For anyone involved in capturing images, NAB 2012 turned out to be all about 4K and more. David Leitner said it was one of the most disruptive and revolutionary NAB shows in over ten years.

So where do we go from here? In the coming year expect to see a few more important, large sensor camera introductions. But then the rest of the production process has to respond, so I think we’ll see a shift to post solutions that are able to handle the much larger data streams produced by these devices.

So get ready for 4K RAW ready Macs and PCs, 4K monitors and more.

While some claim that the Mac Pro workstation is dead (check out Larry Jordan’s comments at around 32:15 on this video from MacBreak Weekly 295), I’m willing to go in the opposite direction. I predict that Apple will release a new big box with all the capabilities to handle 4K with a couple of Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connectors, two PCI slots as well as something very big in graphics.

Just a thought…

Later.

Mark Forman
Mark Forman Productions
http://screeningroom.com

The Past Week in Review: posted on September 14, 2011

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we check out new technologies that could topple leading companies, consider if New York production incentives are fair, and bid farewell to two pioneering filmmakers.

Sony’s F65 CineAlta

Sony Kills Arri & Red?

One reviewer on the EOSHD site wonders if Sony “just killed the (Arri) Alexa?” with its announcement at the IBC last week that the new Sony F65 CineAlta will deliver with a list price of $65,000. While that question brushes aside the great popularity of Arri’s digital camera system, it’s not a fatuous remark. Sony has instantly reshaped the high-end of digital cinematography via this relatively low-ball pricing strategy.

The successor to the Sony’s CineAlta F35–which cost in the vicinity of $250,000 on up–the F65 bests it in many areas, including its ability to record 16bit RAW from an 20MP 8K sensor and a claimed higher-than-film dynamic range of 14 stops. The F65 offers true 4K resolution too–not available on the $50,000 Arri Alexa. Meanwhile the “4K” $55,000 Red EPIC isn’t a full 4K camera since it lacks the F65 imager’s dedicated green photo sites (pixels).

Meanwhile, Andy Shipsides over at the AbelCine blog notes that not only will a rotary shutter version of the F65 be available (this removes the potential jello effect of the CMOS imager) but that the company will be selling a discounted bundle of the camera and its support system until the end of the year.

Wim Wenders used Iridas’ 3D technology to do post on his tribute to Pina Bausch. Photo credit: Laurent Philippe

Adobe Ups the Ante

You can’t say Adobe isn’t serious about taking its NLE Premiere Pro to expanded markets. Would it be to capitalize on the decidedly mixed response to Apple’s Final Cut Pro X? Yup. To many users, Apple turned away from the pro market with this completely reworked NLE.

At the IBC convention Adobe said that demand for professional video creation tools helped its creative suite package to grow 22-percent year-over-year. Growth on the Mac platform meanwhile grew 45-percent over the past year, “in part fueled by the large number of Apple Final Cut Pro customers switching to Adobe Premiere Pro.”

At the Amsterdam convention Adobe backed up this news when it announced the purchase of the IP assets of Iridas. The Munich-based company has been a well-respected name in digital color grading tools over the past decade. Iridas also developed tools for stereoscopic post as well as HDR video.

Enhanced color grading, says Adobe, is a “top requested feature by our Production Premium customers” and that’s where the technology will be appearing, probably by NAB 2012 if the company keeps to its regular series of Creative Suite upgrades. This blog post by Peter Salvia gives a good sense of what the pro world is thinking about this move by Adobe. Not too much guessing to Salvia’s feelings: his blog is titled adobe + iridas = fcp dead.

I’m also including comments that Iridas founder Lin Sebastian Kayser sent out in a letter after Adobe’s IBC announcement. I think it gives a good sense of how exciting this development is for Kayser, an innovator who stuck with his concept when few thought he could take on heavyweights in the color grading industry, the team at Adobe and for future Premier Pro users:

Over the years, many companies have offered to acquire IRIDAS and we always said no; successful acquisitions are a challenge to execute, so when Adobe approached us I thought “We are doing fine, we have a plan, why should we be interested?” But there are a couple of things that are different about Adobe as a company.
First of all, Adobe is a company that has indeed successfully integrated products from many companies it bought ≠ products like After Effects are central to their leadership. Also Adobe is a true engineering company not only investing massively in pure research, but also bringing it to market ≠ Premiere’s Mercury Playback Engine and After Effects Warp Stabilizer being only two examples. Many recent research results in HDR or new camera concepts coming from Adobe research truly impressed our team.
We also see a convergence of trends, as RAW High Dynamic Range image capture comes to the broader market the need for tools such as those IRIDAS developed is exploding; but our company was sized to service a specialist market.

After many discussions we realized that bringing IRIDAS technologies into Adobe was the correct path forward for both companies.
Adobe has hired both our engineering and our support teams. Patrick Palmer and I will also be joining to ensure success.
There are a number of changes that will come with the move, so we have put up some information on www.iridas.com to keep you informed.

Patrick and I both look forward to exciting products that combine both IRIDAS and Adobe technologies to meet the challenges of the future.

All the best,
Lin Sebastian Kayser
Director Engineering, Adobe
Founder of IRIDAS

Scorsese releases his 3D version of Brian Selznick’s graphic novel ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ later this year.

Will Better 3D Save the Studios?

Dave Kehr in the Times notes that the future of 3D movies remains uncertain, as audiences are not flocking to 3D movies like they did previously. But unlike the feared replay of the death of 3D that went down in the 1950s, directors are better adapting to shooting with that extra dimension because of improved technology such as the Cameron-Pace Fusion 3D camera system.

Kehr also notes that 3D may not fade this time as big-name directors including Scorsese and Spielberg will soon release films employing the technology. Meanwhile major TV manufacturers including Samsung, Sony and Panasonic are pushing the technology by building it into their high-end units by default.

However, nothing much seems to be stopping the slide in North American movie attendance over the summer, according to an article by Brooks Barnes in the Times. Films led by A-list stars flopped again and neither the Smurfs or Harry Potter were enough to push projected domestic box-office revenue beyond 1-percent of last year’s total according to Hollywood.com’s stats. Overall, sales were projected to lag 4 percent for the year.

Only solid sales from foreign box offices made the current season less than a debacle. As Barnes has it, “Hollywood has now experienced four consecutive summers of eroding attendance, a cause for alarm for both studios and the publicly traded theater chains.”

DSLRs Go Anamorphic

Ever consider shooting anamorphically with your DSLR? Andrew Reid, who runs the website EOSHD.com, thinks you should. Reid calls his e-book a “comprehensive cookbook for achieving a epic anamorphic look to your DSLR movies.”

