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

CAMERAS: From DSLR to the Latest 3D & Beyond

The Future is Now

Articles, news and more about the
latest DSLR, HD, Stereoscopic 3D rigs,
— plus much more.
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THE MAGAZINE FOR MEDIA PROFESSIONALS WORKING IN VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO, MOTION GRAPHICS, IMAGING & DESIGN

Creative COW
® ®

C R E AT I V E CO 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
JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2010

CREATIVE COW MAGAZINE

A CREATIVE COW LLC PUBLICATION In This Issue:
PUBLISHERS:
Tim Wilson’s Column ............................................. 8
Ron & Kathlyn Lindeboom
The Back Forty with Ron Lindeboom . ............. 50
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF/
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER:
Tim Wilson

The Future
magazine@creativecow.net
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:
Gary Adcock,
Barbara Sumner Burston,
Tom Burston, Richard Harrington,
Ron Lindeboom, Marco Solorio,

is Now
Mike Sullivan, Tim Wilson
LAYOUT & DESIGN:
Ron Lindeboom, Tim Wilson,
Stefani Rice
CREATIVE COW ADVERTISING:
Tim Matteson
tmatteson@creativecow.net
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR:
Abraham Chaffin
abraham@creativecow.net
CONTACT US:
magazine@creativecow.net
(805) 239-5645 voice 8 CREATIVE COW: YEAR 10
(805) 239-0712 fax As we enter our 10th year, we add even more to Bessie.
Creative COW Magazine is published bi-monthly by
CreativeCOW LLC (Creative Communities of the World) at 10 Your Future Is Now
2205 Villa Lane, Paso Robles, CA 93446. (805) 239-5645. Creative COW Leader, Gary Adcock, works with many of the
Postage paid at Hanover, New Hampshire. U.S. subscrip- people and companies defining the future. Here is the story.
tion rates are free to qualified subscribers. Creative COW
is a registered trademark of Creative COW LLC. All rights
are reserved. Magazine contents are copyright © 2009 by 18 HDSLRs for Video: Beyond the Hype
Creative COW Magazine. All rights are reserved. Right of Marco Solorio’s real-world exploration of DSLRs continues.
reprint is granted only to non-commercial educational
institutions such as high schools, colleges and universi-
ties. No other grants are given. 26 This Way of Life
Two families, one on each side of the lens, find what matters.
The opinions of our writers do not always reflect those
of the publisher and while we make every effort to be
as accurate as possible, we cannot and do not assume 36 Coacoochee’s Story
responsibility for damages due to errors or omissions. One story, two perspectives, three turntables, four screens.
LEGAL STATEMENT: All information in this magazine is
offered without guarantee as to its accuracy and appli- 43 Industry News and Featured Products
cability in all circumstances. Please consult an attorney, New cameras, lenses, plug-ins, and iPhone applications.
business advisor, accountant or other professional to dis-

50 2010: The Year the COW Gets Real

cuss your individual circumstances. Use of the informa-
tion in this magazine is not intended to replace profes-
sional counsel. Use of this information is at your own risk
and we assume no liability for its use.
The industry’s largest virtual community for media pros will
expand its services and offerings for its members during 2010.
It will be a year of big changes and additional free services.

4 The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine

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 All things considered, I’d rather be here now.

Tim Wilson
Boston, Massachusetts
A h, the wisdom of bumper stickers. That’s where I got the title for this column.
“I’d rather be here now” is a Zen-like antidote to the many variations of “I’d
rather be [fishing, flying, fly-fishing, knitting, bowling, grandparenting, riding my Har-
Editor-In-Chief,
Associate Publisher ley…]” bumper stickers we’ve seen for so many years. It officially replaces my previous fa-
Creative COW Magazine vorite, “I feel so much better since I gave up hope.”
This column’s title might also remind you of comedian W.C. Fields, who joked that his
epitaph should read “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” In reality, it reads
“W. C. Fields 1880 – 1946,” replacing an oft-told gag with a Zen-like clarity.
The truth is that I only know enough about Zen to know that it’s more complicated
than it looks, except when it’s simpler. But the concept of “mindfulness” found in some
By paying schools of Buddhism resonates with me. One practice of it uses the pauses of daily life –
say, stopping at a traffic light – to take a few breaths, and clear your mind before moving
attention forward. I can’t say I’m getting any closer to enlightenment, but I find when I slow down
that the things making me frantic look more like what they are, a series of steps to be
to what is taken, starting with this one, now.
happening Of course, Master Nishijima reminds us that if we think that mindfulness is something
to aspire to, then we can never achieve it. Now that’s Zen.
now, we find I started thinking about this again a few months ago, when we were drowning in all
those “Best of the Decade” lists. I appreciate their intent — reflection on the difference
the ways between what was new, and what remains important. A form of mindfulness, even. In
practice though, these lists can be more lazy than reflective, and too often, simply wrong.
in which You can find your own examples of “wrong” — seriously, how many of them have you ever
agreed with? — but I saw the difference between lazy and reflective in a magazine I get
the future, that re-ran articles from earlier issues, verbatim!
We thought about doing something like that, I admit. But as we talked about some
and its new of our favorite articles from the first three years of Creative COW Magazine, I found myself
wanting to revisit the writers. Of the over 100 COW authors we’ve published who aren’t me
possibilities, or Ron, barely a half-dozen have written for us more than once! And so we’ve begun asking
is already some of the folks we haven’t heard from in a while — and will be asking others — what
they’re working on, and seeing, right now.
here. In this issue, they offer unexpected insights into the current state of cameras and
lenses (including HDSLRs), best uses of social media for building your business, the latest
multimedia technologies, and a documentary about a family who truly exemplifies living
in the now. The authors of that article also have some great advice about new possibilities
for indie film distribution available now.
How cool is that? By paying attention to what’s happening now, we find the ways in
which the future, and its new possibilities, is already here.
Generally speaking, the further you design along the cutting edge, the faster your
work will look out of date. The Peter Max and Andy Warhol vision of 1960s pop art was so
“modern” at the time that, now, it looks positively quaint.
Which means that it’s time for another one of my patent-pending Liberal Arts Nerd
Digressions. The entire concept of “modern” falls out of date fast. At least in the West, the
modern era is thought to begin around 1500 (the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the
“discovery” of the Americas). Authors, architects and other artists in both the West and the
East were widely using the word “postmodern” to describe their work by the end of the
Second World War!
So in this issue, as much as our authors describe the latest technologies, workflows
and business practices, they remind us that some aesthetic values are more enduring than
others — a good thing to remember even now.
n

