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THE MAGAZINE FOR MEDIA PROFESSIONALS WORKING IN FILM, AUDIO, VIDEO, MOTION GRAPHICS, IMAGING AND DESIGN

MORE SIGNAL, LESS NOISE CREATIVECOW.NET JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2010

Articles, news and more about thelatest DSLR, HD, Stereoscopic 3D rigs,

plus much more.


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Creative COWC R E A T I V E C O M M U N I T I E S O F T H E W O R L D

M A G A Z I N E

Te NOW Issue Creative COW Magazine4

THE MAGAZINE FOR MEDIA PROFESSIONALS WORKING IN VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO, MOTION GRAPHICS, IMAGING & DESIGN

CREATIVE COW MAGAZINEA CREATIVE COW LLC PUBLICATION

PUBLISHERS:Ron & Kathlyn Lindeboom

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF/ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER:

Tim [email protected]

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:

Gary Adcock,Barbara Sumner Burston,

Tom Burston, Richard Harrington,Ron Lindeboom, Marco Solorio,

Mike Sullivan, Tim Wilson

LAYOUT & DESIGN:Ron Lindeboom, Tim Wilson,

Steani Rice

CREATIVE COW ADVERTISING:Tim Matteson

[email protected]

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR:Abraham Chan

[email protected]

CONTACT US:[email protected]

(805) 239-5645 voice(805) 239-0712 ax

Creative COW Magazine is published bi-monthly by

CreativeCOW LLC (Creative Communities o the World) at

2205 Villa Lane, Paso Robles, CA 93446. (805) 239-5645.

Postage paid at Hanover, New Hampshire. U.S. subscrip-

tion rates are ree to qualied subscribers. Creative COWis a registered trademark o Creative COW LLC. All rights

are reserved. Magazine contents are copyright 2009 by

Creative COW Magazine. All rights are reserved. Right o

reprint is granted only to non-commercial educational

institutions such as high schools, colleges and universi-

ties. No other grants are given.

The opinions o our writers do not always reect those

o the publisher and while we make every efort to be

as accurate as possible, we cannot and do not assumeresponsibility or damages due to errors or omissions.

LEGAL STATEMENT: All inormation in this magazine is

ofered without guarantee as to its accuracy and appli-

cability in all circumstances. Please consult an attorney,business advisor, accountant or other proessional to dis-

cuss your individual circumstances. Use o the inorma-

tion in this magazine is not intended to replace proes-

sional counsel. Use o this inormation is at your own risk

and we assume no liability or its use.

CREATIVE COW: YEAR 10As we enter our 10th year, we add even more to Bessie.

Your Future Is NowCreative COW Leader, Gary Adcock, works with many o thepeople and companies dening the uture. Here is the story.

HDSLRs or Video: Beyond the HypeMarco Solorios real-world exploration o DSLRs continues.

This Way o LieTwo amilies, one on each side o the lens, nd what matters.

Coacoochees StoryOne story, two perspectives, three turntables, our screens.

Industry News and Featured ProductsNew cameras, lenses, plug-ins, and iPhone applications.

2010: The Year the COW Gets RealThe industrys largest virtual community or media pros willexpand its services and oerings or its members during 2010.It will be a year o big changes and additional ree services.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0

Tim Wilsons Column ............................................ 8The Back Forty with Ron Lindeboom .............. 50

The Futureis Now


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Tim WilsonBoston, Massachusetts

Editor-In-Chief,Associate Publisher

Creative COW Magazine

Ah, the wisdom o bumper stickers. Thats where I got the title or this column.Id rather be here now is a Zen-like antidote to the many variations o Id

rather be [shing, ying, y-shing, knitting, bowling, grandparenting, riding my Har-ley] bumper stickers weve seen or so many years. It ocially replaces my previous a-vorite, I eel so much better since I gave up hope.

This columns title might also remind you o comedian W.C. Fields, who joked that hisepitaph should read All things considered, Id rather be in Philadelphia. In reality, it readsW. C. Fields 1880 1946, replacing an ot-told gag with a Zen-like clarity.

The truth is that I only know enough about Zen to know that its more complicatedthan it looks, except when its simpler. But the concept o mindulness ound in someschools o Buddhism resonates with me. One practice o it uses the pauses o daily lie

say, stopping at a trac light to take a ew breaths, and clear your mind beore movingorward. I cant say Im getting any closer to enlightenment, but I nd when I slow downthat the things making me rantic look more like what they are, a series o steps to betaken, starting with this one, now.

O course, Master Nishijima reminds us that i we think that mindulness is somethingto aspire to, then we can never achieve it. Now thats Zen.

I started thinking about this again a ew months ago, when we were drowning in allthose Best o the Decade lists. I appreciate their intent reection on the dierencebetween what was new, and what remains important. A orm o mindulness, even. Inpractice though, these lists can be more lazy than reective, and too oten, simply wrong.You can nd your own examples o wrong seriously, how many o them have you everagreed with? but I saw the dierence between lazy and reective in a magazine I getthat re-ran articles rom earlier issues, verbatim!

We thought about doing something like that, I admit. But as we talked about someo our avorite articles rom the rst three years o Creative COW Magazine, I ound myselwanting to revisit the writers. O the over 100 COW authors weve published who arent meor Ron, barely a hal-dozen have written or us more than once! And so weve begun askingsome o the olks we havent heard rom in a while and will be asking others whattheyre working on, and seeing, right now.

In this issue, they oer unexpected insights into the current state o cameras andlenses (including HDSLRs), best uses o social media or building your business, the latestmultimedia technologies, and a documentary about a amily who truly exemplies livingin the now. The authors o that article also have some great advice about new possibilitiesor indie lm distribution available now.

How cool is that? By paying attention to whats happening now, we nd the ways inwhich the uture, and its new possibilities, is already here.

Generally speaking, the urther you design along the cutting edge, the aster yourwork will look out o date. The Peter Max and Andy Warhol vision o 1960s pop art was somodern at the time that, now, it looks positively quaint.

Which means that its time or another one o my patent-pending Liberal Arts NerdDigressions. The entire concept o modern alls out o date ast. At least in the West, themodern era is thought to begin around 1500 (the Renaissance, the Reormation, and thediscovery o the Americas). Authors, architects and other artists in both the West and theEast were widely using the word postmodern to describe their work by the end o theSecond World War!

So in this issue, as much as our authors describe the latest technologies, workowsand business practices, they remind us that some aesthetic values are more enduring thanothers a good thing to remember even now.

n

All things considered, Id rather be here now.


By paying

attention

to what is

happening

now, we fnd

the ways

in which

the uture,

and its new

possibilities,

is already

here.


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AS WE ENTER YEAR 10, CREATIVE COW FOUNDATION IS LAUNCHED TO AWAR

Ron LindeboomPaso Robles, Caliornia USA

Husband and wide team, Ron & Kathlyn Lindeboom, are the co-ounders o Creative COWand say that Our greatest strength in building The COW was that we didnt know when toquit. Our accountants once told us that their rm had no other account like ours. They alsolaughed and said Creative COW wouldnt exist i any o their other accounts owned it.

on programs that assist both students rom the USAand rom around the world. The rst such institutionto receive a check or $10,000 rom the Creative COWFoundation is the American Film Institutes DirectingWorkshop or Women program.

