Category Archives: Art

Nikon D80

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Nikon D80

After a month long teaser campaign Nikon released 10Megapixel D80, a successor to its 2004 blockbuster D70.

At $999 without lens, it doesnt excite me too much. Nikon D70 was a pathbreaker when it came out in 2004, 2 years later D80 just seem to be a lackluster update. I was expecting at least a Full Frame sensor – but looks like Nikon is commited to DX format with its APS sized sensors. Except for the 10Megapixel bump it still has almost same specs (and in some cases a step back from D70).

How does it compare to Nikon D70s? Here is a full spec table.

iStockVideo

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iStock Video 
iStockPhoto which was everymans cheap $1 photostock agency, is now launching iStockVideo, and paying $35-$50 for every 30 second HD clip. You can shoot a 30 sec clip using ur fancy cameraphone or a HD cam and get paid (assuming its of good quality)

They pay:
Small (320×240) = $5
Medium (640×480) = $10
Large (720×486) = $20
HD 720 (1280×720) = $35
HD 1080 (1920×1080) = $50

Phew, now I at least put my HD cam to good use :)

48hour Film Fest

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Cinematography: ME

Participated in the Seattle 48hour Film Festival. We made a short called “Folded”. The genre we picked was “Drama”. We have 3 items which we need to include in the short.

  1. Prop: One Sleeping Bag
  2. Character: Bonnie the Insurance Agent
  3. Dialogue: “Prompt…I expect you to be prompt..prompt and courteous”

It was great fun to shoot – and made a bunch of new filmmaking friends. Our short is showing on Tuesday July 11th at 7pm and Thursday July 13th is at 9pm.

Séance

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seance

Séance is a age old tradition of communicating with the dead sprits through a medium. New Jersey based filmmaker Arun has taken this as a subject for his short film “Seance“. So when a young man tries to unravel his future by consulting a Seance practitioner, he gets more than he bargained for. The story is simple – but very well told. It was a great overall effort.

Few comments:

  1. BGM Score by Steve Mazzaro was fabulous.
  2. That single scary moment was well shot, and great silent buildup.
  3. Tom Cappadona as a spiritual medium was spot on.
  4. Production values by Stan Harris was as good as it gets for an ultra low budget short film. It gave a nice creepy ambience to the whole short.
  5. The lighting being switched on/off during the proceedings was a bit distracting.
  6. A few lines of dialogue could have been rewritten (“Let me GO…NOW“)
  7. Casting – As I said the old actor was spot on – but I only wonder how would a native american or some abroginee actor would have performed in this role of spritual medium. The reason being, black magic, voodoo, seance etc are more culturally interviened with those cultures.
  8. When the medium sees his lost wife(?) spirit inside the young man – a subconsious reach to touch the young man, seeing him as his wife…before checking himself – thus breaking his stance would have injected some backstory into the short 6minutes (longing).
  9. Another cliched suggestion – but one cannot ignore the creepy ambience sound of distant background rain creates (no not thunder).
  10. The story’s main revealing plot was a bit timid – victor? to that we say, so what? we didnt get to see the emotional connection between the young man and his love for his girlfriend. To prop that part up: the story could have asked the actor to at least have her picture in his wallet, and hand it over to the medium while asking the question. For more dramatic effect, a tatooed name on his hands “Patrica” or something…

great job Arun!

Coding Fireworks

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SN1.jpgfireworks.jpg

The July 4th fireworks was sure impressive. Spectacular display of synchoronized pyrotechnics coordinated with computer precision.. computer? Well, you didn’t think that little midgets set off the fireworks with such precision by hand, running around a carefully arranged maze of stacked fireworks waiting to be lit – did you? If so, sorry to burst your bubble – while we are at it…Santa Claus is not real either ;)

How to effectively blow taxpayers money up in the air? It takes 3 things.