This 2nd edition of Reid’s $20 downloadable book includes information on shooting 4K (3840 x 1080p) anamorphic DSLR footage and a comprehensive anamorphic lens buyer’s guide based on “real hands-on experience and testing”. The author claims the information is applicable to DSLRs from all the major players as well as video cameras such as the Sony FS100 and Panasonic AF100.

Selling Film, Not Souls

Film Courage is the oddly named website out of LA that features “film interviews that inspire”. This weekly mix of filmmakers and producers–you can hear it live on LA Talk Radio–takes you through the trials and travails of creatives as they produce and distribute production their work.

What may be most interesting for anyone hoping to make their own independent work is a recent show featuring Jon Reiss, Sheri Candler and Jeffrey Winter from The Film Collaborative, a website of a nonprofit group that’s “committed to distribution education and facilitation of independent film”.

The trio are on Film Courages’ episode number 128 to discuss their book “Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul”. As a book it probably doesn’t have very many surprises for anyone who’s been plowing in this field for any length of time–why filmmakers should be paying attention to Kevin Smith and Ed Burns and whether VOD is a viable source of income for filmmakers–but it seems like a good introduction to the services of the not-for-profit group The Film Collaborative.

Upstate Getting Left Behind?

The large recent state tax incentives passed by Albany might bring joy and some additional production to New York City, but that doesn’t ring such a happy tune upstate according to this recent article by Joseph Spector, Gannett’s Albany Bureau chief.

In his article Watchdog report: Critics rap film tax breaks which appeared on the Democrat and Chronicle website, Spector says that “upstate business groups have questioned the effectiveness of the film-tax credit”, an issue that becomes an issue since there is competition for those funds.

Spector quotes Brian McMahon, executive director of the state Economic Development Council, who said that “It’s an extraordinarily lucrative credit for the businesses, but it is benefiting primarily out-of-state companies that come into New York state, primarily New York City, for a few months, make a movie and leave.”

The amounts of the tax breaks are difficult to pin down South reporter since Empire State Development, the agency that manages the program, hasn’t disclosed the amount of “taxpayer-funded breaks that each project has gotten” even after Gannett says that it “filed a Freedom of Information request in May seeking those details.”

Governor Cuomo as said upstate business development would be a key effort of his administration, but the article notes that tax breaks for beleaguered businesses from the state’s Empire Zone program–revamped in 2010–provides only $50 million in new money each year compared with the $420 million annually for the film program.

You can read the rest of Spector’s investigative report here.

Andy Lampert (left) in a post-screening talk with Joel Schlemowitz at UnionDocs.

Take Me to the Cinemateque

We go to the Times again for a Dennis Lim article on Choosing Cinematheque Over Cineplex. Lim is a good example of a committed writer who straddles the worlds of the “engaged, site-specific programming” of alternative spaces to the studio distribution scene. He urges us to trace the history of the movies by noting how alternative cinemas evolved, “to consider, in other words, how an inventive approach to showing films can foster a new way of understanding them.”

The reporter gives a quick overview of some of the rich history of alternative cinema spaces in the city while touting the continued excitement engendered at venues such as Light Industry and UnionDocs.

An image from Jordan Belson’s Allures
Pioneers Passing

Two filmmakers who passed away recently embodied the DIY style of independent filmmaking key to making Indie cinema in the 60s, 70s, and beyond. The earlier range–let’s say up to the mid 70s–was the golden age of American underground cinema in which both played key roles.

George Kuchar worked in 8mm and 16mm with his twin brother Mike to put the Bronx on the map as a hotbed of camp cinema. Acknowledged by John Waters and David Lynch among others, the two came up with intriguingly off-kilter films such as Moshulu Holiday, I Was a Teenage Rumpot, and Hold Me While I’m Naked. As John Waters wrote in the introduction to the Kuchars’ memoirs “Reflections in a Cinematic Cesspool”, “The Kuchar brothers gave me the self confidence to believe in my own tawdry vision.”

George passed away at 69 in San Francisco, where he taught at the Art Institute. Here’s a recent appreciation of George’s work. You can read his obit here.

The much more abstract work of Jordan Belson will be remembered for his development of a cinema based on hypnotic use of light color and movement. Belson, who also lived in San Francisco, was 85 at his death. Belson’s work was celebrated on the site Center for Visual Music. You can read his obit here.

There’s another caveat: You can only buy the software via Apple’s phone sales line (800-MY-APPLE)–not its online or retail stores. Don’t expect a discount either. Just as before the advent of FCP X, Final Cut Studio 3 (which includes Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, DVD Studio Pro 4, Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5) will be sold for its full $999 price. Educational pricing knocks $100 off that tab.

Although Apple has said it is simply clearing stock, some see the announcement as a sign that the company is finally responding to the extensive criticism from many in the professional world. Final Cut Pro X, introduced this past June, took a radical turn that upended many carefully crafted post workflows while proving incompatible with previous versions of the app.

However, according to posts on The Loop and CNET, an Apple spokesperson claimed that that the software was still retired and that the company has made similar efforts with other software products at the end of their product cycle.

If this is a typical way that Apple sells such defunct software, then the blog site AppleInsider came up with some curious responses by company representatives–internal disagreement over issues such as the availability of educational discounts and even if the software really was available for sale in the first place. While Apple seems at first the only one to sell the earlier version, web seller site Videoguys noted that they did have copies of Final Cut Studio to sell, although it was in limited Supply.

With the announcement just this past week that Steve Jobs was relinquishing the CEO position, it’s tempting to think that the new regime headed by Tim Cook was choosing to be more responsive to the considerable unhappiness voiced by the FCP community these past few months. In reality, that’s probably just wishful thinking. Pro editing can’t rate all that highly in Apple’s future plans.

The numbers of people who see themselves as professional editors is relatively minute compared to the numbers who buy MacBooks, iPads, and iPhones. (The Labor Department recently provided figures that noted that some 25,000 folks across the nation defined themselves as making their money principally through editing.)

With Jobs’ influence now set to decline as the guiding light behind the Cupertino-based company, some are instead wondering whether there is even a strong place for the creative arts at the Apple anymore. In his blog posting on Wired, reporter Tim Carmody starts by asking “Without Jobs as CEO, Who Speaks for the Arts at Apple?” Carmody declares Apple as a unique mix “built on the synthesis of technology and the liberal arts” that Jobs insisted on.

The reporter goes further, calling this time of CEO changeover “an awkward place for a technology company with deep roots in media to find itself.” Carmody thinks that Apple has slipped in its support for video professionals, book readers, or just those who want to use a computer to watch TV in the living room. His bleak assessment is that Apples’ “strategies for media, education and the creative industries — its ticket back to relevance after 1997 — have largely stagnated.”

