Finally!
Hearken Creative now is shooting in HD on a Canon 7d camera. We have several lenses and filters, and can make your next project shine, whether for the big screen, the small screen, or even a web screen.
Additionally, not only can we do full-blown ProTools audio for location sound, but we now have a small Zoom H4N 4-channel audio recorder for interviews, small cast shoots, and field recording. Put the two pieces together, and you have a wonderfully small setup for mobile filming!
Call us to discuss your next video/film project.
http://www.vimeo.com/11932030
The Canon 5D and 7D are all over the place now. This is nothing new or groundbreaking, but it clearly shows that, when used well, these HDSLR cameras can be used for newsgathering and documentaries as well as scripted/planned shoots. Very nicely done.
This is incredible. Just announced at NAB: A Da Vinci Resolve system will now run on a Mac for $995. You still need a control surface, and it’s probably a somewhat stripped-down version — simply because you can only run one processer with it, but here’s the thing: incredibly powerful color correction is now possible for smaller and smaller boutique houses. If Hearken Creative grows a bit, I could foresee starting out with a Mac-based system and then move quickly to the Linux GPU cards via high speed InfiniBand connections.
The Da Vinci system is an industry-leading high-end color correction system for film and digital post production work. Da Vinci was purchased by BlackMagic Design in September 2009, and has been working to re-frame the playing field for color correction software. This will affect Apple’s Color as well as Avid’s built-in color correction (such as in Adrenaline).
The price of all of this stuff just keeps coming down further and further…
Yesterday I attended a half-day session arranged by The Association on the Canon DSLR cameras. Snehal Patel led the workshop of twelve people. I think I was the only one who wasn’t working in Hollywood, and we had quite a few veteran members of the ASC there as well. The industry is changing significantly. From the tech and post side of it, I think I have an incredible grasp on the realities of shooting with these new DSLRs. Now I want to get better on the production side as well.
One interesting thing about the day was a discussion by the DPs in the room concerning the disappointing performance of the RED One camera in real-world situations. Specifically, the cost of the camera, with all of the bells and whistles, is much higher than everyone expects (still much lower than traditional cameras, but the hype doesn’t match with reality). Secondly, the processor is just not robust enough to handle low light well; in fact, during shoots, the RED consistently requires more lighting (which equals more time and more money spent) than traditional cameras — DPs were complaining that you had to stick light everywhere, even in shadows, to make sure something showed up in the footage. So I’m leaning much less towards the RED right now, and seriously getting closer to either the 5D or the 7D, which excels in low-light situations. (I’m interested to see how the new RED cameras fare, but I’m not interested in purchasing any of them, either.)
Another illuminating conversation was how the major studios are attempting to cut down on technical staff (DITs, digital managers) in an attempt to save money on set. It’s going to backfire, but I’ll talk about that in a later post.
Canon has taken the pain (or most of it, anyways) out of bringing footage into Final Cut Pro from their DSLR cameras with a new FCP plugin. The new plugin allows us to ingest footage directly into Apple’s ProRes 422 code, and adds timecode based on the camera’s date and time stamp (a workaround to actually having real timecode, but it’ll work for now).
This, along with the firmware update that was released recently, brings us closer to truly being able to use the Canon DSLRs in a professional environment, which is what I want to do. I’m considering skipping the 7D entirely and simply saving up for a 5D — which will fit my business much better than the 7D anyways.
Q4 of 2009 has seen a number of wonderful projects wrap up and get distributed.
Winnetka Story is a feature-length documentary about the history of Winnetka and the North Shore area, outside of Chicago. Once again I worked with the wonderful John Newcombe, with whom we authored the DVD for Rancho La Cañada: Then and Now a few years ago. Hearken Creative did all of the DVD authoring and DVD menu design, as well as managing the production for the packaging.
Servant Partners launched several new videos prior to the Urbana missions convention that Hearken Creative produced. Most of the interview footage was interviewed and shot by Loren A. Roberts, with video from around the world provided to us by Servant Partners in various formats. HCS brought it all together and turned it into several promotional videos, for use both online as well as looping on plasmas in the organization’s booth at the 20,000-person convention. In addition, HCS authored the DVD, designed DVD menus, and duplicated copies of the DVD for all staff members. Below is one of the four videos produced:
And finally, Dave Schultze of Schultzeworks created a video promoting a computer design that he calls the “Philco PC,” an homage to the Philco Predicta television set from the 1950′s. I was able to work with Dave, consulting on camera movement, editing, and pacing for the video (Dave occupies my old office space, and we have become good friends over the past few years). We were stunned at the response after releasing the video: Vimeo shows that it has close to 100k views of the video, the design has been featured on EnGadget and the NY Times, and Dave has received calls from news outlets and potential clients. This was a great collaboration for us, and HCS looks forward to consulting in the future for other friends and clients! See the video below:
http://www.vimeo.com/7951005
There are many changes coming to Hearken Creative in the new year, but the one thing that will not change is our passion and dedication to making our clients look awesome, bringing creative and powerful solutions to the world of advertising design and corporate video.
A piece of music that might go in the background of a new video I’m working on…
Check it out.
Okay, so HCS has a bunch of Sennheiser and Shure wireless mic systems, like the awesome G2 series from Sennheiser. But the problem is that the wire that these manufacturers use is shoddy, and usually the mics are destroyed after just one run of performances. (They work better for ENG-style work — which is what I do most of the time — because the cable doesn’t get jostled around as much.) So I’m trying to figure out how to purchase or build my own mics for stage uses.
