Happy Holidays!

Thank you to everyone who has been reading this blog. Thanks for all the kind words,support and inspiration you have all given us over the last year. In 2010 we have some exciting stuff planned for the site that we are sure will make it more useful and interesting for everyone! Stay tuned!

Christmas Tree from Cristina Valdivieso + Jon Connor on Vimeo.

Abominable Snowman from Cristina Valdivieso + Jon Connor on Vimeo.

Read more...

When Disaster Strikes: Oops I deleted all of my footage two weeks ago!!!

Scenario: Two weeks later you realize the footage you deleted off of your desktop is somehow not backed up anywhere!! Now what?

CF cards the media used for recording with the Canon line of DSLR's are a very robust media. They can withstand a lot of punishment that a DV tape never could.

Due to the cost of CF cards, however, you need to be constantly offloading the cards and backing them up. The importance of this was driven home to me at Re:Frame San Francisco by Den Lennie , the tapeless workflow guru and co-founder of F-Stop Academy . During his presentation he talked about the majority of problems with this type of media boiling down to one thing, human error. Well, anytime I do something good, or take part in something I am proud of, I am very quick to toot my own horn. Why should it be any different when I do something bad? Really bad. We had a few consecutive jobs that put us out in the field and had us juggling our Seagate 1 TB drives like a circus performer. Everything was backed up at least twice across 2 MacBook Pro's,an iMac,a Mac Pro with a RAID 5 Array,four 1 TB Seagate Drives and

two 500 GB Seagate Drives. Seems like a year or two ago that would have lasted us a lifetime as far as storage goes. Well not anymore. The Mac Pro was filled to the brim and therefore I could no longer edit on it properly. I called my partner in crime,asking what could be deleted off of the desktop. The answer was "Make sure Everything is backed up before you delete anything!" I did. I checked and double checked. Everything on the desktop was backed up on external drives.

Delete.

I then began working on the task at hand. Fast forward two weeks.

I am starting to work on the next job in line.I go into the folder and... empty. "Hmmmm, that's weird." I thought. So for whatever reason I check another project folder on the external. Nothing. Another. Nothing. I am officially at DEFCON 1!!! Alarms are going off! I'm officially freaking out!! It feels like my life is over.

It's too painful to remember everything I lost that day. Lets just say it was about 450 GB of video footage that I could never recreate.

If I would have shot these on a regular video camera I would still have the tapes. Damn you!! I cursed my ambition. My reliance on this new technology and my idiotic finger for hitting that delete button. In an utter panic and in between sobbing uncontrollably(some details have been altered for dramatic impact) I turned to Twitter. I downplayed the severity of the situation but my sheer panic must have resonated because in a matter of minutes I had a number of replies. They ran the full gamut from, please tell me this is a joke, to surely there's a backup somewhere, to condolences on your loss. Then I got a direct message from @CodyPChristian. It said he had a similar problem once and was able to recover his files. We went back and forth as he diagnosed the problem. What OS are you on? Where were the files? Back and forth.Back and forth. Then he sends the Tweet heard round the world.(some details have been altered for dramatic impact)

Data Rescue II. Two words and a Roman numeral.That was the solution. I ended up using Data Rescue III just because it was newer and I felt like I needed any new developments in technology to save me as this was a hopeless cause in my mind. The most tedious part of the entire task was going into the preferences and un-checking the majority of the massive list of files this thing can recover/reconstruct. I was only interested in Quicktime files as I wanted this thing to just focus on recovering all of that footage that was lost. It cost $99 but this thing worked a miracle. It recovered over 450 GB of information that was gone!! It had a specific search function for just such an occasion aptly called Deleted Files.

This tale serves a few purposes. Always,always,always back-up. Then back-up your back-up's back-up before you ever even think about hitting delete. If you do find yourself in this predicament, and you are using Mac OS, Data Rescue III worked a miracle for me.

 Lastly,but probably the most important, I owe a huge thank you to @CodyPChristian This guy does a little bit of everything check him out at http://codypchristian.net/ He didn't need to help me out. He gained absolutely nothing from doing that, other then the satisfaction of helping a poor sap out that just deleted a lot of valuable footage. Regardless,he spent his time to find out what my problem was and to find a solution for me. That speaks volumes to me about the kind of guy he is,his character and willingness to help out when he can. So for data recovery I recommend Data Rescue III. For virtually anything else I recommend http://codypchristian.net/ 

Read more...