6 The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine

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Creative CO
AS WE ENTER YEAR 10, CREATIVE COW FOUNDATION IS LAUNCHED TO AWARD SC

Creative COW LLC introduces

CREATIVE COW FOUNDATION,
educational charitable fund
Creative COW Foundation has awarded its first check for $10,000
to the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women

I n April of 2010, we enter the 10th year of Creative

COW. As we near this milestone, we felt that it was
the logical time to open yet another chapter in the
Creative COW story, one that we feel is the logical next
step for The COW. We are launching a new charitable
foundation, one that focuses on assisting students.
After all, many have helped us to build the dream we
had, and so we want to lend a hand to some of those
who are struggling to follow their own dreams.
To celebrate our 10th year online, we are launching
a new 501(c)3 federally registered non-profit founda-
tion whose mission is to provide financial scholarships
and grants to students in the fields of film, television
and media studies. Our educational grants will focus
on programs that assist both students from the USA
and from around the world. The first such institution
to receive a check for $10,000 from the Creative COW
Foundation is the American Film Institute’s Directing
Workshop for Women program.
Why did we choose this program as our first re-
cipient? In the formative early days of Creative COW,
it was founded and managed by my wife, Kathlyn
Lindeboom. Creative COW was a female-owned busi-
ness, and because of this, Adobe Systems approached
us at a critical time and reached into a grant program
mandated to go to a female-owned business. It kept
Creative COW alive at a time when it likely would have
failed without it.

Ron Lindeboom
Paso Robles, California USA

Husband and wide team, Ron & Kathlyn Lindeboom, are the co-founders of Creative COW
and say that “Our greatest strength in building The COW was that we didn’t know when to
quit. Our accountants once told us that their firm had no other account like ours. They also
laughed and said Creative COW wouldn’t exist if any of their other accounts owned it.”

