Digital
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Test Footage and Drawbacks of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera
Many pundits predicted a serious shakeup when Blackmagic announced their new Pocket Cinema Camera back at NAB in April. Priced at just $995, the Super 16 handheld, complete with 13 stops of dynamic range, seem poised to encroach upon DSLR’s steadfast popularity. As the camera underwent initial shipments in August, homegrown test footage began popping up here and there. Dan Chung, co-editor of News Shooter, recently took his BMPCC out for a spin in the Sanlitun area of Beijing — at night. The experiment yielded mixed results. Armed with a Voigtlander 17.5 mm f0.95 lens to maximize light on the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 4, 2013 -
A Digital Camera Built Like a Film Camera: The Black Betty
The Black Betty is a custom made camera that is quite simple in nature: an SI-2K Mini and a Mac Mini housed in one unit. What separates this from rest of the digital cinema crowd is its form factor: it’s actually built like a film camera. As technology progresses, things get smaller. We now have cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera that shoots RAW video (soon, currently only ProRes) and is no bigger than a point-and-shoot — all for $1000. This is awesome. However, the issue is that filmmakers don’t seem to take advantage of the small form factor […]
by Shaun Seneviratne on Aug 29, 2013 -
Filmmaker Print Subscriptions Now Include iPad, Digital Access
A yearly subscription to the print edition of Filmmaker magazine now includes our iPad edition as well as full access to our digital archives — all for $18. That’s the short version of the recent changes we’ve made for subscribers. The slightly longer version, for those interested in how we’re conceiving of Filmmaker across our various platforms, follows. If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’ll have recognized that we’ve effectively created multiple editions of Filmmaker. Our website contains new, original content every day, and this content is mostly not contained in the print magazine. In fact, if you […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2013 -
Chris Kenneally on Side by Side
Over the past few decades, film’s iron-clad grip on the motion industry has gradually been chipped away by emerging digital technology. Yet it hasn’t necessarily been a smooth transition. Traditional celluloid film has gone largely unchanged as a medium for a century and has been the canvas for works from Casablanca and Apocalypse Now to this summer’s blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. As the saying goes: old habits die hard. In this case, for good reason, a film produces a picture quality, texture, and dynamic range unparalleled by digital. But digital technology has continued to make leaps and bounds in […]
by Billy Brennan on Aug 16, 2012 -
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Three Monkeys
YAVUZ BINGÖL AND HATICE ESLAN IN DIRECTOR NURI BILGE CEYLAN’S THREE MONKEYS. COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS. In film writing these days, superlatives like “visionary” and “genius” are thrown around all too often to describe directors, though few truly deserve them; Nuri Bilge Ceylan, however, is one of those few. The Turkish writer-director was born in 1959 in Istanbul, and started taking photographs in his mid-teens. He earned a degree in Engineering at Bo?aziçi University, but after graduating he moved on to study film, a newly discovered passion, at Mirnar Sinan University. After a ten-year period spent living in London (during which […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 27, 2009 -
WHAT ARE WE… CHOPPED LIVER?
The Apple-oriented rumor site Think Secret has a must-read piece up in which it claims that Apple will introduce a revised Mac mini at January’s Mac World Expo, a new home computer that will serve as the hub of a new digital delivery service with a new digital rights management system. From the piece: “In an effort to appease media companies wary of the security of digital rights management technology, Apple’s new technology will deliver content such that it never actually resides on the user’s hard drive. Content purchased will be automatically made available on a user’s iDisk, which Front […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 3, 2005 -
CUBAN SHOOTS AND SCORES
Listen closely and you’ll hear cheers echoing the corridors of cyberspace. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, owner of 2929, HDNet, Magnolia Pictures and the Dallas Mavericks, has announced on his blog that following a request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation he’ll be financing Grokster’s legal bills in MGM vs. Grokster, a case that winds up at the Supreme Court this Tuesday. The case revolves around the question of whether or not file-sharing services and peer-to-peer networks can be sued if their technology allows users to download or trade copywritten content. The entertainment industry is hoping to overturn a 1984 verdict in a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 27, 2005 -
EMERGING PARTICIPATES WITH PARTICIPANT
From a press release we received today: “Emerging Pictures announced today that it will launch its Digital Cinema Network with an investment by Los Angeles-based Participant Productions. This digital cinema initiative will establish a nationwide network for the distribution and exhibition of specialty films in such venues as prestigious museums, performing arts centers, science & technology institutions, and restored movie palaces. These venues will screen independent and international films, both dramatic and nonfiction, as well as alternate content such as film festivals, dramatic performances, concerts, and other mission-appropriate programming. “Participant Productions, founded in 2004 by eBay pioneer and philanthropist, Jeff […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2005 -
COPYRIGHT UNCONTROLLED
In Jeff Levy-Hinte’s piece, “The Digital Divide,” in the current issue of Filmmaker, Levy-Hinte discusses the major studio’s battle against new technologies like the file-sharing services which, while they enable the free distribution of copyrighted materail, also have legitimate uses. Levy-Hinte’s fears of expanding governmental control over legal technologies were abated this week by a federal appeals court ruling stating that two file sharing services, Grokster and Streamcast, weren’t liable for the distribution of copyrighted works on their networks. Judge Sidney R. Thomas wrote, “History has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 21, 2004 -
DOWNLOADABLE DIGITAL DIVIDE
Producer Jeff Levy-Hinte (Thirteen, High Art, and the Venice-bound Mysterious Skin) wrote one of the most important articles Filmmaker has ever published in our current issue. Entitled “The Digital Divide,” it’s a trenchant and provocative attack on the intersecting political and lobbying efforts that comprise the MPAA’s “War on Piracy.” Levy-Hinte uses last fall’s “screener battle” (which he, Ted Hope, the IFP and the IFP/L.A. as well as an alliance of independent producers all fought) as the jumping off point to discuss what’s next when it comes to the effect of anti-piracy policies on independent filmmakers. By parsing the history […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 30, 2004