Why did we choose this program as our rst re-cipient? In the ormative early days o Creative COW,it was ounded and managed by my wie, KathlynLindeboom. Creative COW was a emale-owned busi-ness, and because o this, Adobe Systems approachedus at a critical time and reached into a grant programmandated to go to a emale-owned business. It keptCreative COW alive at a time when it likely would have

ailed without it.

In April o 2010, we enter the 10th year o CreativeCOW. As we near this milestone, we elt that it was

the logical time to open yet another chapter in theCreative COW story, one that we eel is the logical nextstep or The COW. We are launching a new charitableoundation, one that ocuses on assisting students.Ater all, many have helped us to build the dream wehad, and so we want to lend a hand to some o thosewho are struggling to ollow their own dreams.

To celebrate our 10th year online, we are launchinga new 501(c)3 ederally registered non-prot ounda-tion whose mission is to provide nancial scholarshipsand grants to students in the elds o lm, television

and media studies. Our educational grants will ocus

Creative COW: YEAR 10 Creative COW Magazine8


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OLARSHIPS & GRANTS TO STUDENTS IN FILM & MEDIA STUDIES PROGRAMS.

Today, we are a Caliornia registered LLC, andthough the company has changed over the years andhas seen our membership increase into the millionseach month, you do not orget things like that whichKristan Jiles and the Adobe team did all the way backin the Summer o 2001.

It happened again in 2002, when we were underan attack on our server that took us ofine or mosto two weeks. We didnt know how to ght it and wedidnt have the money to hire security experts to dothe work or us. So we wrote our leaders to tell themthat we were going to close the book on Creative COW.But when we did, we received an email rom one o theleaders Jason Howard o SpectSot who told usthat he knew how to help us, and that he would. Hebrought in his riend, Michael Gregg who is now asecurity developer with Red Hat and they had usback in operation in a couple o days. Amazing guys.

As we grew and grew, we soon eclipsed the power

and capability o our servers to handle the extremeloads that our trac demanded rom our servers. So,Jim Bovenzi and Damon Muzny o AMD helped us getsponsored with numerous dual- and quad-Opteronbased servers that got us through those tough times.

There are many more stories like these and I couldll pages with them all. The kindness that people haveshowed us at critical times, comes due one day andyou have an obligation to pay it orward to others. Itis because o people like the ones just named and thekindness o others too numerous to list here, that welaunched Creative COW Foundation. They are also thereason that there is even a Creative COW, at all, i thetruth be told. We helped steer the car but there havebeen many who kept the tank ull o gas.

It is to everyone who has ever encouraged or sup-ported our eorts over the years, to whom we dedi-cate this endeavor as an honor and remembrance totheir kindness and their own generosity.

A CHARITY THAT REALLY IS A CHARITYThe work and costs o the oundation is underwrittencompletely by Creative COW, so that we are paying allthe costs o administration, legal, and accounting leaving 100% o every dollar raised by Creative COWFoundation to be awarded in its entirety to deserving

students. You wouldnt expect anything less rom theCOW, would you? Creative COW Foundation has elect-ed to set our oundations standard high, veryhigh.

I you support Creative COW Foundation, you canbe assured that it has been set up so that none o themonies raised will be siphoned o or administration,

bookkeeping, legal, or any other expense. None.Creative COW LLC will bear all operational costs,so that the Creative COW Foundation remains ree tooperate as an unencumbered conduit through whichevery dollar raised is passed along directly to deserv-ing students.

Why do it this way, when legally we didnt haveto? Because this was never about money. Few charitiesoperate this way, but we elt that our members neededa charity they could trust in these days when you hearone horror story ater another on the news.

People have stood by us when times were tough,companies have supported our eorts year ater year

in good times and through tough times and asthe years have passed, the COW has grown until it trulyis unique among all o the companies that serve mediaproessionals. We have always been grateul or thissupport and have never taken it or granted.

Today, we have passed Googles coveted two mil-lion unique visitors a month trac level. To be honest,we never thought that wed get this ar; under normalcircumstances, we probably wouldnt have.

And so, its time or payback.With Creative COW Foundation, Creative COW be-

gins a new phase o community building and support.We hope that you are as excited as we are about thisnew endeavor or Creative COW an endeavor thatwill help deserving students rom both the USA androm around the world to ulll their dreams.

Thank you or being a part o The COWs great ad-venture over the years. It has truly been an honor toserve you and to see how this community has grownduring the past decade. You are an amazing bunch.

You and many others that make the COW part oyour lives have graciously joined us in our myriad oendeavors over the years. We hope that you will joinus in supporting the Creative COW Foundation whenand as you can.

n

Creative COW Magazine Creative COW: YEAR 10 9


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corder, in the SRW-9000 basically an HDCAM SRW-1deck with the F23s imaging system mounted directlyon it. Sony will oer an optional 35mm sensor upgrade

and digital recording capability or the SRW9000 cam-era by the end o the year, along with a 25% cut in theprice o SR tape stock

In December, Sony announced SR 2.0, an updat-ed recording system based around HDCAM SR that willallow or various compression levels, a solid state re-cording module, direct access to the native HDCAMSR codec in MXF wrapped MPEG-4 SStP (Simple StudioProile), and a 220Mbps delivery version o the SR co-dec via Gigabit Ethernet.


Creative COW's Gary Adcock has been traveling the world, working with both themanufacturers and cinematographers that are building the future. Here is his report.

Passing into a new decade, people are constantlyasking what the uture holds. Everyone wants toknow what new camera, product or technology will

impact the uture. I am one o those people who get tosee the uture in what lies in what is here, now.

Ater I take a look at current cameras, lenses andrelated technology, I am going to close by surprisingyou with my pick or todays hottest technology.

SONY

While every other manuacturer has been leaving tapebehind on their higher-end products, Sony bucked thetrend to release the irst 10-bit tape based HD cam-

Gary AdcockChicago, Illinois USA

Gary recently contributed to "Metadata and The Future o Filmmaking" or CreativeCOW Magazine's "Workow 3.0" issue, in which he and Academy Award-winner DaveStump, ASC, outlined the process o tracking metadata rom the lens on-set, all theway through editing and VFX. Gary serves on the National Training Committee orthe International Cinematographer's Guild (Local 600), and hosts in many high-endCreative COW orums. He is also at work on two new training titles or the Creative COWMaster Series. Gary serves as the 2010 Tech Chair or NAB's Director o PhotographyWorkshop. For more inormation, visit orums.creativecow.net/nab2010

No need to wait and see what's on the horizon for cinematography


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Sonys XDCAM team has also recentlyupdated their oerings with the shoulder-mount version o the venerable XDCAM EX(the PMW-350), as well as the new PDW-350XDCAM HD camera. Just as we were headedto press, Sony also released a new solid stateproessional camcorder, the HXR-NX5U,which records AVCHD up to 24Mbps in

1080P/24, rather than an MP2 compressedile inside o an MP4 MXF wrapper.

