Postworld

Trendspotting

The recently concluded NAB Convention was, as always, interesting at the very least. Like most NAB’s, this one saw new products, updates of existing products, a lot of flash, some new faces, and a lot of old familiar ones. One can go to NAB and other trade shows and look at products, both existing and future, talk to manufacturers, form some opinions, and think about what products best suit their needs. And while that’s valuable, I prefer to look for trends, not specifics.  continue reading…

Fearless Forecast 2012: Part 2

So, continuing along with this year’s Fearless Forecast, let’s look at the 4 major categories I spelled out in part 1. continue reading…

Better Late Than Never: Fearless Forecast 2012 Pt 1, A Look Back

Well, first I have to cop to being a bad boy and remaining absent from the blog for far too long. Haven’t really had a lot to say that I haven’t already said in various posts in various places, but I didn’t mean to stay away quite this long. And that said, the first order of business in these forecasts is to examine how I did last time. And as always, I got a few things right, a number of things wrong, and a number of things that were so far off the mark it’s not even funny. continue reading…

Understanding Log Grading

In the last post, we discussed what log is and why it’s used in digital cinematography cameras. Now we’re going to look at exactly how it’s implemented and what you should know about how to deal with log coded images. continue reading…

What Log Is…….And Isn’t

With the rapid success of the Arri Alexa, the continuing evolution of Red (specifically its deployment of the RedlogFilm gamma curve), and the use of log curves in things like the Sony F3 and Technicolor’s Cinestyle curves for Canon DSLR’s, I thought it might be a good time to talk about exactly what log is and is not, specifically in the context of digital images.

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Pilot Season – A Survival Guide

With the 2011 pilot season now completed (network pickup and schedule announcements will happen this week), it seems a fitting time to talk a bit about television pilot season, how it works, how it doesn’t work, how things have changed in the last few years, and how those of us who are involved get through it.

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All About ACES

There has been a good deal of talk about the IIF/ACES system, but there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding as to exactly what it is. A lot of the early talk centered around the proposed file format to contain ACES information, but the file format is only a very small part of what the system is intended to be, and one of the least significant.

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Fearless Forecast v2.0 – 2011 Edition, Part 2

In Part 1 of this year’s forecast, we looked at cameras and production trends. In Part 2, we’ll concentrate on post production, distribution, and technology.

In 2010, the appearance of Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve on the Mac at an unheard of price point was probably the single most significant event in a year that also saw Autodesk release a Mac based version of their Smoke finishing software at a very attractive price point. In some ways, both releases were attempts by their manufacturers to determine exactly where the market sweet spot was going to be for the customer base they were attempting to create and attract. In Blackmagic’s case, they clearly felt that the growing popularity of Red, and perhaps to a lesser degree the Canon DSLR’s as video cameras, was potentially opening up something of a mass market for a category of software that had previously only appealed to the professional end of the post production market. By almost giving the software away (in the professional world, $1000 for a program that formerly cost 100 times that is essentially giving it away), they were attempting to corner a market that they had no proof actually existed. To date, I think the results of that gamble have been mixed. continue reading…

Fearless Forecast v2.0 – 2011 Edition, Part 1

In doing another Fearless Forecast for the coming year, I re-read my previous forecast (posted exactly a year ago) just to see how I did. In a nutshell, not bad. Here are some things I predicted and how they actually turned out:

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Grading The Feedback

From the reaction to the two part “Grading The Graders” series, it was a topic that needed to be covered. The differences between the professional systems are not always clear, which is the reason I wrote the articles in the first place. I did want to present the systems in a quasi-comparative way, in which I wasn’t really trying to point out how each has changed over the years as much as I was trying to point out the specific strengths and weaknesses of each in relation to the others. However, I got some very valuable feedback, so I thought I’d address it here rather than in private emails to each of the respondents.

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