Final Cut User

  Matthew Bennett(Matthew’s site) posted some amazing tests with a DVX and Andromeda kit to achieve 1000fps.Check the vid here. 1000fps Andromeda Hack.Matthew is a editor/motion graphics designer in Toronto who has been shooting tests with the DVX Andromeda mod ,  EX1 and RED One . The test looks super smooth and man makes you want to get working with some cameras like this. Some still shots and clips are also at  REDUSER that Matthew has posted.Original post on Reel stream forumsforum link, by the way  anybody know what happened to them. (reelstream)?    Edit: Seems Matthew had fun with AE and some slow acting so it is actually not a hack at all and was faked . Ah Matt is looks good anyway . You got me .Per Matt fourm post.

My first post was a fraud… that clip was faked with slow acting, AE’s timewarp filter, compositing and particles in AE. 

The idea popped into my head to post it with that story, and I couldn’t resist. 

The phantom hd camera has been my wet dream lately, so I thought I’d just try and do a simulation with the andro. I guess it sounded plausible, though, no? 

Anyway, to get a ‘1000fps’ faked effect, you can use these shots as a reference. Like say for the cereal shot, I shot myself with the open boxes, and moved very slowly, shooting at 23.98. I rendered that in sculptor, took it into AE 8.0, and applied the timewarp filter to slow it down to 25 percent. Timewarp draws new interpolation frames, to further smooth out my already slow-mo acting. Then, I used trapcode’s particular to create a stream of ‘cereal’ particles, and composited that into the shot, using masks and duplicate layers to hide the birthplace of the particular stream. Voila, simulated 1000fps. 

Awesome new term listings are up at FXPHD.com for the July 08 term and man what a stellar listing of training you can take. Some of the highlights for me are the Stop motion /Miniatures , Afx 301 with Mark Coleran/Mark Christensen on screen UI , Tim Clapham back with C4D/AE goodness,RED ,Nuke, Matte painting and just way to many good ones to keep listing. All together there about 15 brand new classes with some popular classes being revisited for those new to FXPHD. Those of you worried about having access to some of the higher end software like Nuke and Maya do not worry FXPHD has VPN access for some of the classes on both Mac and PC.

I have said it many times that since joining FXPHD over a year ago that it has been a HUGE plus for me and have made a bunch of friends and contacts. The classes are beyond high end and no one is doing anything near the level that FXPHD does . Being able to have contact with other industry pro’s is tremendous bonus . People have asked to just have access to the forums alone , that says something for the community, professors and staff at FXPHD. Do yourself a favor and check out the info on the main page and keep and eye out for the 0 week class which will probably be up in a week or so . 

July 08 term listing.   

I have been waiting a few months for this to come out while keeping tabs on the development stages of this customizable playback software.Tweak Software is releasing RV, the company’s first commercially available software package, announced Seth Rosenthal, founder and president. RV is a highly customizable cross-platform image and sequence viewer that is capable of playing back uncompressed film resolution clips. Free downloadable trial versions of the software are available upon request at Tweaksoftware.com

RV is a real-time, film resolution, high-dynamic-range image and sequence viewer for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The application can play back uncompressed film resolution sequences, and includes native support for stereo 3D. RV combines a flexible architecture and a hardware accelerated compositing pipeline with a lean, polished design tailored to professional digital artists.

Key Features of RV:

• Real-time playback for desktop, dailies and projection
• Customizable, extensible architecture
• Real-time hardware color correction
• High dynamic range, floating point image pipeline
• Advanced color management with support for OpenExr style linear-light scene-referred workflow
• Native stereoscopic 3D support
• RVIO—a stand alone batch image-processing tool to convert, conform, slate, color correct and composite image sequences
• Comparison, tiling, compositing and playback of any number of sources
• Multi-channel audio with real-time floating point re-sampling
• Open source session file format (with Python/C++ tools)

RV is the first application to be commercially released from Tweak Software. It was developed by artists, for artists, to handle the company’s own high-end VFX projects. Founders Jim Hourihan and Seth Rosenthal spun off Tweak Software from Tweak Films in 2007. Tweak Films earned a VES Award for work on the memorable New York tidal wave sequence in The Day After Tomorrow and a Hong Kong Film award for VFX on Hero. The company established a reputation for tackling R&D intensive projects and has developed several proprietary VFX tools since it was founded in 2001.“High-end shops typically rely on home-grown playback tools that are hard to replace because they are deeply entwined in artist workflows,” explained Rosenthal.