Meanwhile, the NLE’s two traditional competitors–Adobe and Avid–continue to push for as many of those disconcerted FCP users as they can scoop up.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Future Media Concepts (FMC) one of the nation’s largest digital media training companies, announced that it has “teamed up with Adobe to offer training and discussion events for users of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium software.” FMC will be holding free user group events in six U.S. locations that will include presentations and Q&A sessions with an Adobe-certified instructor.

It’s not too hard to see Adobe’s strategy here: push hard to show that their NLE software can take the place of FCP with a familiar look and feel while working seamlessly with the rest of the post ecosystem.

“The Adobe Premiere Pro user group events with FMC help our customers stay ahead of the learning curve — whether they are current Adobe Premiere Pro users, or they’re moving over from another non-linear editor,” Anita Engelman, senior marketing manager for Premiere Pro at Adobe, said in a press statement.

This first set of meetings will address the latest version changes, hardware, plug-ins, techniques, and more. In time–each month for the remainder of the year–the events will feature guest lecturers in many other areas of expertise.

The Adobe Premiere Pro user groups will be held throughout the U.S. in Boston, Chicago, New York, Orlando, Fla., Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. For more information, to register for the Premiere Pro user groups, and to view the current roster of the user group events to be held at FMC, visit www.fmctraining.com.

Even though Avid reported a loss this past quarter, that number came in as less than a year ago. Many think that the Tewksbury, Massachusetts-based company is well positioned to keep and strengthen its hold on the upper reaches of the editing world. Company CEO Gary Greenfield was recently interviewed on CNBC as to technology in general and the company’s prospects in particular.

According to MacRumors, both Adobe and Avid are continuing their programs of heavily discounting versions of their suites and NLE appls through the end of September.

The Past Week(s) in Review: For August 22 and August 29, 2011

This edition of TPWR covers the past two weeks of news.

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we share the good news about local production, learn about a filter that can save you from DSLR headaches, and find out that an older, established filmmaker is more experimental than ever.

Mayor Bloomberg on the set of Pan Am with Media & Entertainment Commissioner Oliver and other officials. Photo credit: The Mayor’s Office.

Upbeat about Production

More good news on the growing number of prime time TV shows filming throughout the five boroughs. According to a recent press conference held by Mayor Bloomberg, we have some 23 shows now shooting regularly; eight of them were selected from 20 pilots shot in the city earlier this year.

Bloomberg made the announcement from the Steiner Studios stages of Sony Pictures Television’s “Pan Am”, set to debut on ABC this fall. Steiner, based in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, is now expanding to double its size. It is already the largest soundstage production facility on the East Coast, with the expansion adding some 2000 jobs to the 2200 jobs at throughout the Yard.

In a release, Steiner Studios Chairman Douglas C. Steiner thanked the Bloomberg administration for its continued support of the entertainment industry. “This onslaught of film and television production is a direct result of the mayor and other elected officials working together to make New York City competitive and hassle-free,” he said. This was taken from an article in The Hollywood Reporter, which you can read here.

Variety credits recently enacted long-term tax incentives granted by the state. An improvement over the previous year-by-year incentive extensions, the five year term offers a more stable environment for the studios for budgeting and other planning. The Variety article says that business boosters, including local studio heads, have learned to be “savvy in lobbying for production incentives at the state capital.”

QR Talk

Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, won the director the fest’s Directing Award. Major prize talk continues to build for Durkin as well as actors Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes well in advance of the film’s October 21st release. But there also seems to be a good bit of interest in Fox Searchlight’s use of QR (quick response) codes on early posters to trigger the trailers.

The gimmick here is that the previews aren’t available any other way online–you really do have to use your smartphone to scan the QR codes on posters you might find on the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Los Angeles–to get to these specific trailers. Entertainment Weekly’s Inside Movies claims to have had the scoop on the first use of these smart-phone-only posters.

Photo credit: MGM
Kubrick Invents the iPad, Personal TV Follows

Seems that it’s not the monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that garners interest these days but the “iPad like” TV notepads two of the astronauts on the Jupiter probe use. Samsung indeed cites these objects in the movie–they’re the size of a notepad and feature a functional video screen–as an example of prior art in its court case against Apple, who claims the Korean manufacturer has infringed its patented iPad design. You can read further details on Foss Patent’s blog here.

Following the lead of personal media, John Clancy, CEO at Azuki Systems, writes on Mashable that the future TV is “all about personalization.” We all knew that, and Clancy’s company makes platforms for mobile phones enabling cable companies and others to offer a good video experience on the go.

The basic argument isn’t new either: Since viewers no longer make plans to sit down and view specific content on a regular basis–we all want content whenever and wherever we happen to be–cable companies and channels like HBO want to offer video service alternatives that keeps up with their viewer’s habits.

While content creators and service providers are “making a mad dash to get screen time on mobile and other connected devices”, these new delivery options are stumbling because experience is not seamless when using the various devices. Azuki, of course, provides the one item Clancy says is lacking–the “key ingredient for success — personalization.” Metadata behind the video is used to split longer shows into smaller chunks so that viewers can catch clips on the go. Worth a read if just to learn how much control can be exerted over your distributed video.

Photo credit: metaio
Siggraph Notes, AR, & ARRI

Over at Studio Daily, editor Beth Marchant offers a quick take on SIGGRAPH 2011. Top tech presentations at the show in Vancouver, says Marchant, included Nvidia’s Project Maximus (a graphics technology that allows users to access and scale different parts of the GPU as needed) and Amazon’s “Cluster GPU Instance for its EC2″ –this service allows smaller facilities to rent processing power to render scenes. Meanwhile, BlackSky Computing ups the ante on cloud computing schemes like Amazon’s EC2 cloud by claiming it isn’t very effective beyond the capability of working with short sequences. BlackSky may enter the market for high-performance processing and rendering with its own competing service.

Augmented reality may offer a whole new way to use smartphones, or it could just be a gimmick for gamers. With that conclusion still up for grabs, you might take a look at an intriguing video “Roadmap of AR and the Vision of an Augmented City” to get a better idea of what the latest developments offer. Created by the Media Processing Division of chipmaker ARM and the R&D department of German-based AR company metaio, the video shows how more powerful smartphones capable of realtime 3D motion tracking will provide real-time contextual, digital information overlaying urban scenes.

You have to wonder why they haven’t offered this already since the Munich-based company has been around for much of the history of cinema, but ARRI CSC has launched its own Expendables Online Shop. Found at arricscstore.com, the store offers all the items you’ll need for handling camera, lighting, and grip work.