PANASONIC

Panasonic keeps hammering away at thehigh-end market. O course, I originallychuckled at the Varicam 3700s limited ea-tures, yet this workhorse has, hands down,won me over. The addition o 1080 4:4:4 cap-ture, and 1-60 ps as VFR on new E-series P2cards or via dual link output changes every-thing, and allows Panasonic to do in 1080 whatis a staple o the 720p worklow. The ability to

record 96K audio seals the deal on the 3700sstatus as a mainline production camera usablein multiple shooting scenarios .

Panasonic also rocked CES 2010 by show-ing o a working prototype o a one-piece 3Dcamera that records stereoscopically to dual,interal SDHC/SD cards in camera. A vastlysimpliied shooting technology using a sin-gle camera to capture both streams o video,combined with a projected $21K USD price,and Panasonic once again has chosen to leadstereoscopic production, much like they havedone all along in HD. I am looking orward to

testing this camera or an extended reviewhere on the Cow later this spring.

[Editor's Note: or details on Panasonics re-

cently announced HD stereoscopic 3D oering,

please see the Industry News section elsewhere

in this issue.]

ARRI

When the worlds top manuacturer o ilmcameras decides to revamp its digital cameraline, watch out. When the new Alexa camerasystem was announced last all at IBC, you

could almost eel the ground shaking on theshow loor and I was 4 halls away!

ARRI came to ight, bringing a prototypeimager to the show loor with a baseline expo-sure at more than 800+ ASA (2x aster than theSony F35), and an advertised latitude o morethan 12 stops.

With an as-yet unannounced tapelesscapture system, and ARRIs long standing rep-utation or unrivaled quality and meticulousconstruction, I cannot wait to get my hands ona model or testing.

The ARRI Alexa is set to give every other

camera manuacturer a run or image quality and versatility

when they release their updated RAW worklow or the cam-era, which is 1080/60p capable with variable rame rates, livevideo out, and an HD (1280x720) optical or electronic view-inder. Heres hoping that the new EVF is usable on other cam-era systems, as, at irst glance, I ound it superior to the incred-ible RED EVF

Industry watchers, note: ARRI USA has wooed HD guru Mi-chael Bravin rom his long-time association with Band Pro andSony to head up the marketing or their new camera. Thingsare going to get very interesting, ast.

WORTHY EFFORTS

There are a number o other high end players to watch now.

Creative COW Magazine Te NOW Issue 11

The Sony SRW-9000

The Panasonic HPX-3700

The ARRI Alexa


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While the high-speed ootage rom Vision Re-searchs Phantom is still surprising any num-ber o shooters, how many o you noticed thatthe Phantom 65 has a true 65mm digital im-ager? Thats over two inches across!

Silicon Imaging has been making inroadswith the SI 2K systems, especially in the 3Dspace, because the physical design o their

cameras. The 2K mini is under our incheslong, including the PL-mount!

More important, by embedding the IRI-DAS Speedgrade Onset directly into theircamera systems, SI has taken the lead on theworklow side o high-end production. Non-destructive looks can be added while shoot-ing, with the ull color management metadataable to be passed through to post.

METADATA

The time has come or all manuacturers toembrace the capture and maintenance o

metadata rom the camera through delivery.As it is, except when using a transer-

ring unction or the newest codecs like AVC-I, PhantomCine, ARRIRAW or R3D, the NLEsand post apps we currently work with havethe nasty habit o stripping o all incomingmetadata. No matter how careully we guardmetadata through production, it is too otendecimated in post.

Manuacturers, start with this rule ormetadata management: Do No Harm. I youdont use it, dont mess it up.

STEREOSCOPIC 3DThis is not your parents' anaglyph. No red andgreen lenses. No spears coming out o thescreen to shock you like some amusementpark attraction. With over $1billion in ticketsales or James Camerons Avatar world-wide in 17 days, and with over 75% o viewerschoosing to pay higher ticket prices or the 3Dversion, it is time or us all to see: 3D isnt go-ing away this time.

At 162 minutes, Avatar also proved tome that a stereoscopic eature could run thatlong without giving viewers the prooundly

pounding headache normally associated withextended viewing o 3D content. Digital pro-jection has helped make it much easier, bycombining cross polarization and brighterprojectors with specialty screens created toenhance the visual experience and reduce a-tigue. Be thankul.

3D isnt just or movies, either. Nearlyevery manuacturer at the 2010 ConsumerElectronics Show was showing some lavoro home 3D display. This was mirrored in an-nouncements rom Discovery, Disney, HDNetand DirecTV, all adding dedicated 3D chan-

nels to their lineups by midyear, and with ESPN planning tobroadcast 85 live events in 3D in the irst year.

Expect 3D technology to take leaps and bounds usingnewly-created post and production tools speciically designedor this worklow.


Above, James Cameron on the set o "Avatar." Photo courtesyMark Fellman, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

Below, the Phantom 65 Digital Cinema Camera.


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aperture markings in total darkness. They also broughtback the aordable Panchro series o lenses.

One other company that has come into ocus orme is Vision III imaging. I expect to see a lot rom thiscompany in the next couple o years. Based heavily inthe deense and military sector, much like Vision Re-searchs Phantom camera was in the early 90s, theirv3 lens technology uses a rotating iris adaptation or

parallax scanning: incorporating parallax inorma-tion into standard images or enhanced realism anddimension.

My early testing at Fletcher Camera in Chicagoshowed a noticeable increase in the perceived sharp-ness o the image as it was recorded. Vision III callsthis textural depth, and by the time this article ispublished, I will have had time to work with their v3technology more thoroughly, and to post the resultsat blogs.creativecow.net/garyadcock.

AND TODAYS HOTTEST TECHNOLOGY IS

Anamorphic lenses yes, you read that right.

With 2009s Star Trek, J.J. Abrams reminded uswhat anamorphic ilm looks like. Think o all the eter-nally classic ilms that you have seen, iconic spectacleslike "The Robe," "Lawrence o Arabia," "Spartacus,""Dog Day Aternoon," "Sound o Music," "MarathonMan," "Blade Runner," more recent ilms like "A FewGood Men," "Unorgiven," "Terminator 2," "Titanic,""The Abyss," Star Wars Episodes 1 & 2, even indie ilmslike "The Kite Runner" these were all shot usingHawk or Panavision anamorphic lenses.

Anamorphic lenses are not truly wide angle, asmuch as they are panoramic, designed to capture widevistas. Since 35mm ilm is essentially a 4x3-recording

medium, anamorphic lenses allowed or the various

Companies like Element Technica and PACE whose Fusion 3D system, co-designed by Vince Paceand James Cameron, was used on Avatar are atthe oreront, yet there are creative places or otherniche players. One huge leap in 3D came rom IN-2CORE, whose QTAKE HD was created to provide real-time stereoscopic 3D video assist.

Funny as it may seem, this has been diicult, i

not impossible, until now. On Avatar, the produc-tion crew had to use secondary Codex captures to beable to provide real-time playback o the stereo signalon set. That meant requiring both SRW-1 and Codexrecorders on every camera a rather pricey way tohandle the issue, but at the time production on Avatarbegan, it was the best way to handle the stereoscopicplayback process normally done by the video assistperson on set.

LENSES

All the talk about RED has helped make high-end PLMount lenses all the rage. Designed or the ilm com-

munity, ARRIs Positive Lock mount has ound newlie or lenses that had previously been reserved orcommercial and big screen productions. PL mountsare available or digital cinema cameras including theSony F35, ARRI D-21, Vision Research Phantom, SiliconImaging SI 2K, and all manner o ilm cameras.

