LaCie announced some updates to their familiar rugged line at NAB. There is now a larger housing with two drives for RAID 1 or 0. It includes both a thunderbolt and USB 3 interface, with 4 TB for $419. Also new to the rugged line is a 1 TB SSD drive, priced at $899. There’s a variety of other options in both SSD and spinning disk ranging from 250 GB to 2 TB. Not rugged but a new mobile addition is a USB-C drive. Expect to see more of these now that Apple has made it clear that’s the new direction of connections. Comes […]

Welcome to your first day on a film set. Perhaps you’ve gotten a new job as a production assistant. Perhaps you’re still in school and have been given an opportunity as an intern, or you’ve recently been asked to help out with a friend’s production. You probably have some questions. I’m writing this because I’d like to try to answer some of those questions in advance, and because I have hope. Hope that maybe the next time I ask someone to sweep up some glass that just broke, I won’t have to explain where to get a broom, how to […]

It’s NAB, and Blackmagic have once again announced some exciting new cameras. Blackmagic has developed a bit of a reputation for announcing cameras with amazing specifications at incredibly good prices. They may not be as refined as the cameras from Sony, Canon et al., and they may not always ship on their announced dates, but if you’re a shooter on a budget you have to look at Blackmagic’s camera offerings. Blackmagic’s first camera was the Cinema Camera. Despite its unusual shape and user interface, this camera was a hit because of its high dynamic range, reasonable price, and its support […]

In the late 1890s, Frederick Hill Meserve, the son of a Union solider, started collecting photographs from the Civil War. Collecting images — particularly those of President Lincoln — became something of an obsession, and he eventually acquired the largest single collection of Lincoln images. Meserve’s collection was used as the basis for the penny, the portrait on the $5 bill, the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Rushmore. The collection is vast — over 70,000 items — and became a family project for five generations. As if this didn’t sound more amazing than the plot of National Treasure, it gets better: Dorothy Meserve […]

If there ever was a piece of gear that I’ve experienced a Goldilocks dilemma with, it’s my camera bag. Or bags: different jobs call for different bags and configurations, so I’ve gathered a few over the years. Recently I’ve gotten to put a classic through real world use, the Chronicle from Domke’s updated Next Generation Journalist Series. Domke is an iconic camera bag you usually see slung around the shoulders of journalists out in the field (or movies, like The Bang Bang Club). The Chronicle is a medium sized bag that feels extremely sturdy and well built. It’s got a […]

Alongside her current Kickstarter campaign for Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck’s God Bless the Child, producer Laura Heberton pens this guest essay for Filmmaker reflecting on the many different ways one can be a film producer in our Internet age. Both God Bless the Child and another picture produced by Heberton, Alison Bagnall’s Funny Bunny, premiere at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival. This coming Friday, at about 2 o’clock in the morning, I will finally get to meet, in some (probably nondescript) lobby of a hotel in Austin, Robert Machoain and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck — in person and for the very […]

When, in 2013, I spoke to Dean Fleischer Camp about his exquisitely deadpan web series, Catherine, created with Jenny Slate, I immediately wanted to know about its production design. How did he come up with its uncannily bland, generically discomforting visual spaces? The director told me that his inspirations included the ’90s TV show Kids in the Hall as well as Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom, but that part of the show’s visual aesthetic came from the porn-movie sets he was renting as a location. Now, Camp writes with word of a new project that furthers the aesthetic he’s been […]

For over a year the FAA has been fighting a rearguard action against the proliferation of drones. The agency has had regulations in place stating that unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) — also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or drones — can’t be used for commercial purposes, and they have mostly pursued a policy of “educational chats” for people who have caught their attention (typically videos on YouTube that get picked up by the media). Their bark hasn’t been without some bite, too. In one case they fined a pilot $10,000 for flying a drone through the University of Virginia. Interestingly, […]

I fall into that category of independent filmmaker who, as the need exists, writes, produces, directs, shoots, records sound, edits, even grades their own footage. (What we used to call color correction.) Then again, often times I’m “just” the DP. 2014 was my busiest year ever, and at some point I found myself taking on each of these basic roles. As a result, the scope of my “kit” is necessarily broad, encompassing both production and post. (Kit is a Britishism for one’s working collection of gear, a name I intend to lend to a series of brief tech reviews in […]

Keynote speakers at today’s Producers Brunch at the Sundance Film Festival, independent powerhouses Jay and Mark Duplass issued a passionate and witty call to all the producers in the jam-packed house: keep making small movies. At an event that saw their own producing partner, Stephanie Langhoff, receive the Sundance Institute Red Crown Producers Award, they told producers to learn from their own decision to stay invested in the independent sector after receiving a measure of larger Hollywood success. Along with Sundance Dramatic Competition entry The Bronze, which Langhoff produced, the Duplass Brothers have, as executive producers,two other productions at the […]