Photo credit: Kevin Brown
Wormholes, CDN Woes, & Bird Talk

In an area within MIT’s student cafeteria, you can find a Plexiglas dome that sits over a video screen. You can find the exact similar setup in Stanford University’s cafeteria. What is it? First, consider that there is an always on, high-speed link between the two conversation areas. (The plexi dome acts as a chamber to funnel audio while not disturbing others nearby.)

Meant to make realtime long-distance interactions casual and arbitrary, the designers of the system act all science-fictioney by calling the link a wormhole. See if it heralds the future of long distance interactive communication by reading the the rest of the article on the Boston Globe’s site.

Over on the GigaOM site, reporter Stacey Higginbotham offers us an inside look at content delivery specialist Akamai and the “scary future of streaming video.” Seems that within two to five years, the throughput requirement for certain single video events will reach some 50 to 100 terabits per second.

That is about the equivalent bandwidth of what it takes to distribute a TV quality stream to a large prime time audience today. Problem is that this is an “order of magnitude” beyond the largest online video events held today, according to Higginbotham, and that’s without adding all of bells & whistles of interactivity, which many claim we desperately want. See what you think by reading the article here.

The LA Times interviews Pixar’s Brad Bird for an article entitled “Hollywood isn’t Brave Enough to Copy Pixar’s Process”. While Pixar has become “the gold standard among popcorn films”, Bird opines, Hollywood studios are doing everything to copy the famed animation studio except actually taking the time and effort to really, truly develop a good story first. A good storyline is a central tenet of the vaunted Pixar process. Read more about Bird’s thoughts on current trends in animation by clicking here.

Photo credit: Mosaic Engineering
DSLR’s Savior, Flash & Jobs

In short review/article on his site, DSLR enthusiast Philip Bloom claims a new anti-aliasing and moire filter from Mosaic Engineering solves the two most serious problems–aliasing and moire generation–you will face when shooting with Canon’s 5DmkII. It seems the filter removes the interference patterns on details that are generated by the camera’s line skipping. Is this a simple cure for what Bloom calls the “bane of shooting with DSLRs and the single biggest problem”? Read it here and decide.

Fast and efficient Flash memory rules in the world of consumer computing (i.e. iPads, smartphones, digital cameras). Except in limited cases, the price of solid-state storage has remained too high to allow it to move into the world of large-scale computing like data centers. Now, Pure Storage, a new start up, says that it can use consumer level flash storage along with its software to pull the price of Flash storage down to less than that of hard drives. That’s a mighty achievement if true. Read more here in Steve Lohr’s article in the Times’ Bits blog.

There have been plenty of testimonials to Steve Jobs on his resignation from Apple. At least read one of them from someone who has something to do with our industry: Here’s a note from George Lucas, who sold Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division to Jobs, a sale which famously created Pixar Animation Studios. But of course that only came after a number of years of development and many millions invested in the new operation. Read more of Nick Wingfield’s article in the reporter’s Wall Street Journal blog by clicking here.

Elle Fanning & Coppola on the set of ‘Twixt’
Still Going Strong

Francis Ford Coppola brought Val Kilmer and the composer of his latest film Twixt to the recent Comic Con convention for a talk. What made that panel more than just the usual dog and pony, says reporter Jason Adams on JoBlo.com, is that this original horror tale-said to be inspired by one of Coppola’s own dreams–will be presented as a live performance. That’s right–Coppola claims to be returning to the early days of cinema when things weren’t so locked down to present some of the “magic and spontaneity of live performance art”.

Coppola, working with electronic musician and soundtrack composer Dan Deacon will “change the experience to suit the audience” in real time. Read more about the ever experimenting FFC and his new idea for presentation by clicking here. Twixt premieres at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

As an aside: If you would be curious to see how an earlier, eager Coppola marked up a page from “The Godfather”–and a heavily marked up page it is with “Hit hard and bloody!!” among the exhortations he made to himself–then click here.

Raul Ruiz
Memories of a Cine Magician

Raul Ruiz, the little heralded filmmaker (at least in the U.S.), passed away recently. (If you haven’t had a chance to see one of his many intriguing works, check out his transfixing Mysteries of Lisbon, which is still showing at Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center.)

Producer James Schamus posted a touching remembrance on Scott Macauley’s IndieWIRE blog, calling the director/author “one of the truly great, idiosyncratic and visionary voices of world cinema.” Both Schamus and Macauley—along with a raft of downtown notables of the time including Christine Vachon, Michael Kirby, John Zorn, Kathy Acker, and Jim Jarmusch—worked or acted in Ruiz’s 1987 film The Golden Boat, a goof on the New York art scene at the time.

This bit from AP’s obit sums up his career neatly: “A favorite of cinephiles, Ruiz rebelled against the conventions of moviemaking in an extensive, varied body of work that didn’t result in a widely-known masterpiece, but left behind a vast, labyrinthine collection of experiments, curiosities and innovations.”

The Past Week in Review: For August 9, 2011

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we hear about a web mogul in the making, a gray lady learning new tricks, and why fewer people are tuning in and paying the cablers.

Lady Mogul & Lady Gray

In his article Felicia Day: Mogul In The Making, Forbes’s David Ewalt profiles the TV actress and praises her innovative work in creating small niche web videos that are both artistically satisfying for her and actually make money. Facing consistent typecasting by TV casting agents, Day struck out on her own. In 2007 she created the first few episodes of The Guild and released them free on the ‘net. She filed enough fans to support a full season of shows. By the second season production costs of over $10,000 per episode were covered by sponsorships from Sprint and Microsoft.

This was followed up by Dragon Age Redemption, a further gloss on videogame obsessed youth. Shot earlier this year, it features Tallis, an “Elven assassin” played by Day, who also co-produces. This yet to be released web series moves well towards more established pro realms in its use of sets, props, and costumes, with folks with rather impressive credentials involved including Independence Day associate producer Peter Winther as director and John Bartley (Lost) as cinematographer.

You can read Ewalt’s article by clicking here.

You can watch Day’s The Guild series here. Since it resembles a more standard sitcom, its budget doesn’t show as much as might her upcoming low budget fantasy film. Microsoft sponsors it on Xbox Live, so money and recognition are coming Day’s way. Although Dragon Age Redemption was originally scheduled to debut this summer, after Day spoke to reporters at the San Diego Comic-Con fan chatter on the web now points to a fall release.

Developments in the newspaper world are a bit further afield from our usual coverage. But since this involves media heavyweight and city icon the New York Times, I thought the Gray Lady’s web moves would be of interest.