At least our new lens companies have sprung upin the last two years to provide PL mount lenses andconversions, but stalwart Zeiss released new CompactPrimes in an ultra-lightweight rame in ocal lengthsrom 18mm to 85mm that set the market ablaze.(That's them in the title graphic or this article.)

Cooke also announced the S/i 5 with internal LED

technology that allow ACs and 2nds to see ocus and


Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, Zo Saldana as Neytiri in "Avatar."

Photo courtesy WETA, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.


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Widescreen, Scope or Vista ormats to use everysingle millimeter o the celluloid, not something trulypossible since the advent o sound on ilm. The advan-tage when shooting ilm is not something to be over-looked, since the exposed negative area is 52% larger.

But the process o squeezing and unsqueezingimages adds subtle, but aesthetically pleasing, dis-tortions. We associate the sot edges and subtle dark-

ening onscreen, as well as the speciic bloom o thebokeh the sot, out-o-ocus areas o the rame with cinema. Anamorphic lenses can accentuate, evenexacerbate the separation between what is in and outo ocus, due to the optical properties o the glass, es-sentially a concave grouping o elements orcingthe entire image into a more square shape as it isrecorded.

Since ARRIs D-21 and VRs Phantom cameras bothhave essentially square imagers, and RED windows itsull imager when in the anamorphic shooting mode,mainstream digital cameras are designed with ana-morphics in mind. Using the newer 35mm size imag-

ers, you simply get more: more image, more resolu-tion, more picture when played back.

I am all or a 50% increase in sharpness and res-olution that anamorphic lenses bring, yet that is notthe only reason why I use them. It is about that lookthe lens imparts on the image, the muted out o ocushighlights, or the resounding pop as the lens inish-es breathing into ocus, or those distinctive anamor-phic lens lares.

It is also about getting away rom the plastic

nature o how video oten looks when it is shot, andmoving our images back to the ilmic quality that isassociated with the most classic ilms we watch notthe rate o the rames, but the look o the world in eacho those rames.

Lenses like the Hawk Anamorphics rom VantageFilm allow us to bring back many o the visual artiactslike edge sotness and chromic aberrations, in addi-tion to the critically sharp but minimal depth o ieldwe associate with classic ilms, within the controllableenvironment o state o the art digital recording.

For example, the Hawk 60mm Macro lens allowsme to set to its shortest ocal length, then rack ocus to

ininity, without any change in aperture impossiblewith older anamorphic lenses.

ANAMORPHIC

CINEMATOGRAPHYAs movies went widescreen, a question

immediately presented itsel: whats the best

way to get wider images into a 35mm rame

whose width remains the same?

One solution, shown at top, is to simply place

the wider image in the middle o the rame, and

mask out the unused space in projection. How-

ever, this both wastes lm stock , and leaves over

hal o the rames possible resolution unused.

The other solution has been anamorphic

cinematography, captured with methods

including cylindrical lenses, rather than

traditional spherical lenses. As the middle image

illustrates, widescreen images are squeezed

into the 35mm rame. They are then stretched to

their original aspect ratio in projection.

This squeezing and stretching inevitably

creates subtle distortions, including ones that

we have come to associate with the intrinsic

properties o lmed images: sep-

aration between oreground and

vertically stretched background,

and aberrations including hori-

zontal and rainbow fares, veiling

light, and others, all o which are

oten used as artistic elements.

Lower image o girl, as well as ad-

ditional inormation, courtesy o

ARRI.


17/52

The Hawk 1.3 Squeeze series alsooers the ability to shoot 1.78 (16x9)

when using one o the square sensordigital cameras I mentioned, but whenthat same lens is used on a standard16x9 imager, it allow use o the ull sen-sor to record the more cinematic 2:35aspect ratio that we are accustomed toin the theater.

YOUR FUTURE, NOW

Our uture is here. It is now.Advanced camera technologies al-

low us to strive toward new levels o vi-sual quality. That does not mean that we

need to abandon our visual legacy. Thedesire to overcome the limitations o analog ilmmak-ing does not require a new look that is too clean, toocrisp, just too lat on screen. We do not need to repeatthe mistake made when the print industry transitionedinto desktop publishing, when the art o typographywas very nearly tossed to oblivion.

As we move arther and arther into the digitalage, we reach a point in time where everything old isnew again. We may not be shooting as much ilm as weused to, but there is no reason the images should notlook as good.

n


Ready or more?Join Gary, Future Media Concepts

and Creative COW at the NABDirector o Photography Workshop,

April 10-12 in Las Vegas.

For more inormation, visitorums.creativecow.net/nab2010

John Cho as Ikaru Sulu in "Star Trek." Horizontal lens fare behind his

ear and oval highlights in bokeh are distinctive artiacts o anamorphic

lenses. Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures Corporation.


18/52

or breathtaking results in skilled hands. Having bothtools in one unit is still mind boggling to me, even a-ter over a year o using it.

The act is that these HDSLR cameras should NOTbe shooting beautiul video at all. Their compressionrates are high, their chrominance sub-sampling is high,their re-sizing rom ull-rame to 1080 isnt smooth,theyre 8-bit at the compression level, and choosing abad quality lens just compounds all o that. Yet the HDvideo can still look breathtaking!

I have owned a Canon 5D Mk II or over a yearnow, and love it. It shoots 1080p, and boasts the onlyull-rame, 35mm sensor on the market larger thanthe RED ONEs sensor or super-35mm motion pictureilm, and about the same size as VistaVision. These

Te Now Issue Creative COW Magazine18

Marco SolorioWalnut Creek, Caliornia USA

A COW member since 2002, Marco owns OneRiver Media, a San Francisco acility oeringservices rom pre-production to post. His background in audio engineering and musiccomposition includes advanced skills with keyboard/piano/synth, classical/electric gui-tars, bass guitar, trumpet/ugelhorn, saxophones and percussion. Marco also oundedCinesot, developers o MediaBatch, enabling advanced collaboration, management,review and approval.

Blah, blah, blah! Youve heard the buzz. Now here's the story you won't see anywhere else,based on a year 's experience capturing HD video with a still camera for paying clients.

HDSLR, VDSLR or whatever you might call them the interest in still cameras that can also shoot

HD video is growing ast...and so is their potential. Iliken it to the DV revolution that began with the SonyDCR-VX1000, and again with aordable 24p produc-tion using the Panasonic AG-DVX100. Both were trulygroundbreaking cameras that, at the time, were un-paralleled in quality or the price. We are seeing thesame revolution begin with HD video coming romthese HDSLRs.

Amidst all o the interest in these cameras orHD shooting, it shouldn't be orgotten that these areDSLR cameras irst, with still photography capabilitiesthat are nothing short o amazing. The ull-rame sen-sor and its 14-bit, 21 megapixel resolution is a recipe

HDSLRs for Video:Beyond the Hype


19/52

ull-rame sensors are HUGE, and suck up so muchlight that even a room lit with a single candle can pro-duce beautiul results. Ive shot 1080p video in suchextreme low-light conditions that any other HD cam-era, including a Sony F900 or a RED ONE, would havequickly degraded to noise and artiacts.

