Shot & Echo

Shot & Echo

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  • Edelkrone Unveils its Slider Plus

    • 12 Dec 2012
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    • Cinematography DSLR Edelkrone Gear Slider
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    Innovation in DSLR filming accessories is not only limited to the U.S. or Asia. One of the most prominent newcomers over the past two years have been the Turkish engineers at Edelkrone, Based in Ankara. Their Pocket Rig and Focus One Pro systems (which we will be reviewing here soon) have gained the Digital Video Black Diamond Award and much admiration from documentarians, cinematographers and videographers who want to keep a compact, autonomous shooting style with a robust and stable solution. 

    Today Edelkrone unveiled their latest offering, the Slider Plus. Now we haven't been fans of sliders as they are either cumbersome, overpriced or simply not designed well enough for a smooth shot. But Kadir Koymen's team have ingested their hallmark inventiveness and solid engineering skills into a slider that is only 1 ft long yet through its double-motion system reaches a total length of 2ft on only 1 tripod, and apparently does so with increased supplenes from start to stop.

    And it is also moderately priced at $499, under half of what you'd pay for signature sliders from other companies (hear that, Philip Bloom?). What we would be interested to see is if this system will also work in a diagonal or even upright position, or if there would be any way to counterbalance it. Edelkrone have indicated it is ready for a motorized controller which will be ideal for timelapse videos. The Slider Plus will start shipping in January 2013, so keep a look out for additional test videos in the weeks to come.

     

    Sliderplus

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  • On Hankley Heath, Skyfall Rises

    • 13 Mar 2012
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    • 007 Hankley Heath James Bond On Set Skyfall
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    A curious thing happened on a photographic nature walk one wintery morning in March. On Hankley Heath in Surrey, a young lady who shall only be known by her blog moniker The Foraging Photographer, made an unexpected discovery while investigating a new batch of tadpoles.

    The makings of a Scottish lodge were rising from the snowy heath, a bustle of workmen masking plywood with authentic-looking stonework. She had fallen upon a set which, as it turned out, will be a crucial location in the plot of the upcoming 007 movie. Film crews have built an entire replica of what seems to be the Bond family estate in Glencoe, complete with chapel and graveyard. Its name: Skyfall.

    More elements of the backstory reveal themselves through her photographic coverage, days before the heath is blocked off when principal shooting starts, so head on over to her blog for some great images of frogs, ferns and low-flying helicopters. Spoilers abound in her posts, including why they would rebuild the lodge on a military training ground (but if you know Bond movies, you probably know the answer to that already.)

     

    (download)
    Click here to download:
    on-hankley-heath-skyfall-rises-ywfdEbmuiIwkJvHABFBH.zip (3.73 MB)

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  • Bond Shooter Greg Williams on Convergence

    • 15 Jan 2012
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    Olga_kurylenko

    Photographer, cinematographer and motographer Greg Williams has renewed his blog and as the name shows, he does give some amazing insight into his own work and stories behind the images. For now he's highlighted works with Jude Law, Robert Downey Junior, Brad Pitt, Christina Hendricks and a session for Vogue with Olga Kurylenko. 

    Williams, who's currently shooting on set of the latest Bond movie Skyfall, wrote this about his style: "Ultimately I’d rather have a beautiful flawed photo than a technically perfect boring one. I think that’s often the other outcome. I sincerely believe that flaws make images believable."

    Having used four Canon 1Ds bodies as his workhorse for digital stills since 2004 at "an average of 3,000 frames a week", in recent years Williams has also been shooting with the Red One, creating what he calls Motion Photos (Motos) as well as short films, commercials and music videos. You can see his 2010 Showreel below and more on Vimeo. If anyone embodies the modern photographer/cinematographer hybrid, it's him.

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  • Tattersall hosts free filmmaking webinar

    • 31 May 2011
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    Anyone who's been thinking about moving into motion pictures or is thinking about making the move from DSLR stills photography to videography should sit up right now. CreativeLive have just announced that none other than Gale Tattersall will be hosting a filmmaking seminar online on July 8-10. Even better, the live feed and daily re-casts will be completely free, as with all CreativeLive web workshops.