This past week the Times introduced Beta620, a public site for its experimental projects. A bit reminiscent of Google labs in its approach, it offers consumers a way to test new Times’ Web apps that may or may not be used as a standard part of the main site.

Consumers can try out some seven different projects currently including Longitude, which locates the day’s Times articles on an interactive Google map. Here’s an article on AdAge that goes into some of the different aspects of the new project, which might finally provide the old gray lady with some decent Internet chops.

AR, Apple & Adobe

If you have ever used an augmented reality app on your smart phone, you know how intriguing the idea of combining the phone’s video camera with a data overlay can be. You might also be aware of the downside to current technology—instead of actually recognizing a scene’s elements, today’s phones actually use either a QR code that the camera can lock on to or rough sensors and not very detailed GPS info to enable that useful combination of the virtual and the real that’s the promise of AR. The result is much less precise than the hype has lead us to believe.

Now, however, Layar—the largest purveyor of mobile augmented reality platforms—has released Layar Vision. The new app better employs machine vision techniques, recognizing real world objects and layering over digital content that the user has uploaded to the company’s servers. More here.

Apple, as we’ve come to know over the years, likes to control as much of its ecosystem as possible. Not relying on the kindness of strangers is one reason why they bought two ARM chipmakers over the past three years, with the technology turning up in iPods, iPhones and iPads.

Now, Apple is said to be well on the way to merging its two operating systems—the mobile world of iOS and the traditional Mac OS X–with a new custom A6 ARM chip design. According to this Appleinsider article, you can expect to see it in product by some point in 2012. Peter Misek of Wall Street analyst firm Jefferies & Co. speculates that Apple will turn out a new MacBook Air, iPad, and iPhone all running on the yet to release quad-core A6 chip. While pro-level gear like the Mac Pro desktop and MacBook Pro laptop will still use more potent Intel CPUs for now, the analyst posits that by 2016 all of these products, along with the iPad and iPhone, will be running on a single yet-to-be-designed ARM-type chipset.

If you’ve been following the ongoing battle between Apple and Adobe regarding the place of Flash on Apple’s iOS, you know that HTML 5 is the Cupertino company’s preferred app for web animation.

Of course Adobe is too savvy a company to let this simmering dispute to endanger its position as toolmaker to the creative world. This past week Adobe launched Adobe Edge, a tool to allow creators to design animated web content using a variety of standards that Apple does approve of, including HTML 5, CSS, and JavaScript. The software will coexist with Adobe Flash, and not replace it, at least initially. Edge seems especially important if Adobe expects to be a player in mobile, since Apples’ devices will probably never run Flash natively.

Click here to read Sarah Perez’s article on ReadWriteWeb.

New Cellphone Tricks

Up against fierce competition in the cellphone market from Apple and Android-based phones, Nokia continues to try lots of things to reinvent itself.

It doesn’t hurt to pair with a leading animation house either, and that’s what they did in this video. Working with UK-based Aardman Animations, Nokia charged them to create the “world’s largest stop-motion animation made with phones” which is some kind of record to shoot for, I suppose.

Shot on a beach in Wales via three Nokia N8 cellphones rigged up to a crane, video producer Sandrine Ceurstemont used ever-changing life-sized sand drawings covering some 11,000 square feet to do this simple silent narrative. Check it out on the New Scientist site here.

For those who shoot with a Canon EOS series DSLR, a new app allows you to control it via a compatible Android device over USB. There are other specifics as to which version of the phone or a Honeycomb tablet you need to pull this off at this site.

Fewer Golden Eggs

As reported by All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka and others, Time Warner Cable has a porn problem—it isn’t selling enough of the stuff these days.

Seems that even though cable companies like TWC and Comcast claim that web video (e.g. Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV) isn’t cutting into their business, their video-on-demand portion had dropped substantially over the last quarter. Reporter Kafka asked TWC CEO Glenn Britt to explain the drop; Britt revealed that there were many fewer viewers paying $10 or so for a VOD softcore video as they were now checking out XXX-rated video on the web for free. That final step to XXX rated material is something the cablers won’t touch.

The Editors Guild magazine has posted my article on using databases for tracking edits during postproduction. Mainly centering around the use of FileMaker’s FileMaker Pro—including the newish FileMaker Go app for iPhones and iPads—I also offer a bit of history via speaking with David Leitner and his use of an early Mac database Double Helix. David used that innovative database extensively for production on Al Reinert’s feature documentary For All Mankind.

You can link to the article here.

While you won’t find the music to this Dickson Experimental Sound Film (circa 1894) on the new National Jukebox site, you can still pick among some 10,000 recordings for free.

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This look at the past week’s news includes a look at trends in 3D production, tips on what goes into making a successful start-up, and the debut of a national jukebox service.

Technicolor’s DSLR Love, Zacuto’s Rig

This past week I visited with Domenic Rom, senior vice president of Technicolor Creative Services at the company’s Leroy Street offices. Domenic wanted to discuss new products Technicolor released at the NAB last month. With him was Bob Herman, Technicolor’s PR manager, in from the West Coast.

I’ll write about these new services in an upcoming article. The new services include Technicolor’s CineStyle, which is become an instant hit. No surprise, as it offers the ability to integrate the output of Canon’s DSLR cameras into Technicolor’s full DI workflow.

But if you do want to keep up with what’s happening with DSLRs for video production, Philip Bloom’s site regularly offers up good reviews and opinion pieces about the latest production gear and software.

In a recent posting, London-based Bloom reviews the Zacuto Scorpion Rig. Zacuto, out of Chicago, moved quickly to become one of the leading gear makers for the DSLR market. Their latest high-end production rig that offers a much more usable approach for employing these small cameras within a more or less traditional film style shoot.

Sony 3D, Indie 3D, Even Small Objects Get 3D

With 3D production now becoming a serious alternative for filmmakers, educational resources that can shed some light on what actually is required to create usable 3D content becomes a clear need.

Last week I attended an evening seminar by Sony’s team from its 3D school in Culver City, California. I’m writing up that story for the editors Guild website. I’ll post a link to it here shortly for anyone wanting more info about what this free seminar offers.

Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that Hollywood directors with huge budgets can pull together the resources to do a 3D production,

However, for an indie to take on 3D production has seemed an exercise in fiction. High-end 3D gear is well beyond what most folks with meager budgets could ever consider.

But in her recent Variety article “Indies embrace cheaper 3D”, writer Karen Idelson notes that lower costs for 3D production gear and new post solutions have joined with the promise of a bigger box office to attract indie filmmakers.