LENSESHDSLR cameras have added a new dimension to theidea o revolution: the vast choice in lens options isevery independent ilmmakers dream come true. Nolonger are shooters stuck with a ixed lens o dubiousquality or limited ocal length. No more wide-angleadapters, or telephoto adapters, or even going the ex-tra step with secondary lens adapters. Now, you sim-ply pick the lens you want, speciic or the type o shotyou want. The only limit is your budget.

There are even manuacturers developing lensadapters to it exotic cinema lenses (like PL-mountedCooke, and Zeiss optics), which work well with smaller

sensor cameras like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1and Canon 7D.

Ive been a long-time Canon SLR shooter (bothilm and digital), so at this point, my lens arsenal isquite large, and includes Canon FD, Canon EF, NikonF, and Sigma mounts. With my 5DMk II, I purely shoot with Canonsbest L lenses, mostly consistingo their astest primes and a ewzooms.

Although the imagery romthese still lenses is astounding,there are dierences between

them and ilm/video lenses thatyou should know about.

You can twist the ocus ring oncinema lenses or days rom lockto lock, or detailed ocus pulls.The short twist on still lenses canbe a little annoying i you're tighton a slightly moving subject (evena talking head) with very narrowDOF.

Annoying or not, at leastthese ocus rings move only romstart point to stop point. Compare

this to the electronic ocus ringon a lens like the beautiul Canon85mm /1.2L II. Although one o the absolute sharpestand astest lenses on the market or photography (Iknow, I have one), a lens like this can seem downrightevil or video: the electronic ocus ring just doesnthave that physical eel and eedback to it, and worse,will keep spinning orever, even when you can't ocusanymore.

Controlling aperture with a physical ring on thelens itsel is also ideal, preerably without -stop click-points rather than the push-pull mechanism oundon some photographic lenses. Although ring gears can

be temporarily added to any lens (I use them), theyreusually bulky, a drag to take on and o, and simply notas eective or ollow ocus and/or motorized control.

The good news is that some companies can mod-iy your photography still lenses to employ some othese cinema style eatures, including clickless aper-ture stops and permanent ring gears.

Although I preer Canon optics, I deinitely preer

Nikon mechanics in their F lenses. They employ physi-cal lock-to-lock ocusing and a physical aperture ring,making them a good candidate or such cinematicstyle lens conversions.

A trick Ive sometimes implemented is using Nikonlenses on my Canon body, by buying cheap Nikon Fmount to Canon EOS EF mount adapters. There aresome good buys on used F mount lenses i youre on atight budget but want more physical lens control.

WHEN IN DOUBT, HACK IT

One o the strongest movements in the HDSLR world

today is the development o third-party irmware.Trammell Hudson is the guiding orce behind theMagic Lantern Firmware (magiclantern.wikia.com).He reverse-engineered Canons irst irmware releaseto bring much needed eatures to the 5D Mk II. He has

also laid some initial groundwork or the new 7D.The Magic Lantern irmware does not replace

the cameras own irmware and eatures, but merelyadds his unctions to them more like a patch innon-volatile RAM. In act, the ML irmware needs tobe added to the camera every time it is turned on,which or saety, is a good thing.

Why would he bother to hack in so many eatures,

and why would you bother to reload it every time

you shoot, when you could just buy a video camera?

As Trammell notes, I you can ind a camera that a)

Creative COW Magazine Te Now Living Issue 19

One o the menus or the Magic Lantern rmware or the Canon 5D Mk II


20/52

shoots HD, b) has a 50 mbps data

rate, c) has interchangeable lenses,

d) has a 35 mm or larger sensor

and, e) costs less than $150Kthen

buy that one instead.

So what does Magic Lantern

add? Dozens o eatures that cin-

ema lens shooters expect. Zebrapatterns, or starters, with thresh-

old levels that can be modiied to

your needs.

There is also recorded lens

data, live histogram, custom over-

lay crop marks or ininite aspect

ratios, automated ocus pulls, ocus

stacking, automatic HDR exposure

bracketing, and much more.

He is also working on timecode

integration in act, Im letting himborrow one o my timecode gen-

erator units to help with his devel-

opment.

Best o all, the Magic Lantern

Firmware is open-source and ree

to use under the GPL license. I you

do use the sotware, please do-

nate. I did!


Above, Magic Lantern rmware showing audio meters (upper let in

window) and histogram (upper right in window).

Below, a comparison o common camera rame and sensor sizes. Both

images courtesy o Marco Soloro.


21/52


22/52

tures that should have already been built in! Not out-o-the-box by any means, but an excellent solution tothe problem nonetheless.

MORE CHALLENGES

The downside to the massive native resolution in theselarge HDLSR sensors is aliasing that results rom on-

the-ly downscaling to 1920x1080 (or 1280x720). Thisis roughly 2.1 megapixels, down-sampled, in the caseo the 5D Mk II, rom 21 megapixels!

The current workaround or any HDSLR is to tryto avoid shooting against things like brick walls, chainlink ences, power lines, etc. I you must, try to distancethe subject urther away rom them, so that the back-grounds become deocused. In act, even just a hairout o ocus will completely solve the problem.

Unlike traditional CCD sensors that capture the en-tire image at once, HDSLR video is recorded by linearlyscanning across the cameras CMOS sensor one pixel ata time, which can lead to rolling shutter distortions,

aka, Jello-cam. Although only microseconds, thescanning time it takes between the very irst pixel andthe very last pixel is long enough to create the visualdistortion. When objects, or the camera itsel, moveaster than can be recorded in one pass, the imagebecomes skewed or squashed. The aster the motion,the heavier the skew and/or squash. Unortunately orhigher-resolution cameras, larger CMOS sensors, withtheir longer distance to scan, are more susceptible tothis than smaller ones.

As technology advances, CMOS scan rates will be-

come aster in these large sensors. There are also some

new sotware solutions that can help "ix" the problem

AUDIO

One shortcoming o these HDSLRcameras is their lack o high qualityaudio recording. Ironically, the audiorecording hardware isn't terribly bad,and the inal audio recorded is actu-ally uncompressed.

The monkey wrench is that these

HDSLR cameras record the audio withautomatic gain control (AGC) alwayson. AGC is a method o compressingand/or limiting audio input levels sothey do not overload the camera'saudio preamps. Think o it as an au-tomatic volume knob or incomingsound.

This is normally a good thing asit saeguards the camera's internalaudio hardware rom inexperiencedusers that may override the preampswith signal that is too hot. However,

an AGC system that cannot be turnedo is a curse in any proessional en-vironment. It creates a noticeablyhigher noise loor that can be veryannoying.

There are currently two ways to overcome this.The irst is the oldest method in the cinematic book,and works with any HDSLR: using dual system sound,whereby the audio is recorded on a separate, dedi-cated device, where ull control and sonic quality ismaintained throughout the entire audio path.

The second method combines the Canon 5D MkII, the Magic Lantern Firmware and some additional

hardware. In act, the irst eatures that Trammell add-ed to Magic Lantern were to deeat the ugly internalAGC system.

