SXSW Day One. Killer Video By Misa Garcia.

By: Jared Abrams
Misa Garcia put together this killer day one video. He really is one of the best filmmakers I have had the pleasure of working with. We are in Austin for the SXSW Film Festival. To be totally honest we are completely out of our element here. It’s like a mini Mardi Gras. A total party! We have been getting tons of great interviews for our documentary about the validity of film festivals as a way to market and promote independent films. We will get them up soon.

creativeLive with Vincent Laforet. Free Workshop and Gear.

By: Jared Abrams

Vincent Laforet will be teaching an HDDSLR workshop at creativeLive March 4^th-6^th. He will also be giving away a ton of gear. Here is a rip from his blog. Click here to check it out.

“OK here we go!   This coming Friday through Sunday promises to be a very exciting 72 hours!  As most of you who read the blog know – we will be shooting and broadcasting live on web the second part of our creativeLIVE HDDLSLR workshop titled “HDDSLR – Moving From Still to Video with Vincent Laforet”

The workshop will be broadcast free during that 72 hour period and go on sale thereafter.

We will also be giving away an insane amount of gear during the workshop – to be eligible to win it – all you need to do is to follow @creativelive and @vincentlaforet on twitter – that’s it!  We’ll send everyone more details as we get ready to give stuff away.

For those of you who took part in the first workshop a little under a year ago – here’s how this workshop will differ from that one.   The first workshop focused heavily on gear and theory.  We did a little bit of shooting and a quick edit.  This workshop will flip that around – we’ll focus a bit on some new gear, and on some other important things you need to know prior to any shoot.  But most of our time will be spent actually shooting.  We’ll discuss a little theory of course – but ON SET and DURING a shoot.  We will also devote a good chunk of the first day to workflow – both with Apple’s Final Cut Studio and Adobe’s CS5 suite, from ingest to output – and even backup – something a lot of this blog’s readers have been clamoring for for awhile!”

Vinny Minton Rocks A Canon 5D And Glidecam For "House"

By: Jared Abrams

Here is a killer BTS video of Vinny Minton rocking a Canon 5D on a Glidecam 2000 rig. He is a pro, so please don’t try this at home. It’s cool to hear that the Canon 5D cut seamlessly with the Arri Alexa footage. Here is a rip from the post.

The scene – I was there to track a girl skateboarding around a skate park. The when she finishes her run she gives her brother (who is in a wheel chair) a stroll up and down the ramps, when she suddenly lets go of the wheelchair and she ends up collapsing.

For the most part I shot everything with the glidecam 2000hd and a 16-35mm and used the cinevate core for some low angles of just the skateboard and feet. The advantage of shooting this particular scene with the 5d mark II is that it’s pretty much impossible to do it with their Arri film cameras they were using. The lightweight and size of the 5d allows mounting and flying the camera pretty much anywhere, although I was told that a few crewmembers had doubt. They thought there was no way the footage was going to come out well, because I was skating fast up and down the ramps. They thought footage was going to have the jello effect, although when combined with the glidecam, it’s just an incredible combo and pretty much takes away that issue when done correctly…

One thing I was really curious about was how the 5d would cut with their Arri cam but once I saw the episode I was amazed on how seamless the cameras cut together.

Source: Planet5D

Canon T3i/600D Announced. 10X Movie Digital Zoom.

By: Jared  Abrams

I picked this up via Canon Rumors. Canon Announced a new Rebel T3i/600D. The new Rebel will have a crazy digital zoom with no loss of resolution. this I will have to see to believe. Here is a rip from the press release.

Click here to check out more.

Capture stunning detail with EOS movie

Capture your memories in superb clarity with Full HD (1080p) movie mode, while a dedicated movie shooting mode means you can switch between stills and HD video instantly. You can also reach distant subjects using new Movie Digital Zoom function, which crops the centre of the sensor from 3x to 10x while still maintaining Full HD quality – great for capturing wildlife on a safari holiday.

Enabling you to capture more engaging videos, Video Snapshot mode shoots video in two, four, or eight second segments, creating clips that are short, easy to edit and of similar lengths to clips used in most TV programmes. As they are recorded, the clips are saved to a Video Snapshot Album and combined into one movie. A soundtrack can be added by choosing from tracks uploaded to the camera and the result viewed on the camera’s LCD, or on an HDTV via the built-in mini HDMI connection.

EOS 600D – key features:

▪ 18-megapixel CMOS sensor

▪ Scene Intelligent Auto mode

▪ Full-HD EOS Movie

▪ On-screen Feature Guide

▪ 3.7fps continuous shooting

▪ Wide-area 9-point AF

▪ 1,040k-dot vari-angle 7.7cm (3.0”) screen

▪ Basic+ and Creative Filters/ Built-in wireless flash control