  1. First, obviously the Fireworks, ($147 at Costco)
  2. Software to choreograph the display ($2000-$4000)
  3. Hardware which ignites the fireworks (via firewire port ;) ($8000)

Dont have a budget for all these? Well, you can do it all yourself in the computer you are reading this on…

Unfortunately due to rain, I was scared to bring my camera out (well, not really, I forgot it in the car :) – so no pictures except from my phonecam.

First Film to be shot with a Cellphone

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Cellphone film   Nokia N90

An Italian Director has completed a full 90 min movie using his cellphone. Amazingly no post production work done to the footage to cleanup the aliasing or to bump up the resolution.

Shot with a Nokia 90 in the MPEG-4 codec with a miniscule budget of mere $1000+, this movie is an assimilation of interviews about love and eroticism shot on Italian beaches. They didnt use any special lighting – just a small pocket light did the trick most of the time.

The writing was on the wall ever since cellphones were able to record more than 15 sec movie clips. My 2003 $500 Sanyo used to record video without sound, now even a entry level camera has a video camera in it.

Can’t wait to see a bootleg copy of the film, shot inside the theater with another camera phone :)

Stereoscopic 3D Monitors

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sharp_3d.jpg

Sharp has introduced a 3D Lappie. Wow!

What are the big boys up to, a company roundup:

  • Philips has actual 3D consumer monitor.
  • Toshiba has a prototype 3D monitor that doesn’t require glasses.
  • Sanyo has come up with a prototype glasses-less 3D monitor that can simultaneously provide two different TV programs–one for a person on the left and one on the right.

I guess it would be great for advertizing – mmm… pizza

Jimmy the Tulip

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Jimmy the Tulip

 

JVC upgrades HD100

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HD100 when it was released last Oct – ran into rough waters with its split-screen issues and lack of 60P (for reality look & slowmo). Now it has updated its lineup to offer 2 more cameras based on HD100 design. The left column is the old camera, and the 2 right columns represent the 2 new cameras announced today.

Features GY-HD100U GY-HD200U GY-HD250U
Price $5200 (w/lens) $8000(w/lens) $9000(no lens)
720/60p
[MiniDV Tape]		 No, only 720/30P (6GOP) Yes at 4:2:0 (12GOP) Yes at 4:2:0 (12GOP)
720/60p
[component out]		 Yes at 4:2:2 Yes at 4:2:2 Yes at 4:2:2
(3) 1280×720
1/3″ CCD		 Yes Yes Yes
Colorspace 4:2:0 (tape) &
4:2:2 (thro digitizer)		 4:2:0 (tape) &
4:2:2 (thro digitizer)		 4:2:0 (tape) &
4:2:2 (HD-SDI or digitizer)
HD-SDI No No Yes
Word Clock No No Yes
Gen-Lock No No Yes
Flips Image No Yes Yes
Enhanced Cinema Gamma No Yes Yes
Accessories DR-HD100U (Hard disk)
KY-HD250 (studio adapter )
HZ-CA13U (Lens adapter for PL Lens)
CCU connection (wire-remote) to control power, genlock, R/B gain, black level and intercom up to 330 feet
Availablity Available Now Oct 2006 Oct 2006

RED1

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Red

RED camera has finally announced its price – $17,500. This is a true 4k resolution camera (equivalent of Super 35mm film camera).

The price includes a Super-35mm sensor (the CMOS CCD), S35mm PL lens mount (popular film lens mount), LCD, HD-SDI output (4:2:2 capability), dual HD-SDI outputs (4:4:4: capability), battery and charger. HD-SDI is the digital uncompressed data link out of the camera. The price doesn’t include Lens,  storage modules and other accessories.

With its modular design, there is no need to buy another camera for the next 10years if you have 20K lying around.

More info at http://www.red.com/

Format table: http://snipurl.com/redmatrix

Borrowed Music – 2

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I never knew that day will come so soon (read the last para of my last post).