Here’s one rather eye-popping example: With an average screen pulling in some $27,820 in its debut weekend, Werner Herzog’s new 3D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams (IFC) is not only making the most money of any film in his career but also came out on top of the total US box office–yes, that includes beating out Fast Five--according to website Box Office Mojo.

You can read more of Idelson’s article here.

Another type of 3D can also be important to a production–Indie or otherwise–and it too is coming down in price due to improvements in technology. The Times’ Melena Ryzik writes about MakerBot; the Brooklyn-based start-up has designed a consumer-grade, desktop-size 3D printer that uses melted plastic to build models of your designs.

The ability to easily and relatively inexpensively create 3D objects is a welcome tool. Graphics artists and those doing models for movies and commercials often need a real-world version of their creation to produce molds for final art. Meanwhile, creating your own movie props from scratch could solve production headaches. The MakerBot device was recently demo’d at a weekend Make-a-Thon which the reporter covered in an article you can find here.

The most recent iPhone and iPods have garnered kudos for their high res screens that reach 326 ppi (pixels per inch). Here’s a report of a company–Ortus Technology–which had recently developed a 4.8-inch color liquid crystal display with the pixel density of 458 ppi.

While a display like that might in itself be useful for production or post, a further interesting point is that the company now offers a similar sized screen that can deliver some 229 ppi when used in a dual-screen 3D mode. Ortus spots the development as an ideal viewfinder for use in 3D camera systems.

Cloud Services, Encoding and Video Delivery via the Web

More developments keep turning up to offer low-cost, or often free, production services that rely on cloud computing to deliver the goods.

In January, Vid.ly, a new website and service from Encoding.com, began a public beta. Users need only upload a video once; the service then transcodes it into 14 popular web and mobile formats, according to this article in VentureBeat.

Once the video has been encoded, you also get a short URL link. Once clicked on, that link automatically provides the video file that’s compatible with the device that’s just been connected.

It’s not just for those uploading cute animal videos either. If you have a number of video files, you can point to the source files stored via FTP, HTTP, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or other cloud storage services.

What’s it cost? Well, who can keep up with free (at least for now)?

VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi also writes about Zixi, a cloud video start-up that recently raised $4 million in a to fund its web video broadcasting business.

Zixi is completing the build out of the system to deliver HD video via the cloud for broadcast, enterprise and video-on-demand services. Current customers include CNN, Reuters, and CBS Sports.

While Cisco, Polycom and others already offer some form of HD video delivery via the cloud, Zixi claims it has developed methods of making the best use of available network bandwidth, as well as minimizing start-up delay.

At NAB 2011, hardware company Haivision announced it collaborated with Zixi to create its line of low-latency Makito encoder and decoder HD H.264 appliances. Haivision spots the devices as ideal for field use in breaking news (to replace pricey satellite uplinks) and connecting production facilities over low-cost and readily available Internet connections to save “thousands of dollars every month” when compared to managed-performance network services.

More on the Makito product here.

But the actual delivery of movies and other entertainment en mass over the public Internet is hitting a snag as we move further into our age of digital distribution.

A company like Netflix, of course, relies on the Internet to build its fast growing business of delivering movies and TV shows directly to viewers’ homes. But as Netflix’s CEO makes clear in the following article, anti-competitive action by ISPs via new broadband caps and other controls on video traffic might just quash all this as the ISPs fight to keep more of your money and not be tossed aside as nothing more than just the “dumb pipes” as some disparage them.

ISPs also fight the implementation of network neutrality as planned by the chairman of the FCC and Obama’s appointees. A number of members of Congress are siding with the broadband industry, and plan to limit how much control the FCC has over this new growth in network traffic. You can read more in this article from GigaOM here.

Last month, there were a number of reports that Apple was putting the final touch on its huge new data center in North Carolina that will actually be key in the company’s cloud-based video service. While this is speculative, the timing is right as Apple’s new OS Lion is said to move much of its capability to the web.

Check out this article from Business Insider for more on Apple’s purported plans.

VC News ala Scoble

Here’s a short, fun read by the nonstop blogging engine known as Robert Scoble entitled “What I learned by interviewing 23 start-ups in past few weeks”. Scoble offers up videos of his meetings with a variety of successful launches. The hot start-ups turn out photo/camera apps to those who are building apps around non-Apple iOS smartphones. These latter, according to Scoble have, for the first time, the coolest apps out there.

The National Jukebox

Yes there is such a thing, at least after the Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment got together to announce it. Now anyone can access “the largest collection of historical recordings ever made publicly available online.”

That’s large as in “more than 10-thousand”. Not bad when you consider that this is only the beginning: only music from the archives of the Victor Talking Machine Company are included, which Sony controls.

Here’s an article from the NPR website that discusses the collection.

If you want to go directly to our new National Jukebox website click here

In an earlier podcast, David Leitner had discussed some of the key technologies that he found going in to the 2011 edition of the National Association of Broadcaster’s convention, which ended last week.

In his wrap-up of the show, David considers one of the top attention draws at a very busy show—Apple’s preview of Final Cut Pro X, announced at the last minute at the annual Final Cut users’ group meet-up. The Cupertino-based company, reports Leitner, delivered a striking re-working of its very successful non-linear editor, which is said to now control around 50-percent of the total editing market. Beyond just listing some of the new capabilities, he offers up specific examples from his experience of just how the new software—which releases in June—benefits editors from newbies to pro.

David goes on to discuss how the ubiquitous appearance of solid-state drive (SSD) technology further made the case that tape is “on its way out” as a capture medium, and how a number of companies are using the compact devices to offer remarkable recording gear. Other technologies he takes note of include proliferating Super 35mm sensors, a new life for film lenses, and a discussion of what the move into choices for quality lens means for production. This section runs about 35 minutes.

David Leitner Final NAB 2011 Podcast Part 1

In the second section, David discusses LED lighting, including a significant new product from Arri Lighting, the L7 Fresnel. There are also notes on cameras at the show, including the new Arri Alexa M, which the company designed for 3D; the RED Epic, being used by Peter Jackson in shooting 3D for The Hobbit; and Panasonic’s shoulder-mounted camcorder. David goes on to discuss further aspects of 3D production, including an innovative 3D camera rig developed by a St. Petersburg-based company and recently used by famed effects designer Douglas Trumbull; small screen Nintendo 3D; business models for 3D, and more. This section runs around 15 minutes.

David Leitner Final NAB 2011 Podcast Part 2

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we have a look at some of the top news from the “world’s largest electronic media event”, including a new 3D camera company, a totally rewritten NLE and—with the upcoming Earth Day in mind—a note about a meeting where you can learn to fit recycling into your production cycle.