    I have to date followed two outstanding webinars, both by Director of Photography Vincent Laforet, and both on the subject of making movies with the new generation of DSLR cameras. British cinematographer and DP Gale Tattersall made TV history last year by deciding to film the season finale of House entirely on Canon 5D MKII cameras. This upcoming workshop will be specifically of interest on day 2, when Gale will discuss basic lighting as well as in-depth setups for day shoots and night shoots.

    In addition, we'll get a glimpse at pro-editing on the brand new (and yet to be released at the time of posting) Final Cut Pro X, which promises to be a complete overhaul in editing, especially beneficial for DSLR shooters.

    again, 8-10 July at www.creativelive.com. Seriously not to be missed (but you can always buy the workshop as a download beyond these dates.)

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  • Haiti Revisited, on iPhone

    • 20 Jan 2011
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    • haiti iphone jeremy cowart photography
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    One year on from the crippling earthquake that hit Haiti, photographer Jeremy Cowart revisited the Island nation after his previous tour in which he tried to aid the people in any way he could (also see his Voices of Haiti gallery). Apart from documenting the relief efforts as a volunteer for Hope International, the entertainment, fashion and travel photographer shot a personal journal on a much less intrusive device; his iPhone.

    Apple's little snapper is becoming ever more popular among pro shooters, be it as stills or videos, including a new wave of music videos being shot on the iPhone 4. As visual voodooist Chase Jarvis puts it, the best camera is the one that's with you. He even named his photo app after this mantra. A plethora of camera-devoted apps help to edit and tweak your lo-fi shots, making the basic fundamentals of mind, moment and composition the true spirit of iPhone photography (iPhonography?). Cowart's poignant images of life in the Haiti of 2011 conveys just that. And in case you're wondering exactly which apps he used, short of selling his refinement secrets, @jeremycowart writes "
    I literally now have 20+ photography iPhone apps. I honestly think I used every one. I would download a new one and start experimenting..." divulging that some of those include 
    Filterstorm, Hipstamatic, Instagram, Incredibooth, Cross Process and Lisa Bettany's Camera+. 

    By the way, Cowart's instructional photography DVD Lifefinder has been receiving quite a bit of love from its viewers. We personally haven't seen it, but judging by his CreativeLive workshop, we can understand this might be comfortably inspirational.

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  • Apple TV 2: Love is in the AirPlay?

    • 14 Nov 2010
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    • AirPlay Apple TV Movies StreamToMe TV shows
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    1000-tvs1
    image ©Louie Psihoyos

    Let's face the music, we've become digital comfort-junkies.
    We want to Facebook on the go,  look forward to some quality FaceTime with our loved ones or pull a Crazy Face with the iPad.
    Whatever happened to social awkwardness? 

    Well, the good people at Apple are now giving us even less motivation to leave the living room couch. You may have heard of their little hobby, the Apple TV.
    That little set-top box recently became even smaller , ditching the internal hard-disk capacity and heat issues (the first generation was known to run from a warm 30 degrees Celsius in stand-by mode to a feverish 50 degrees during full activity) for a streaming black hockey puck. The initial idea is not that revolutionary: connect it to your HDTV and with the included remote select which music, movies or photos you have in your computer's iTunes or iPhoto library or rent new releases directly from Apple's servers. Sales of the device are so far limited to countries where iTunes store movies and TV shows are available, but that shouldn't affect functionality in other countries. You can always get an iTunes account in say Germany with your European credit card and download films and shows with English audio tracks. 

    But there's an iOS update afoot that has a little feature called AirPlay which makes the interactivity between your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and the Apple TV even more interesting.
    Steve Jobs recently demonstrated AirPlay functionality at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California. Say you're listing to Erykah Badu's new album on the iPhone when you come home from work, but don't want to stop listening just because you're home. Press the AirPlay button and select where you want to push it to and all of a sudden Window Seat is bumping out of your AirPlay compatible speaker set in the Kitchen. Or, and this is where it get's really interesting, you've been catching up on The Colbert Report on the iPad and want to find out how he nails Quincy Jones. Tap the AirPlay icon, select Apple TV and the iPad pushes the whole video, at the point where you are watching it, over to your telly and Home Cinema set-up. Just like that.

    Now in my case I could have the kids wanting to watch Sesame Street / Barbapapa / Babar / Muppet Show / The Polar Express / Wall-E / Toy Story 1,2,3, all of which are on a different media, be it DVD, mp4 on an iPod or .avi on our iMac. My main motivation for ordering the new Apple TV is so that I can have everything in one place and at the click of the remote have their requested show or movie playing in seconds. I must add here that we do not let them watch regular television, a big advantage of the digital content age; we control what they see, without advertisements, without violence, without pestilentially dumbed-down songs that nag on in your brain long after the kids have gone to sleep.

