editor, producer and director.  Jay worked as editor on the Emmy-award winning documentary Hearts of Darkeness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, chronicling Francis Ford Coppola making Apocalypse Now.  Very insiteful and full of dirt and secret stories… ooo cool…. and hey, I won a Moviola T-shirt!

DMA/LA – (Free) — Also at the Barnsdale Art Park Gallery Theatre (where the LAFCPUG meets), Ko Maruyama heads up this great meeting of Digital Media Artists.  They have a raffle too.

Pizza & Post – (Free) — As the name implies, there’s free pizza and a talk on post.  This is a new find of mine too and is put on by the Video Symphony TV & Film School in Burbank.  This month’s talk was by Philip Hodgetts of Intellegent Assistant.  There’s some free mags there too.  RSVP is needed for this event.

Miscellanous Stuff

Movie Night w/Mostly Lisa – (http://mostlylisa.com/blog/movie-night/) Won two free iPhone apps while watching Lisa Bettany get drunk watching the Oscars.  (And I don’t even have an iPhone!)

Digital Production Buzz – (http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com/) Every Thursday 6pm – 7pm, Pacific Time.  Fantastic Digital Video Production, Post and Distribution online radio podcast.

Leo Laporte – Twit.tv, live and recorded video broadcasts for tech stuff.  The ultimate geek-out.

The more I look into events, the more I find and I would swear that if I were jobless, I could survive on the freebies of events such as the above.  This combined with the plethera of eseminars/webinars has given me a wealth of knowledge in the digital film making arena and I look forward to more this year.  I’ll let you know what I find.

–Eric