Reel World: Charles Son Talks Canon 7D and the City of Black & White Documentary

I caught up with Charles Son the co-director of an amazing short film, shot on the Canon 7D, about Mat Kearney’s last show of the City of Black & White tour. It’s really exciting to see what he and Ryan McNeil were able to do with this piece. The Reel World series is all about the practical application of DSLR’s as a filmmaking tool.

It’s one thing to go out and shoot cool beauty shots for fun,but this series is an attempt to highlight filmmakers in the field using these cameras in real world settings.

City of Black & White — Canon 7D documentary from Charles Son on Vimeo.

“Everything I've learned has come from watching movies and shooting them myself. Going to college for video production didn't help me much, other than meeting like-minded people with whom I still work today.  I think I had already learned the basics in high school, studying Scorsese and making movies with my parents' camcorder.  Since I graduated three years ago, I've been working in Hollywood at a great production / editorial company called Pictures in a Row.  So many great minds there, who have taught me a lot.I do a lot of editing as well as shooting, and it's great to do both.  If you think like an editor when you shoot, you're not going to be kicking yourself in the edit bay.

The job just kind of fell into my lap at the last minute. My co-director Ryan McNeill got a phone call from Mat's record label the night before the show to ask if we could fill in for another shooter.  We figured it'd be a quick little fluff piece, but we didn't realize how charismatic and insightful Mat would be on camera.

I had just bought the 7D a couple weeks before and I was dying to use it for more than just tests.  And since this was going to be at night with dimly lit rooms and exteriors, it was a no-brainer to use the 7D and test out its low-light capabilities in a real situation.

Simply put, the 7D kicked major ass.It more than exceeded my expectations.I couldn't believe the latitude it gave me and how well it worked in low light.I don't think we would've been able to do this shoot without it.  It's great to have so much control over the depth of field.  When I watched the raw footage, I was amazed at how "big" it made everything feel... there's a larger-than-life quality you get, where you can almost feel the size of the sensor in the images, as opposed to smaller chip cameras.And using interchangeable lenses, like a tilt-shift, is definitely a blast.

I love the Zacuto Rapid Fire.  It's so small you might not think it'll help that much, but it really does.  It's extremely easy to customize to your body.  And it's light enough that when I wasn't shooting I could leave it attached and carry it around by the 7D's neck strap.  I definitely want to try out a bigger rig at some point with a counterweight that goes over the shoulder to make it feel even more like a film camera.After the shoot, my back-ordered Z-Finder finally arrived and it too is glorious.

Ryan and I really need to thank Mat for being such a great subject to document! It was his idea to climb up on the roof for the main interview, and a lot of people have said that the roof shots are the most beautiful.He actually kept a lookout on the security guards there, and found the right time to sneak up the ladder.Maybe he should be a location scout...

Since most people don't know that DSLRs shoot video now, it's pretty entertaining to me when ordinary people start posing for you like it's a picture at events like these. If I tell them I'm actually shooting video, many will get self-conscious and don't want to be on video. And there have been a couple times when people looked so happy to be in a picture, that I pretend to snap one before walking away!("Oh that was a good one!Great smile!")I'm sure that's going to change quickly as these cameras get more popular.

Although the 7D is great in low light, the noise can be distracting in really high ISO shots.  Our colorist, Adam Sakellarides, used a great noise reduction program by Neat Video on a lot of shots.  It's a great program, extremely easy to use, and it helped immensely.  We did keep the noise in the black-and-white shots because it felt right.
And some noise can be very beautiful. However, you can definitely see the junk from the H.264 codec in a few shots... that blocky pattern that looks terrible and you can't do anything about.  If only Canon could give us uncompressed video...

These video DSLRs are such a huge step toward the democratization of filmmaking. I equate it to the release of the Panasonic DVX-100 with its 24p video. Anyone can now have professional tools and techniques at their disposal at an affordable price.  It's very exciting times. But we all need to watch out for the next generation, since there are 8-year-olds running around now with 7Ds and editing in Final Cut Pro on their new iMacs! ” – Charles Son
Check out Charles Son on Vimeo.

I couldn't agree more. I think we are living in exciting times as filmmakers.It's more about the person behind the camera
and having talent but this is a perfect example of someone gifted going out, and getting amazing results with the Canon 7D.

Read more...