    As the Apple TV doesn't support .avi files, I will obviously have to do some converting. 
    Or do I? First reports from beta testers say that AirPlay not only works with Apple's native apps (iTunes, Remote, video) but quite a few third-party apps too. Audio, for example, can be pushed to the Apple TV from Pandora or selected games, be it with a slight delay. This raises the question, would AirPlay work with streaming apps that can play and simultaneously convert .avi videos from the computer? Then you'd have a movie on your desktop being served to your iPhone being streamed to your Apple TV which pushes it onto your TV screen.

    "Our suspicion is that audio will be available automatically for routing using AirPlay but video will not," says Matt Gallagher, the Australia-based programmer and founder of ProjectsWithLove, makers of the ServeToMe/StreamToMe combo. "According to Apple's documentation, routing audio with AirPlay is automatic for most iOS audio."  Gallagher adds that on a technical level, StreamToMe plays all audio through the AV Foundation layer and correctly uses the MPVolumeView class in fullscreen which offers the button to switch audio targets. "At this stage though, Apple have not offered any information about how video might work, or if this is available to 3rd party apps at all. Certainly, if it is possible to provide video streaming but extra implementation is required, we will update StreamToMe once it is clear what the requirements for this would be."

    Apple-tv-2nd-gen-2am2-460

    On a final note, Gallagher expresses what most Apple TV enthusiasts have long hoped for. "Ultimately, we would prefer to release StreamToMe for the Apple TV itself." The potential for running apps natively on the Apple TV is huge, especially since it seems to be running a version of iOS. Some incorrigible tinkerers have already managed to get a weather app, a Wii-mote app and the media center app Plex running on a jailbroken device. Should Apple decide to open up this little black box to third-party apps like it has iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, the amount of things you could soon be doing with your TV are limitless, from playing games, to surfing the net, to chatting and who knows, even FaceTiming. And at only €119 per box, that's a whole lotta TV love. You hear us, Steve? 
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  • Clint Mansell on scoring "Moon"

    • 5 Jan 2010
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    Here's a man on our interview wish-list, but as the following article seems to be Exclusive to the excellent Little White Lies movie mag, I'll grant them the scoop.


    Clint Mansell, former Pop Will Eat Itself node and now a much-wanted film composer, talks to James Wright about scoring for the Duncan Jones sci-fi "Moon", as well as his collaborations with Darren Aronofsky. Highly insightful of his creative process and scoring workflow. On that by now popularly borrowed piano, drum fill and string theme Mansell reveals being inspired by a Portishead track to create "a very subliminal part of the film to play on the cloning theme. At the same time you’ve only got one character in Sam, so with each song I tried to make it so that they feel the same but they’ve each got slight unique differences to them."
    Great read.

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  • Moon tries to tweet itself out of Oscar isolation

    • 31 Dec 2009
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    • Academy Awards Duncan Jones Moon Oscar Sam Rockwell movie making
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    Moon

    Can tweets land you an Oscar nomination? Ridiculous, you say? Maybe, but a little twitter storm has been highlighting the plight of an independent movie trying to rise above the corporate shadows of its indifferent distributor to orbit the upper echelons of Academy attention. (note to self, write more concise sentences in 2010) 

    The movie in question is British psy-fi Moon by writer/director Duncan Jones. The campaign doesn't so much seek recognition for the film as a whole—although it proves more than worthy—but more specifically a little love for lead actor Sam Rockwell. Normally this is the task of the mighty movie studios who decide which of their year's releases they deem worthy of a consideration marketing blitz. Sony Pictures Classics had been quite supportive of the Trudie Styler produced lunar drama, but only as far as theatrical, DVD and Blu-ray distribution went. 

    In Jones' own words, Sony wasn't going to waste energy on the critically lauded work. “We have more than asked," tweeted Jones (@manmademoon), "we’ve knocked heads. They have chosen the films they are backing & we are not in their plans." This is particularly frustrating for the filmmaker, who happens to be David Bowie's son, as "we have done SO well so far with the awards we HAVE been submitted to," including the British Independent Film Awards, the Athens Film Festival (Nychtes Premieras) and the Edinburgh International Film festival. Apparently when it comes to the United States, Sony thought it would cost too much, as DVD screeners of Moon sent out to critics and Academy members "would need to be water-marked copies as our DVD isn’t out yet in the U.S."