What Else? NAB in the News

Every year around this time a general hysteria sets in for those interested in the technological aspects of film and video production.

This past week wasn’t any different, with the unspooling of the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, accompanied by the usual round of speculation, hearsay, and tasty details from those supposedly under NDA over this or that piece of hardware or software.

Some use the attendance numbers at the show to try and descry the health of the industry. But with the total number of registered attendants essentially unchanged (up a little over 5-percent for a total of 92,708) it’s doubtful any conclusions exist beyond the knowledge that the numbers didn’t tank.

But the good news for anyone involved in production and post? The faster-better-cheaper mantra chanted at the beginning of the computer age still finds ample voice in this 2011 edition of the show.

For anyone thinking that 3D had no relevance beyond expensive features, James Cameron delivered the keynote address—along with partner and camera design wiz Jim Pace—to the mainstay audience of broadcasters that “Your business is about to go 3D”. You can read more about just how this business model makes sense (and could even be well under way in five years) in this article in Variety.

How to Remake a Popular NLE

But before talking up cameras, let’s jump into post since many thought the big news of the show was Apple’s announcement of a completely redesigned Final Cut Pro. Coming out some 10 years after the first version of the popular NLE software, the new Version X will feature a low price point of $299 when it debuts in June.

Larry Jordan, a Final Cut trainer of some note, titled his blog on the introduction of the new app “The Sound of 1,700 Jaws Dropping”. Although he obviously has a number of horses in this race, Jordan points up the new version as a “bold move” for its totally redesigned interface, full 64-bit support, and, oh hell, why not, “a rethinking of the entire concept of what it means to edit.” Read more here.

You can find a bit more of a questioning attitude—it’s there in the title ” FCP X, Game Changer or iMovie Pro?”–in this podcast from the Terence & Philip Show, an enjoyable bit of back and forth between LA and the Vegas show floor from Terence Curren and Philip Hodgetts.

You’ll find stronger critiques of the software’s relevance from Walter Biscardi on his blog. Biscardi, who also attended the Apple presentation at the annual Final Cut User Group SuperMeet event, sees the NLE apps from Avid and Adobe gaining in importance to professional editors.

For even more specific reasons why he plans to move to Avid Media Composer, read Biscardi’s updated post here.

Avid, a company valued at a tiny, tiny fraction of Apple, takes on the Cupertino crowd by offering a limited time “cross-grade” to Final Cut Pro users. Until June 17th, FCP users can pick up the $2495 Avid Media Composer software for $995. More here.

Here’s Looking at You

As D.W. Leitner mentioned in a podcast from earlier on at NAB, the spread of 35mm-sized single sensor camera systems takes creators back to the origins of still photography, where knowledge of how lens, sensor/film and the rest of the setup interacts with light holds to the details long ago worked out by the great masters of the medium.

Arri has been gaining fans for its Alexa, with a number of features and TV shows now moving to the digital camera system. At the show, the Munich-based company presented new versions of the Alexa, including the Plus, Studio, and modular M, which is pegged as ideal for 3D since the camera head can be separated from the body to allow a lighter, lower profile 3D rig. You can watch Abel Cine’s Mitch Gross find out more about the product launches in his interview with Arri’s Marc Shipman-Mueller.

Arri also has a long tradition in building quality lighting gear. Here’s a short video on their introduction of a portable LED-based L7 Fresnel that is garnering positive attention.

Another camera with fast growing interest is Sony’s recently introduced single-sensor PMW-F3. Most notable new twist: Its upcoming firmware upgrade delivers a much greater dynamic range via S-Log gamma mode. Dual Link 4:4:4 RGB video output, 3G-SDI output and more are also on tap with the $3,300 upgrade coming out in late summer/early fall.

You can find a video with extensive comparison shots with a standard XDCAM here.

Magic, Blackmagic that is, Really does make it Faster, Cheaper, Better

Blackmagic Design is a small, savvy company based in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. Each NAB the company presents products that remake, piece-by-piece, crucial parts of the postproduction infrastructure via hardware that does what the original products do (or better) but at a small fraction of the price.

At the show, you could find the HyperDeck Shuttle, for example, which offers 10 bit, 4:2:2 uncompressed SD, HD over HD-SDI or HDMI recorder for just $345. (You still need to add a solid state drive.)

For $995 Blackmagic’s UltraStudio 3D, meanwhile, allows laptop editing of SD, HD, along with 2K capture and playback. You’ll find it supports two streams of full resolution video up to 1080p HD for stereoscopic 3D workflows.

Finally, Blackmagic announced DaVinci Resolve Lite. This new reduced feature version of the DaVinci Resolve color correction software has one striking feature: it’s free. DaVinci Resolve Lite has some limits, of course. But since it’s based on the upcoming DaVinci Resolve 8, it shows what can be done on a full-featured color correction app that only goes for $995. The software runs on the latest model iMac, 17inch MacBook Pro and Mac Pro computers.

Adobe launched Version 5.5 of its Creative Suite collection of apps at the show. Productions might like one new approach: you will be able to lease access to the software on a month-by-month basis.

We’ll be covering a local New York producer/director’s use of the software in an upcoming issue, so stay tuned.

With so many intriguing new products at the show, I’ll simply point you to a couple of reliable sites that offer quick round-up video postings that you can range through to find what’s most interesting.

Filmmaker IQ offers some useful in-depth interviews in its Video Roundup.

The FreshDV team, meanwhile, produced 32 videos from the NAB tradeshow floor with over 5 hours of content.

Make your Production fit for Earth Day and Beyond

On Saturday evening, April 30th, prop and set-dressing boutique Film Biz Recycling will hold a free workshop in environmental management for film and television production. The Brooklyn-based not-for-profit will offer a “practical workshop and how-to” intended to expand the talent pool, provide upper and middle management with useable tools and increase awareness of the impending changes and options in the film industry, among other key issues.

Spaces are limited and an RSVP is required. Click here to RSVP.

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week, just so you don’t have to.

We take a look at a break-through camcorder, Apple on a roll, and a local director who learned to say no after a big payday.

I know the plaint: another week, another breakthrough camcorder. To name just two of the more recent faves, you might choose the Panasonic AG-AF100 or RED EPIC M8. It’s just that kind of year. So hold on. In less than a month, much more is coming from the NAB show. Lucky you, we’ll have some sharp reports from the show floor, so keep tuning in.

In any case, Sony’s NXCAM Super35 FS100 is drawing raves for all the right reasons. For starters, the squat, single sensor camcorder will price under $7000. You might consider its large sensor, which yields a quality, low-noise image in low light conditions. Meanwhile its Hasselblad-like form factor means it fits into tight spaces as well as an HDSLR—which really seem like a target–so watch out Canon.