“RV is very customizable and that makes it the first effective replacement for those proprietary viewers. But more importantly, if your work is all about images, you should have a great image viewer. Jim has a long history of creating refined tools for artists, and he designed RV from the ground up to be the kind of tool we wanted to use ourselves. RV has spread quite quickly in its pre-release form just through word of mouth, and based on feedback from our early adopters, we are taking the right approach.”RV is coming to market in a release version 3.4, having undergone multiple generations of development for internal use at Tweak Films. To date, RV has benefited Tweak’s projects as well as projects for a select group of major effects facilities, including WETA Digital, which adopted a pre-release version in 2006. RV is currently available directly through Tweak Software Tweaksoftware.com at the price of $299 per node locked license and $369 per floating license. 

 Wired has a nice read on the Dark Knight filming and how Dir. Christopher Nolan likes to do 8k home movie tests with IMAX cameras. He mentions how he likes to shoot as much practical shots as he can without using CG. This should be another great movie coming out this summer.  Wired Story

 In partnership with the Executive Producer of OFFF NY, I’m pleased to announce F5, a two-day festival of creativity taking place in New York City. Although the event won’t be until the spring of 2009, I want to put it on your radars now and encourage you to subscribe for updates on the F5 site. In addition to getting F5 news before everyone else, subscribers will get advanced access to ticket sales, which will be limited.I’m not going to say anything more about the event right now, except that it’s going to be amazing. F5 goes beyond just motion graphics into the fields of filmmaking, photography, graphic design, art, music, interactive design, advertising and experience design. The goal of F5 is to change the way you look at creativity, and in so doing, change the way you look at your work and your life.

You bet your butt I will be there and AENY will be supporting Justin @ Motionographer on this venture . Mark those 2009 calendars now it will be here before you know it.

Stan Winston, an Oscar-winning visual effects artist, has died at age 62.

Winston died at home Sunday evening after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma, according to a rep from Stan Winston Studio.

“Stan died peacefully at home surrounded by family,” a spokeswoman said.

Winston won three visual effects Oscars and earned multiple nominations. His first Oscar was for James Cameron’s “Aliens” (1986). Winston later won for “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1992) and 1993’s “Jurassic Park.“

original link via 

LA TIMES

Stu Maschwitz’s blog ???????? ????? ????????Prolost is a daily stop on my blog reading list . Stu always has useful insight into all different areas this entry on clipping being a problem we all face in production. Make sure to take some time to read it one day it may just save your life. Clipping post from Stu

Hmmm something new to try on Tuesday’s post some inspiration on to you guys/gals that I find around which gets the creative juices going. Refused.tv looks to be a kick ass collective of directors (one of my favs is Rob “Whitey”  McConnaughy and Aggressive) who are doing amazing work on the music video, commercial and visual effects front. I must fan out a little on Whitey’s work since he has made some of the all time best snowboard videos under Kingpin production with Brad Kremer (now with Mack Dawg productions amazing snow/skate vids as well). Whitey took most of his snow stuff off his site (too bad ) except for this gem of the Chris Coulter intro Chris intro .

So take some time to check out Refused’s site and check out some really good work from all the talented directors and let’s hope one day Whitey, Brad and the OG M3/South Lake crew will get back together for another kick ass snow flick. PS Whitey always had the best soundtracks in his videos. Links- Whitey’s Site  Aggressive’s Site. 

 In my quest to find a portable, solid and inexpensive dolly set up for work and skate/snow personal projects veteran skateboard cinematographer Jason Hernandez(if you have not seen his work pick up some of the Transworld Skateboard vids for proof of awesomeness oops can’t forget John Holland so double the awesomeness) and his dad Carlos have a great set up called EazyDolly. For the spec breakdown on the page it looks like it will be in 2 models one coming in on 23 in wide 12′ track and the other on 28 1/2 . The prices are great as well $460.00 will get you EazyDolly with 12′ track , $545.00 will get you the same but with the camera base and add $80.00 for each additional 4′ of track.I am pretty certain Jason made the little demo video on the TWS site as well for EazyDolly check it HERE.   

 redcentre @ fxguide.fxguide already has a list of why it is a daily stop for me and alot of others but now you have another reason to click the link above and check out a new podcast series geared toward all things Red . redcentre is lead by Mike Seymour and Jason Wingrove who explore all options for working with Red cameras and all the people, equipment,accessories and workflows involved while working(playing) with Red . One of the recent episodes #4 is very interesting besides the great talking points between Jason and Mike they had on a good friend and uber tech Graeme Nattress mainly known for his great plug-ins for FCP,Motion and Color @Nattress.com.I have a little write up planned for Graeme’s plug-ins coming but more on that later.Here are the show notes for ep#4 EP 4 Show notes This is a must have in your podcast line up if you are at all interested in Red and all its goodies. Check out fxguidetv while you are there another huge resource along with FXPHD  FXPHD.COM. Graeme puts the sometimes very technical aspects of Red ,the imager and how linear and log info are managed.This can put to bed some misinformation that may have been passed by others so i suggest for your homework today download ep4 and subscribe to all fxguide related podcasts.