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When a single production light can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars I’m always looking for alternative ways to light. Something like this is interesting alternative. You can adjust the color temperature, and customize it to fit whatever location you happen to be shooting in. And best of all, you can even use it as a praticle if needed.

Well, it’s official. “Perfect” (The short I shot last summer) has been successful entered into Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary International Film festivals.   Now all I can do is wait and see if it gets in!  For those of you with your own projects I would recommend looking at withoutabox.com It’s great for keeping track of your projects and the more than 2500 festivals worldwide that you might want to enter it in.  Good luck!

Apparently Blockbuster has decided to primarily support Blu-Ray. Definitely not good news for the HD DVD camp. Only time will tell what implications this will have for the war.

[UPDATE: This is a more balanced report. Blockbuster clarified their position by saying that they are reviewing the data constantly, and they will support whatever the consumers want. If the 250 stores (and online) start renting more HD DVD, they will adapt. HD DVD is saying that most of the Blockbuster renters are PS3 owners without games to buy, and the real money is in movie purchases. They feel that when a renter walks into a Best Buy and sees a $500+ Blu-Ray player and a $250 HD DVD player the decision will be simple.]

Apparently Blu-Ray may not be the perfect long term storage/backup medium. Some people over at AVS are reporting mold spots between the layers that makes the disk unusable. Apparently this is something that has happened before, but it still isn’t good news.

Kodak has developed a new type of sensor for their still cameras that are 2 to 4 times more sensitive to light. They do this by adding additional clear pixels that capture all wavelengths of light, which not only increases their sensitivity, but because the pixels are smaller it allows for higher resolution. The remaining red, green and blue sensors capture the color information. The technology can be used to improve both CCD and CMOS sensors. The chips will start becoming available in 2008, but no word on when they’ll find themselves in video cameras. Let’s hope it’s soon.

If you’re in the L.A. area, this Thursday UCLA is going to be demonstrating the glories of 4k digital projection. The footage, shot on 35 and 65mm, “was scanned at 8K resolution and down-sampled to blend with the 35mm scanned at 6K in a 4K DI workflow.” wow. And here I thought 4k scanning was good! Wish I was in L.A.

So for the moment HD DVD seems to be in the lead. According to Engadget the HD DVD camp is claiming 60% market share of stand alone players. Of course this is specifically designed to take the PS3 out of the playing field, but perhaps this war isn’t over yet…

For me, I like the fact that I can shoot projects with my HVX-200 and then (if they’re short enough) master them to HD DVD using DVD Studio Pro and a regular DVD. Higher quality at no extra cost.

As more and more people start getting their hands on Final Cut Studio 2 there have been a lot of questions raised about the new codec they’ve created – ProRes 422.   I, for one, wasn’t wild about having yet another format to deal with, but the reports that are starting to come in I’m beginning to change my tune.  With bit rates the same as DVCproHD and HDCAM combined, it offers something new for Mac users.   Having just gotten my hands on a FCS2 version this weekend, I’m looking forward to seeing what it has to offer.

The great divide in filmmaking is those who shoot on Film and those who shoot Video. This may change all that. At this point the quality is pretty low, but if someone else could take this and improve upon it, we could be looking at the next big break for independent film. I would love to be able to shoot 24pn on my Panasonic HVX-200 and have cheap way to show it in theaters.