DP and author Jon Fauer praises “the refreshingly well-executed design and thoughtful features.”

A Brit, Den from F-Stop Academy, got a pre-production model in enough time to do this even keeled presentation while pulling off a music video of a fetching new London singer.

Another Brit, Nigel Cooper, offers a very thorough first look here, and delivers some of the first slams on “cheap feeling” plastic parts and frustrating ergonomics. In part an answer to that, remember that while today’s digital production technology delivers much more for much less, top manufacturers with expensive R&D and huge factories see no other solution than to cripple their lower priced gear in order to protect the margins on their pricier gear. That’s one reason a small upstart like Red can cause so much turmoil in the industry: the owner’s deep pockets and singular vision have upended the status quo quite thoroughly.

Finally, visit Sony’s website for the details.

One more chance for gear geeks to swoon this week comes via an unboxing of the new DaVinci Resolve control surface. If you don’t know, taking gear out of a newly delivered box is now an expected part of such swoons, with cardboard box by cardboard box lovingly unpacked and thoroughly documented.

But this is more than the usual geek love of gadgets, as the product has real significance. New color correction software and hardware continues to up-end facilities ensconced in high-end markets, much like the arrival of NLEs hollowed out the mid-range, do-it-all facility. The new gear delivers unquestionably quality results—if a good color corrector is at the helm, that is—while costing much less than just a few years ago. Apple Color, a software only product, is one example. The path to the new DaVinci is a bit more round about: the lauded, Florida-based maker of color correction gear went belly up a couple of years ago. Bought by innovative, Melbourne-based Black Magic Design, the software now sells for under $1000 while running on relatively standard Mac and Linux boxes.

The new DaVinci Resolve control surface isn’t cheap—it lists at $30K—but the old DaVinci system required an outlay of at minimum about $100K. Of course anyone doing color correction as their job will want a suitable control surface—mouse clicking and dropdown menus won’t do.

Here’s a post on Mike Most’s blog from last year that gives a sense of why Black Magic Design’s lowball pricing on a high-end product is so disruptive.

As for the actual unboxing? Here’s color grader Alexis Van Hurkman showing us each box and connector as he has at it.

In an earlier post, we noted comments about–tragedy aside–how the Japanese earthquake and tsunami might affect TV production in the US. Many U.S. networks have standardized on Sony’s SR tape system for mastering and archiving, and it’s Sony’s Sendai plant, near the quake’s epicenter, that was hit hard. Sony’s statement on the quake’s effects is here.

Terence and Philip, who blog on the ProVideo Coalition website, devoted a recent podcast to the tape shortage crisis and took on broader questions of just what it means for the production and post industries. Making the point that “No one ever voluntarily changes their workflow”, the duo go on to chat about file-based delivery, archiving non-tape sources, and more.

If you’ve recently bought a MacBook Pro, you should update to 10.6.7, the latest version of Mac OS X. While it’s a minor update, it fixes many of the issues that recent buyers have encountered.

It also might be a good time to buy Apple stock. In a posting on the Fortune magazine site, reporter Philip Elmer-DeWitt quotes Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty on her belief that Apple stock is still greatly undervalued. Huberty reasons that there is still a lot of upside to the stock since Apple is expanding distribution in China, will produce a lower-priced iPhone in 2012, the tablet market will grow even more with Apple dominating, and we should expect a new Smart TV product from the company by 2012-13. More here.

If you’ve created a short film in the hopes of making it into a calling card while considering the usual film festival route for distribution, you might want to read Janko Roettgers interview with filmmaker Andrew Allen on the GigaOM site. Entitled “Filmmaker: Forget Festivals, Go Online Instead”, Allen offers up an interesting comparative list of the benefits of attending a film fest versus posting online. Seems the online world wins here, though no mention of the hobnobbing that can sometimes offer important introductions that you wouldn’t have made otherwise.

In any case, Allen is quoted as saying “The biggest thing I learned from this experience is that giving something away to earn people’s trust and build a fan base makes selling future creations much much easier—be it a feature film, web series, or even merchandise.” More here if you’d like to pick up on that discussion.

Of course filmmakers like Allen don’t come to such conclusions out of thin air. Each week brings news of deals being made for new types of online video distribution, kicked off in part by Netflix’s fast rise as a distributor to contend with as it moves into the distribution of recent TV and movie titles. This past week the LA Times Business of Movies blog stated that Miramax was sitting down with Netflix and other video services (Amazon, Hulu and Google) to distribute its 700-film library online. More here.

Talking about the rapid development of online distribution deals doesn’t compare to the speed at which the combo of smartphones and social media are evolving. Last week ballyhooed start-up Color launched a new app for iPhone and Android devices that allows users to instantly see photos, videos and comments of friends in the same physical vicinity as they upload to Facebook and other sites.

While us more cautious types (okay, older) might just see Color as the next step towards some rather creepy conglomerate future, this LA Times article highlights the cool factor, as well as the fact that top Silicon Valley VC company Sequoia Capital et al have already propped up Color with $41 million.

Jordan Crook at Mobile Burn, however, calls it a fun but impractical idea.

The ever-entertaining Robert “Scobelizer” Scobel posted this rant of an audio podcast about the “hypefest” over Color and speculated that no matter how much money was behind it, the company wouldn’t succeed since it isn’t highly rated enough in the one place it counts for success: “Where are the droves of new users coming from? The featured lists in app stores. iTunes has become a DOMINANT way for apps to get more users.” Scobel’s podcast appears here.

Scobel’s website, where the above quote appears is here, The quote appears approximately half way down the current page.

Finally, the question of the hour, or at least as Ray Gustini has it in his Atlantic Monthly column, is whether or not Darren “Black Swan” Aronofsky is now “too rich to direct Wolverine?” The story, as Gustini relates it, is that the Brooklyn-based director was originally set to direct The Wolverine sequel for 20th Century Fox, but last week he bowed out, as per this Hollywood Reporter article. Aronofsky states that he wasn’t comfortable being away from his family for the length of time it would take to shoot the film, which he claimed would be “almost a year.”

But Gustini says that Aronofsky, the “famously finicky art house director”, doesn’t need the expected $5 million fee since Black Swan became one of the more unlikely hits of recent years, raking in some $271 million in worldwide box office grosses so far.

I don’t know that I would fault Aronofsky from making such a reckoning, if that is what he did. But the reporter goes on to say that the director’s success is one way to sidestep the usual “‘one-for-you, one-for-me” career path of successful indie directors. See what you think by clicking here for more.