And then I found this awesome company called CPC in the UK (courtesy of the Blue Room stage discussion board), and they have cheapie replacement microphones, both the lav kind and the headworn kind. But I am not sure if they can ship cheaply to the U.S.; so, I am looking for a U.S. company that can supply these mics, or something comparable. I’m even willing to solder my own connectors onto them, to save even more money.
The reason that this came up is that I was doing sound design for the Pasadena Summer Musical Theater production for a few weeks earlier this summer. The body mics got a real workout, going on and off multiple children each day for rehearsals and performances. Several mics didn’t make it through the two week run, and the culprit was always the juncture where the cable meets the connector. So I was thinking that it might be good to make my own, or find a new microphone/cable combination that will be able to withstand the rigors of stage performances.
I have an e-mail out to CPC in the U.K., but I am willing to entertain any options — either here or overseas — that can help me replace or build newer and better mics for the Sennheiser or Shure systems.
It has been several years since I purchased the cameras that we use at HCS to film video. They are not HD, they are not new, and yet they get the job done, and usually the footage looks really good to the client. But at some point in time, we will have to upgrade to HD. The camera prices have come down, and the compression codecs are getting better and better, and easier for the computers to handle too.
So why wait? Well, I’m confused about where HD is going to go.
On the one side, we have these cool new DSLR cameras (like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II shown here, or the equally cool Nikon D300) that shoot stills and video. Why is this cool? Because DSLRs have large lenses and large imaging sensors, meaning you can go for shallow depth-of-field looks and lower light, and get absolutely stunning results. (Check out this incredible action footage shot by Robert Bösch to promote the D300.) It also means you can shoot stills and video with the same equipment. But the downsides, for me, all have to do with integration of professional features like timecode and audio capabilities. I would rather not have to send all my audio through a tiny 1/8″ stereo microphone jack (although that’s what I do on the Canon GL2), and there isn’t any timecode available. Many of these DSLR/video cameras also limit the framerate (often 30fps) and resolution (sometimes only 720p and not 1080p) that can be captured. But the price-to-performance ratio is hard to resist if you can find suitable workarounds for these setbacks.
On the other side, the lower-end professional film camera market is so close to breaking wide open, that I am compelled to wait before spending any money. Red Camera‘s Scarlet, when it comes out, is going to run circles around current camera options. And right now, there are several sub-$1000 cameras that could shoot entire feature films. We’re looking at the Sony PMW-EX3 for shooting our next film. (See this great video review, and click over to his camera tests as well.) And we still have Panasonic’s AG-HVX200A, which was one of the first HD cameras that could shoot at multiple frame rates (and related to my current DVX100A — which is a bonus in terms of learning curve on a new camera). And JVC’s GY-HM700 is another strong contender, which shoots directly into a native Final Cut Pro format (woohoo! no more wasted time logging and capturing!)(see this review) that will street for around $7000. (Here’s another interesting comparison about the merits of both the EX3 and the GY-HM700.)
So, when and what to buy? Not yet, because I have no projects that require the new equipment just yet. And, when that next project comes around, we’ll take a look at what the requirements are, and how each of these solutions might fill those requirements.
Scott Simmons recently posted a farewell note to Kodachrome, Kodak’s brilliant film stock. As unforgiving as it was (bright sunlight was its favorite playground at 64ASA), the brightness, richness, and crispness of the photos were unmistakeable. Oh, and, by the way, the developed film lasts forever. You think I’m kidding you? Go over and look at my lightbox at iStockphoto. All of these were shot at least 25 years ago, and some of them date back to the 1950s. Over 50 years old! How many things last that long nowadays? I mean, look at a few of these:
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And we are saying goodbye to the film stock.
Honestly, this brings up a larger issue that I have discussed previously on the blog. Storage. Archiving. Longevity. I am pulling up a video project that I haven’t touched for a few months today, and the hard drive is screaming at me. It took a few tries to even get it to spin up. So I am spending this afternoon dumping the entire drive onto another, newer drive so that I can go back to working on the project.
I am fastidious about backups and archives (borne of experience). All material that is on a hard drive in my office is redundant. As soon as a project is finished, it is backed up to DVD or another hard drive. But I have no expectation that those hard drives are going to last longer than 5 years. So I guess I was not surprised to be losing another hard drive.
But here I am, pulling 50 year old Kodachrome photos out of a closet and scanning them and they look like they were taken yesterday.
Once I get all of those slides scanned, I was planning on throwing the slides away; I have the scans — why would I need the original slides? But I’m not sure anymore: I’m learning that, if you have a hard copy, that might be better than having a digital copy! Even for all the miniDV work that I have done, I have carefully labelled and stored each tape in fireproof boxes. Those are my “hard copy” from those projects. Once I switch to solid state (P2, hard drive, etc.) what is my primary “hard copy” of the original media?
Additionally, the beauty of that Kodachrome film can not be overstated. It is simply gorgeous. I wonder whether a still camera like the Canon EOS 1D Mark III or a video camera like the new RED cameras will ever show us the depth and clarity of that film. I’m sure they will achieve it, but will anyone be able to pull that data off in another 50 years to admire it like we admire Kodachrome today?
Flickr Photos