    In addition, Jones also found out, too late, that Moon was in fact eligible for the Golden Globes. Moon is up and running for BAFTA nominations, and the British Academy has also been trying to shake up the voting procedure to allow more foreign movies to become eligible, and noticed. According to Variety.com,  Bafta is "studying a solution to stream all the qualified films via a secure website to its members in order to level the playing field," an that idea has the support of distributors, who would be saving precious screener cash in these harsh economic times.

    But even though influential creators including Iron Man director Jon Favreau and Coraline author Neil Gaiman support Moon's cause, getting Rockwell on the Oscar bill will not be easy. It is not altogether impossible for Academy members to pick up on the buzz and decide for themselves to see the movie—and then hopefully submitting Rockwell's name—but the odds are low, even if over 2100 people have signed an online petition, including Jim Jarmusch and James Franco. 

    However, all's not lost. 5,777 voting ballots have been sent out to the Academy members, and they have to be returned by January 23rd 2010. Nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards will then be announced on Februrary 2nd. Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences represent 15 general areas, namely (yes, I'm going to list them all) actors, animators and short film makers, art directors and costume designers, cinematographers, composers and songwriters, documentary filmmakers, directors, executives, film editors, makeup artists and hairstylists, producers, public relations specialists, sound artists and engineers, visual effects experts and writers (I love it how AMPAS leaves the best for last...). So, if you're reading this and happen to know a member, from Amy Adams to Steven Zailian, tap on their shoulder and whisper a little Moon love into their ears.

    Alternatively, badger Sony Classics to send out £3.49 gift cards to rent Moon on the UK iTunes Store. It's swift, effective, and multiplied by 5,777 will only cost them just over £20.000. Think of the money you'll make selling DVDs when Sam Rockwell wins that Oscar, Sony!
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  • Digging deeper into HDSLR movie making

    • 23 Dec 2009
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    • Canon 1D mark IV Canon 5d mark II HD-DSLR Pentax k7 Vincent Laforet cinematography fusion movie making photography
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    Great things are afoot in cameraland. I'm talking about the capability of the latest DSLR cameras to capture HD video, and at some amazing results. Even entry-level models like the Nikon D90 and the pro-sumer Pentax k7 are allowing anybody to create some dedicated shorts with an array of lenses ranging from fish-eye wide-angle to superzooms. But it is at the High end where a serious departure is being made in moviemaking. Look at videos made with the full-frame Canon 5D mark II, shuch as Shane Hurlbut's Navy Seals project, and you'll see amazing quality already being used for commercials and independent shorts coupled with compact versatility.


    And then there's the new Canon EOS-1D mark IV. Yes, it's a pro 16.1 megapixel still camera, but with its Full 1080p HD movie function at 30 frames per second its also a camera for cinematographers who think outside of the box. Explorer of Light Vincent Laforet has had pre-release access to canon's new beast and combining it with pro filmmaking gear such as steadicams, focus pullers and even Arri lenses. To see where all this can lead to watch his Nocturne video, shot entirely in available light on the street of LA, mostly at an incredible 6400 ASA.

    Then go to Vincent's blog to see the making of Nocturne, and follow the developments first hand. I will personally be tracking the advances in HD DSLR movie making, as the fusion of photography and cinematography opens up so many inroads into new media that a photographer will soon not be able to do without mastering both skills. It's an exciting time, and I look forward to seeing the first full length feature shot on DSLRs to hit the cinemas...

    Nocturne from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

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  • Name that waveform

    • 26 Nov 2009
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    • Design Music
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    Cd_cover1

    This CD labeling concept by designer Joshua Distler would make a great quiz for music geeks. If you've ever worked with music creation software like midi grandaddy Cubase, Apple's Logic and Garageband or younger cats like Reason and Ableton Live, you'll instantly recognize the pattern as being the waveform visualization based on a tune's volume output. A nice idea, but how many of you out there could recognise a choon by its waveform alone? No, I don't think it will be an instant TV show hit, but some dev could turn this into an iPhone app that visualizes your music library into a guessing game, I guess.

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