The rig I use includes a JuicedLink CX231 micromic preamp/mixer a device with proven, low-noiseisolated signal preamps and a good quality micro-phone, speciic or the sound environment I want tocapture. I can hook up (or example), a Sennheiser K6/ME67 combo (super-cardiod shotgun microphone)into one o the two channels o the JuicedLink CX231via a balanced XLR cable. The JuicedLink is then edinto the 5D Mk II into its line-level 1/8" audio inputjack.

With the Magic Lantern Firmware, and ONLY withit, I can then monitor the live audio eed into the cam-era, as its recorded by plugging headsets into the 5DMk II's external AV output jack, and visually monitorwith color-coded peak-meter VU overlays.

Were talking about a still camera, right? Amaz-ing.

The result is the use o proessional phantompowered microphones, an input trim mixer or bothmic channels, an optionally deeated AGC signal pathwith audio and visual monitoring, ultimately record-ing to an uncompressed audio codec.

Firmware hackery at its best, or proessional ea-

Creative COW Magazine Te Now Issue 22

Car mount o the audio rig, as described.


23/52

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24/52


in post-production, but it's an extra step, adding both

time and a very slight reduction in overall image qual-

ity due to interpolated pixel reconstruction.

The workaround or now is to keep your pans and

tilts slow.

Also, there is currently no support or live, uncom-

pressed HD output rom any o these cameras HDMI

port. This will be a huge leap orward, as it will allow

or real-time capture to a much higher quality ormat

than the cameras built-in encoding ormat. Using

something like an AJA Ki Pro or direct ProRes record-

ing would be invaluable, especially or chroma-key

production.

THE FUTURE OF HDSLR TECHNOLOGY

I havent talked much about the RED ONE camera inthis article, but i an HDSLR company really wanted tobuild a RED killer, they could.

What would that entail? For starters, they wouldneed to address many o the limitations above: reducethe amount o rolling shutter skew, implement a bet-ter down-scaling solution, support live uncompressed

audio and video output, and support timecode. Inact, I could see adding a multi-pin accessory port onthe camera body that tethers out to a multi-port con-nection, which would then add XLR input, audio moni-toring, video monitoring, TC in/out, and anything elsethat might be needed.

From there, we need to go beyond 30 FPS in 1080HD. Having truevariable rame-rates in 1080 HDwould be ideal, like1-60, 1-120 or even1-240 and beyond i

they can do it with-out melting thehardware. Likewise,going higher than1080 HD wouldreally open every-ones eyes; 2K, 4K,and even beyond.The sensor is cer-tainly capable o it,even i recordingmoving pictures inthat resolution has

not been enabled.A lip-out

screen would alsobe nice.

Seriously, mosto these sugges-tions are eaturesalready used in ex-isting products.

O course,the idea o a REDkiller is somewhatmisleading. RED

will not be goinganywhere as ar asthe industry as awhole is concerned.But or many shoot-ers, the remarkablequality o HDSLRcameras mean thatinvesting in a REDcamera is a ar lesscompelling option.

I'm an exampleo that. Investing in

These are not still photographs. Rather they are unaltered rames rom Marco's H.264

ootage o model Jackie Rivero, captured only using available light, with no post

processing. While we have done our best to show them to you accurately, be sure

to look or the ull-size movie, and complete inormation about lenses, ISO, shutter

speed, white balance, etc. at magazine.creativecow.net.


25/52

a RED with the necessary options to shoot even a sin-gle rame is not cost eective or my business model.I a RED ONE dropped in my lap rom the sky, would Iuse it? Absolutely.

And would I still use the HDSLR or shooting HD?Absolutely. Am I ditching my Sony EX1 anytime soon?No way. But with some o the advantages my HDLSRgives me over a RED, even i just at a paltry 1080 HD

resolution, or a much lower price, with all the lensesand bells and whistles I use in my camera rigs, theressimply no need or us to consider RED right now.

CONCLUSIONAND GETTING STARTED

Despite the technologys shortcomings (and there aremany), shooters, developers and manuacturers areall climbing aboard the HDSLR bandwagon becauseo the great potential these cameras have now, and inthe uture.

Even i you are only interested in experimentingwith them or video, these HDSLR cameras are practi-

cally a no-risk purchase: great quality, a lot o manualcontrol, and at a price-point that can't be beat. Formany people, the Canon 7D would be a good place tostart. It has ull 1080p resolution, employs a gamut orame-rate options and can take advantage o lighter,less expensive EF-S lenses. My suggestion would be topick one decent quality zoom in the 28-70mm range,and one decent quality prime, maybe in the 50mm


range, buying as ast o each o these (i.e., letting in asmuch light) as you can aord.

For a 7D body, an inexpensive zoom and an inex-pensive prime, you'll still only be around $2500 all in, aar cry rom the price o any other HD option, let aloneone with a removable lens system.

Dont like it? Sell it right back into the hungrymarket or used photography gear the money youll

lose could be justiied as a rental cost or you cankeep it is a great still camera.

The most important thing to remember aboutshooting with HDSLRs is true or every camera, butESPECIALLY so with HDSLRs. You have to understandyour shoot, and know how the advantages and limita-tions o your camera play into those speciic circum-stances. Otherwise, you'll either shoot yoursel in theoot on production and lose a client, or you will missout on an opportunity to seriously raise your produc-tion values.

I have a eeling that weve only seen a snippet owhats to come rom the world o HDSLR cameras, and

rom here, our jaws will continue to drop.n


26/52

A our-year journey by two amilies, one on each side o the lens, leads to newperspectives on what we really need, the kinds o truths we can tell with flm,

and what it means to live in this very moment.

This Way

of Life


27/52

horsemanship. We knew that the magical relationshiphe had with horses was unique, and we quickly ormu-lated a plan to produce a little instructional DVD onhow to break in a horse.

It was to be a casual thing, tting around Tomsday job as a cinematographer. But the minute weturned on the camera, it was obvious that Peter hadsomething: a presence, a way o ignoring the camera

and engaging with it at the same time. However, itwould be almost a year o shooting beore we realisedthat the DVD had turned into a real lm, about a realamily, and their remarkable way o lie.

Perhaps because o the long shoot, the lm ischaracterised by an intimacy, not only with the cam-era, but also clearly with us as lmmakers as well.

For example, or the rst year, Colleen would qui-etly turn away when-ever we arrived withthe camera. She waskind and polite, butvery clear that she

did not want to be onlm. Then, one day wecalled her to test thewater. Something hadshited. Sure, she said,come on over.

It was at thispoint, almost a yearinto the process, whenwe realised that, whilewe had been observ-ing the Karena amily,the Karenas and es-

pecially Colleen hadbeen watching us.

I understood thenthat we had entereda type o contract notcovered by law, or bythe usual dictates odocumentary lm-making. This could notbe a portrait rom the

outside. We had to be on board with all elements oour lives or nothing.

And o course, as lmmakers, this was where we

were most challenged. There is an expectation o pu-rity in documentary making, that there is an absolutetruth, and i the lmmaker can just nd a position osucient height to both observe intimately and not beobserved, they will capture that truth.

TOM: ON RESPECT

The true ction is to believe that anything captured oncamera is act. The moment you isolate a shot, remov-ing it rom its time and space, you give it a bias.

