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I should probably start with an apology: this one is going to get technical. Still, I hope you'll stick with it, because understanding how and why we take such care over measuring the quality of white light is key to understanding the benefits of modern lighting equipment such as that based on fluorescent and... »
I went to NAB 2013 with no great expectations for new equipment, and therefore wasn’t disappointed. ARRI is still ascendant with Alexa. Sony has just released the F5 and, to the horror of F65 owners, the F55. Canon seems confident in its position, having accidentally built an excellent indie filmmakers’ camera in the 5D... »
I hate to think that my enduring memory of London’s Broadcast Video Expo (BVE) this year will be the almost fluorescent green sweatshirts that the floor staff had been forced to wear, but it may be so. Suppressing an involuntary exclamation and shielding our eyes from the hideousness, let’s move swiftly past the dayglo-clad... »
My opening question for production designer Adam Stockhausen was whether one could politely refer to Moonrise Kingdom as a “little” film. Apparently, one can, possibly because it enjoyed an exceptionally positive critical response and success at the box office. This modesty of scale makes Stockhausen's work as production designer even more interesting, because Moonrise... »
For years, there have been no stop-motion contenders for best animated feature, and now, suddenly, three come along all at once. ParaNorman is a supernatural tale of a boy, the titular Norman, living in a small New England town bewitched by a centuries-old curse, realized by freely blending the traditional technique of stop motion... »
I must admit that I arrived in Amsterdam with a sense of deep foreboding at the amount of pixel peeping I was going to be asked to do at IBC this year. The recent availability of cameras like the Sony FS700 and Canon C300, and the realization that they're both quite decent, is an... »
There was a time when the world was simple. Ampex made video tape recorders, Pye made cameras, and the western world had manufacturing industries. Even in the modern world, where we’re more likely to be using specialist software running on commodity hardware, there are go-to names for the big stuff: Digidesign for audio editing... »
It has recently become a common desire to have things that go fast appear to go very slowly, and until quite recently, the only way to achieve the effect was to throw a lot of money at the problem. »
It seemed like a good idea to sign off our NAB 2012 coverage with a mention of the big splash, a major new release, something exciting – but although the exhibition seemed refreshingly, almost comfortingly replete with new stuff, it’s actually quite hard to pick out a shining example. »
I recently read an opinion – by a member of the ASC, no less – that while 4K images on 4K displays looked stunning, that degree of sharpness wouldn’t necessarily be popular among actors, especially actors who are, shall we say, not in their early twenties anymore. Personally, I think the increased availability of... »