Today, a super mega budget movie borrowed the soundtrack from our ARR’s score!! Nicolas Cage’s movie ‘Lord of War’ uses our ARR’s Bombay theme. When Nicolas cage gets arrested in Africa – the sun sets down, we hear Bombay theme in the background – just the full theme, not even a remix.

There you go – as far as I know thats the first time a major Hollywood movie used music from our movies! ARR has made us proud :)

As Manoj points out in the comments, the film makers did obtain the rights from Universal Music (India). It was funny the way they gave credits in the end titles (in the actual movie, not in IMDB) – The title card read as “Mumbai Theme Music” not “Bombay Theme Music” – such political correctness. It reminded me of the time when Bombay was renamed, my alma mater didn’t want to change its name from ‘IIT Bombay’ to ‘IIT Mumbai’ – so they called it : IIT Bombay, Mumbai :)

Borrowed Music 1

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No no – don’t jump to conclusions – nobody ripped off the famous ‘Sex and the City’ tune.

Well, ripping off music, themes and tunes are nothing new in our side of the hemisphere. Our Deva dutifully copied ‘Primal Fear’ (Vaali), ARR from ‘Bewitched’ (En Swaasa Katre) and the list extends on and on. Even I have heard some 60′s classical tunes (from old black and white movies) stolen completely from American 30′s music.

So imagine my surprise when I was watching Ang Lee’s ‘Yin shi nan nu’ (1993), and halfway into the movie I heard it – The famous theme tune from Sex and the City. Back to the initial question – yes, nobody copied from ‘Sex and the City’, but ‘Sex and the city’ has completely ripped off the tune from Ang Lee’s Chinese movie – Not just a few notes, the whole damn tune!

Undoubtedly ‘Sex and the City’ has the most infectious theme tunes, a tune which I keep humming all day (until recently replaced by another HBO tune from ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’, which itself was plagiarized with permission from a Bank commercial). Either way its one of the great tunes on TV today. Digging further, it seems that HBO is actually being sued by the guy who originally composed the tune for the Chinese movie.

I just dream of a day when a western MD rips off our music (for effect, maybe an Annu Malik or Deva tune) – and our musicians take a Warner Bros or a DreamWorks to court – yes, that would be the day!

Listen to a portion of the clip here

Raag De Rahman

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Just when I thought AR Rahman hit rock bottom with his lackluster score for Aamir Khan’s Rang De Basanti – I heard his endearing music for Deepa Mehta’s Water. Though it has some hangover from their previous collaboration 1947 Earth. Here he re-establishes his ‘born supremacy’ over Period music – period! :)

Warriors of Heaven & Earth

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Poor direction, Poor Acting, Inappropriate music.

At 5.1 surround sound, AR Rehman’s BGM music does sound spectacular – but very inappropriate. I am giving the benefit of doubt to our madras maestro as Director ‘Ping He’ seems to be asleep at the wheel half the time. He is no Ang Lee, so if you expect a ‘House of Flying Daggers’ (poetry in motion) or a ‘Couching Tiger’ you would be very disappointed.

The acting is pathetic, the editing cuts jarring and director’s touches are plain pretentious (Villain playing some sort of violin, and camera slow tracks from the back – while he delivers his punch lines.. please!). And the coup de grace is that silly f/x sequence.

Coming to Music – the music video sounds great with all the usual Rahmanque touches. But when the movie starts, neither the scripts nor the story offers any definitive moments for our maestro to exercise his magic – so he uses it whenever and wherever possible resulting in a missmatch.

2.5/5

Sanyo Xacti HD1

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Sanyo has just released a sub-$1000 consumer pocket HD camera. Doesn’t have any indie shooting features, its purely a consumer pocket cam. Like my dream cam HVX200 – this one is tapeless solid state memory cam. Die tape Die!.

But it has successfully hit the magic under $1000 price tag - heck its not even sub $1000 – its only $799. In comparison the cheapest single chip Sony HD cam is around $1,700.