As a very young lmmaker, I was on a estival pan-el with Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter). In


This Way of Life is a lm about a amily. Mum, Dad, sixkids, 50 horses, a mountain, a beach and a burntdown house.

Shot over our years, against the backdrop o aremote New Zealand mountain range and a hiddenbeach camp, we explore Peter and Colleen Karenasconnection to nature, their survival skills, and theirintimacy with each other and their horses as they at-

tempt to navigate the discord between Peter and hisather.

Though European, Peter was adopted into a Maoriamily, and is Maori in all but skin. He is a horse-whis-perer, philosopher, hunter, and builder, a husband andather. Despite seemingly overwhelming challenges,Peter reuses to compromise. Especially troubling toPeter is his broken relationship with his adopted ather,

a malevolent man who reuses to leave him alone.We ollow their amily up into the Ruahine ranges

and down to their hidden beach camp. We watch as

Peter and Colleen, both in their early 30s, celebratethe birth o a child and cope with a late miscarriage.Their attempts to navigate the discord between Peterand his ather culminate in the thet o Peters valuableherd o horses and the burning o their beloved amilyhome.

Now homeless, we watch as Peter steers his am-ily toward a new way o living and being. Regardlesso their hardships, the Karenas manage to never losesight o the magic in the everyday.

The question everyone asks is: why? Why dedicateour years to make a slice-o-lie documentary abouta local amily? It began with Peter Karenas incredible


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make a lm about the helpless and the ludicrous with-out delivering a message o hope, or without seeing

the subject nding a solution to their problems, wasuntenable as a documentary subject. That simple hu-man respect remains my guiding light to this day.

BARBARA: ON CHOICES

Peter lives by an internal code o values and honorlargely lost in modern times. Colleen is the keeper oher amilys taonga tuku iho (heritage). A true matri-arch, she sees amily as the center o the universe, andmothering as the worlds most important job.

The parents allow the kids to be exposed to risk,but only ater careul instruction in the unction andoperation o the dangerous thing (horse riding,

bow and arrow, rie, climbing on rocks, unsupervised

my youthul naivety, I challenged them onthe voyeuristic nature o their 1975 docu-mentary Grey Gardens, and my linger-ing eeling that they had taken advantageo their emotionally vulnerable subjects.I remember the cold stare that one o thebrothers gave me but that sense o howthe lm invaded the subjects privacy with-

out respect, as i their only value was as asource o amusement, stayed with me.

One o the rst docos I made, FlashWilliam, was or the National Film Boardo Canada, also in 1975. It was the story oa hermit who lived in a coal mining ghosttown in the Canadian Rockies. He made ea-ture lms, some in 35mm, some in 3D, all byhimsel. He played most o the roles, includ-ing the two leads in Dawson City Joe, whowere identical twin brothers and who ap-peared, thanks to in-camera split screen techniques,in the same rame throughout the movie.

He was also cameraman, sound recordist, editor,art director, costume designer, composer and distribu-tor o his lms.

He was a unny old man, and there were plentyo opportunities to poke gentle un at him. One shotI wanted to use was o Flash bending over, bum tocamera, rummaging through an old steamer trunk,searching or a particular piece o wardrobe. He wasgrumbling and throwing clothes let and right over hisshoulder, and it was a very unny image.

The producers vetoed this shot, saying that it wasdisrespectul o our subject. The Film Board had a strictrule that respect was more proound than showing

someone in a unny position. They were clear that to



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ocean and river swimming), and then instilling a senseo responsibility in the children, both or themselvesand their siblings.

We know that we walk a thin line here, but wedecided early on to tell the story rom their eyes, torepresent the amily the way they see themselves.We could have chosen to reect the hard reality moreclearly, more honestly even, but that this would have

been a orm o judgement, a way o imposing our lie-style choices over theirs.

As a way to acknowledge the issue o subjectivity,we chose to have the eldest son, Llewelyn, narrate thelm. Even though the parents are eloquent and heart-elt in many ways, the lm is a childs eye view. It iseathered with a magical quality, the unrealistic viewo the child who can never see the big picture.

There is a scene in the lm where, ater becom-ing essentially homeless, the amily sets up camp nearthe beach. To the kids, its a time o great adventure,and even Colleen chooses to imbue this hardship withdeeper meaning.

In a sense, we only lightly touch on the real di-culty o raising children in such a challenging situation but then the strength o the Karena amily is thatthey also brush over these things, as i they are merelyannoying details, a part o lie.

We have ound that the most common reaction tothe lm is one o sel-reection. Why do I live my lielike this? Whats stopping me rom living a simplerlie? Do I need all this stu to be happy? This Wayo Lie seems to become a reection o each audiencemembers diering ways o lie.

We were not unaware that people might react insuch a way, but we did not set out to make a lm that

would preach a simplistic liestyle over a more complex

one. We always wanted to make a lm o true intimacy,using the remarkable medium o lm to crat a talethat is satisying on a human level, in the way that ablockbuster can never be. We wanted to engage headand heart, and do it with great gentleness, so that thesense o this one amilys values could percolate intoour everyday lives.

TOM: ON POST, LOGIC, AND FEELINGWith this lm, more than any other o our productions,we operated rom a place o eeling, rather than logic,or time and motion. It was a grand departure rom theusual process o logging material, making lists andthinking that some piece was missing, an additionalinterview required, etc.

Our project management consisted o putting allthe tapes into a box and not viewing them or almostour years, until we elt that lming portion o produc-tion was complete. By then, we had 60 hours o originalmaterial. Even though our FCP suite was right there,the tape deck was right there, and we could have seen

anything at any time, I stayed away rom any kind oreview. Dont ask me why. I dont have a clue!

Structure was dicult. Because we were makinga lie story, we had no idea what was going to happennext as we shot. More importantly, because getting toknow reclusive people takes time, the longer we spentwith the amily, the more intimate we became, and themore they revealed their deepest eelings to the cam-era. The structure only revealed itsel in the editingroom, navigated by Cushla Dillon, our stalwart editor.

When I started shooting This Way o Lie in2004, Sony had just come out with their new HDV or-mat camera, the Z1U. It was small and manageable,

and the quality seemed quite astounding or such a



31/52

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We used power windows, sharpening and noise re-

duction to get the most emotion out o each shot. Wenished up by mastering out to HDCAM SR. The endresult is antastic.

Unlike mechanical motion picture cameras thatwithstood the test o time, the digital cameras o to-day are a movable east. HDV was cool or a momentbut, this week, the Sony EX-1 is my avorite favor. The

Ikonoscop A-cam dII is coming soon, and looks in-teresting. Ill probably switch allegiance many moretimes beore I lay down my camera.

Ater years o shooting 35mm lm, Ive never re-gretted going digital. Certainly the technology madeour lm possible.

BARBARA:

ON DETAILS AND DISTRIBUTION

This Way o Lie has played to sold out houses at theNew Zealand International Film Festival and the Van-couver International Film Festival, among others. Wehave selected estivals that ocus on the audience, be-

lieving that the audience will bring the sales, and soar, this has turned out to be true. We have a handul otheatrical distribution oers on the table, one broad-cast sale is completed, and another is in negotiation.

Having said all this, any rights we sell are limited.We want to keep a range o windows or ourselves. Itmeans that we dont just hand the lm over, but remainactive in promoting the lm to communities-o-kind.

We have a hybrid distribution deal or New Zea-

land, going out across the country in March 2010. The

distributor does all the bookings, scheduling and split

negotiation, using all his contacts and knowledge. We

will do the marketing and PR ourselves, either hiring


someone or doing it ourselves.

This model enables the lmmaker the person

or company with the most at stake to keep control

o the process, and not see their potential prots eaten

up in promotion.

For broadcast and other windows, such as airlines,

we have hired a sales agent or New Zealand and Aus-

tralia who takes a straight ee. No uss, no percentages

clawed rom every level o the deal. We then retain allother rights ourselves, such as DVD and non-theatre

screenings.

We are yet to nd a North American distributor

who will do that, but we are working on it, discussing

with the distributors who are interested in the lm to

attempt to put this together. In the meantime, we have

signed with a Paris-based distributor who was very

open with their sales record, and was very negotiable

on ees. All non-theatrical and DVD rights have been

split of as non-exclusive.

Here are some guidelines you might consider as

you shape your own hybrid deals:

1) Ask who the agent will take your lm to: broad-

casters, airlines, US/UK TV buyers, etc. Also ask

or an outline o expected earnings rom each othese.

2) Once the agent gets a deal, he gets your approval

on license ee, terms and any commercial deal

points. The agent will coordinate contracting the

deal, but will get lmmaker nal sign of on the

contract. Collections rom Exhibitors can be the

responsibility o either party. Who gets rst re-

coupment is also a point to negotiate on. Use a

lawyer at this point to check o the details.


34/52


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:Barbara and Tom ounded Cloud South Films as a mid-lie lovechild, to allow them to make lms together, and have previ-

ously written articles or us separately.Barb wrote about their documentary, One Man, One Cow,

One Planet in our 2007 Power o Artistic Passion issue, whicheatures the remarkable story o Peter Proctors trek to India tohelp restore traditional arming there.

In addition to her research, writing, directing and produc-ing or Cloud South Films, she is a columnist or the New Zea-

land Herald, where she was named So-cial Issues Columnist o the Year in theQantas Media Awards, and was a nalistor Columnist o the Year.

For our 2008 Music Videos issue,director and cinematographer Tom wroteabout working with the Arri D-20 digitalcinema camera on Tin Man. Among hismany awards and nominations, he won aUS Emmy Award or Outstanding Cinema-tography or a Miniseries or Movie or hiswork on The 4400; won a Genie award(the main Canadian national lm award)or Best Achievement in Cinematography(Magic In the Water) to go with two ad-

ditional nominations; and won the Cana-dian Society o Cinematographers Awardor Best Cinematography in a DramaticShort (La premire ois). Tom is also aellow o the Royal Society o the Arts.

As they told us, Our documentariesare personal, well researched, visuallycompelling and socially relevant. For us,this is the only medium worth investingin.

n

Barbara Sumner Burstyn

Thomas BurstynBay View, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand

or estivals in Spain, France, Italy and India, includ-

ing the Mumbai International Film Festival. Weve

even won a new environmental award or it and the

lm continues to sell in stores, on our website, and on

Amazon.

As we completed this article, This Way o Lie

was accepted into the Berlin Film Festival.

We also just received our rst commission, to

make a documentary I wrote seven years ago called

Leonards Lovers. It came about rom going to din-

ner parties when we lived in Montreal, and people

talking about the highly regarded and infuential

and amously reclusive singer-songwriter Leonard

Cohen. Somebody always remarked that they slept

with him, and the idea or the documentary grew rom

there. While Mr. Cohen is the conduit to the stories the

lm is a journey into the sensual and sexual transitions

o the mature woman.

It sat in my drawer or seven years until I met the

right person at the Vancouver International Film Festi-

val. I pitched it, and it was commissioned on the spot.I think that weve proven that, with diligence and

consistent attention, you can make documentaries

work nancially. It has ended up being very worth-

while or us, in every way.

n

3) Agent will arrange with lmmaker to ship any re-

quired materials. In our part o the world, this is

typically a PAL DigiBeta copy o the eature. Ma-

terials and shipping are at lmmakers expense,

and are typically on loan to buyers.

4) Agent arranges or lmmaker to provide an in-

voice or the license ee when due. Once the lm-

maker is paid, agent will invoice lmmaker or hiscut o the net license ee. I you can get an agent

or 20%, then that is good.

5) Filmmaker can cancel at anytime, with 30 days

notice to wrap up any deal. For any deal that is

concluded and signed o, but awaiting payment,

the agent will still be entitled to commission.

The key is in the details. In this way, everything remains

transparent and in your control.

NOW

Now is still This Way o Lie. Its a baby, and stillneeds lots o nurturing. For independents like us, the

process o lmmaking includes sometimes years o

promoting and marketing your lm.

The lm we wrote about or the Cow Magazine

nearly three years ago, One Man, One Cow, One Plan-

et, continues to grow. Just this year, we were selected


35/52

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a painting o Tampa Bay circa 1840. We will use thescrim to hide the movement o the turntables, but only

sometimes. Other times I want the audience to see theturntables move. Plus, there will be show-controlledlighting, rotating gobo eects, strobes and re eects

"Well gure all that out during the edit.Just another day at the oce at Boston Produc-

tions.BPI has been producing highly interactive, highly

complex, multi-disciplinary projects or museums, vis-itor centers, and theme parks or over 20 years. For theTampa Bay History Center project, we worked close-ly with exhibit designer Christopher Chadbourne andAssociates and Set Designer Jonathan Bean DesignLtd. to create a new and exciting way to tell the story


Mike SullivanNorwood, Massachusetts USA

Mike has been Senior Editor at BPI or over 10 years. His other installations in-clude the Smithsonian Institution, The International Spy Museum, and The Na-tional Collegiate Basketball Hall o Fame. A Cow member or years, he says, "Iespecially like the Art o the Edit orum. I wrote this to give back to everyone whohelped me gure out ways to make some o these Gordian projects become areality."

One Story, Two Perspectives, Three Turntables, Four Screens,and an Unconventional 7.1 Surround Sound Mix

Highly complex multi-media installations at least the successul ones are only possiblethrough careul planning, intense cooperation, and a willingness to turn the picture on its side.

My boss came into my edit room to discuss the proj-ect I was about to begin or the Tampa Bay HistoryCenter in Tampa Florida.The show is about the Seminole Indian Wars inthe 1800s. About 15-20 minutes, our screens, hesaid. Thats not unusual. Ive cut many multi-screenprojects, rom two to my current record 16. Hewent on, The two outside screens will be rotated 90degrees and displayed vertically.

Nowwere getting interesting.And there will be three large turntables, about 10

eet wide or so, with 2 or 3 lie-size dioramas on eachone that will spin into place at dierent parts o theshow.

The entire stage will be behind a scrim with


37/52

o Coacoochee, a Seminole Chie who escapedprison and a death sentence to lead his peopleduring the Second Seminole War.

PRODUCTION

All o the dialogue and narration was takenverbatim rom a series o interviews that Coa-

coochee gave to US Army Lieutenant John T.Sprague in 1841, ater Coacoochee

18th_issue_print_edition

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