8 Creative COW: YEAR 10 — Creative COW Magazine

OW: Year 10
SCHOLARSHIPS & GRANTS TO STUDENTS IN FILM & MEDIA STUDIES PROGRAMS.
Today, we are a California registered LLC, and
though the company has changed over the years and
has seen our membership increase into the millions
each month, you do not forget things like that which
Kristan Jiles and the Adobe team did all the way back
in the Summer of 2001.
It happened again in 2002, when we were under
an attack on our server that took us offline for most
of two weeks. We didn’t know how to fight it and we
didn’t have the money to hire security experts to do
the work for us. So we wrote our leaders to tell them
that we were going to close the book on Creative COW.
But when we did, we received an email from one of the
leaders — Jason Howard of SpectSoft — who told us
that he knew how to help us, and that he would. He
brought in his friend, Michael Gregg — who is now a
security developer with Red Hat — and they had us
back in operation in a couple of days. Amazing guys.
As we grew and grew, we soon eclipsed the power
and capability of our servers to handle the extreme
loads that our traffic demanded from our servers. So,
Jim Bovenzi and Damon Muzny of AMD helped us get
sponsored with numerous dual- and quad-Opteron™
based servers that got us through those tough times.
There are many more stories like these and I could
fill pages with them all. The kindness that people have
showed us at critical times, comes due one day and
you have an obligation to “pay it forward” to others. It
is because of people like the ones just named and the
kindness of others too numerous to list here, that we
launched Creative COW Foundation. They are also the
reason that there is even a Creative COW, at all, if the
truth be told. We helped steer the car but there have
been many who kept the tank full of gas.
It is to everyone who has ever encouraged or sup-
ported our efforts over the years, to whom we dedi-
cate this endeavor as an honor and remembrance to
their kindness and their own generosity.
A CHARITY THAT REALLY IS A CHARITY
The work and costs of the foundation is underwritten
completely by Creative COW, so that we are paying all
the costs of administration, legal, and accounting —
leaving 100% of every dollar raised by Creative COW
Foundation to be awarded in its entirety to deserving
Creative COW Magazine — Creative COW: YEAR 10
students. You wouldn’t expect anything less from the
COW, would you? Creative COW Foundation has elect-
ed to set our foundation’s standard high, very high.
If you support Creative COW Foundation, you can
be assured that it has been set up so that none of the
monies raised will be siphoned off for administration,
bookkeeping, legal, or any other expense. None.
Creative COW LLC will bear all operational costs,
so that the Creative COW Foundation remains free to
operate as an unencumbered conduit through which
every dollar raised is passed along directly to deserv-
ing students.
Why do it this way, when legally we didn’t have
to? Because this was never about money. Few charities
operate this way, but we felt that our members needed
a charity they could trust in these days when you hear
one horror story after another on the news.
People have stood by us when times were tough,
companies have supported our efforts year after year
— in good times and through tough times — and as
the years have passed, the COW has grown until it truly
is unique among all of the companies that serve media
professionals. We have always been grateful for this
support and have never taken it for granted.
Today, we have passed Google’s coveted two mil-
lion unique visitors a month traffic level. To be honest,
we never thought that we’d get this far; under normal
circumstances, we probably wouldn’t have.
And so, it’s time for payback.
With Creative COW Foundation, Creative COW be-
gins a new phase of community building and support.
We hope that you are as excited as we are about this
new endeavor for Creative COW — an endeavor that
will help deserving students from both the USA and
from around the world to fulfill their dreams.
Thank you for being a part of The COW’s great ad-
venture over the years. It has truly been an honor to
serve you and to see how this community has grown
during the past decade. You are an amazing bunch.
You and many others that make the COW part of
your lives have graciously joined us in our myriad of
endeavors over the years. We hope that you will join
us in supporting the Creative COW Foundation when
and as you can.
n
9
 No need to wait and see what's on the horizon for cinematography

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

P assing into a new decade, people are constantly

asking what the future holds. Everyone wants to
know what new camera, product or technology will
impact the future. I am one of those people who get to
see the future in what lies in what is here, now.
After I take a look at current cameras, lenses and
related technology, I am going to close by surprising
you with my pick for today’s hottest technology.
SONY
While every other manufacturer has been leaving tape
behind on their higher-end products, Sony bucked the
trend to release the first 10-bit tape based HD cam-
corder, in the SRW-9000 — basically an HDCAM SRW-1
deck with the F23’s imaging system mounted directly
on it. Sony will offer an optional 35mm sensor upgrade
and digital recording capability for the SRW9000 cam-
era by the end of the year, along with a 25% cut in the
price of SR tape stock
In December, Sony announced “SR 2.0,” an updat-
ed recording system based around HDCAM SR that will
allow for various compression levels, a solid state re-
cording module, direct access to the “native” HDCAM
SR codec in MXF wrapped MPEG-4 SStP (Simple Studio
Profile), and a 220Mbps “delivery” version of the SR co-
dec via Gigabit Ethernet.

Gary Adcock
Chicago, Illinois USA

Gary recently contributed to "Metadata and The Future of Filmmaking" for Creative
COW Magazine's "Workflow 3.0" issue, in which he and Academy Award®-winner Dave
Stump, ASC, outlined the process of tracking metadata from the lens on-set, all the
way through editing and VFX. Gary serves on the National Training Committee for
the International Cinematographer's Guild (Local 600), and hosts in many high-end
Creative COW forums. He is also at work on two new training titles for the Creative COW
Master Series. Gary serves as the 2010 Tech Chair for NAB's Director of Photography
Workshop. For more information, visit forums.creativecow.net/nab2010

10 The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine

 Sony’s XDCAM team has also recently
updated their offerings with the shoulder-
mount version of the venerable XDCAM EX
(the PMW-350), as well as the new PDW-350
XDCAM HD camera. Just as we were headed
to press, Sony also released a new solid state
professional camcorder, the HXR-NX5U,
which records AVCHD up to 24Mbps in
1080P/24, rather than an MP2 compressed
file inside of an MP4 MXF wrapper.

PANASONIC
Panasonic keeps hammering away at the The Sony SRW-9000
high-end market. Of course, I originally
chuckled at the Varicam 3700’s limited fea-
tures, yet this workhorse has, hands down,
won me over. The addition of 1080 4:4:4 cap-
ture, and 1-60 fps as VFR on new E-series P2
cards or via dual link output changes every-
thing, and allows Panasonic to do in 1080 what
is a staple of the 720p workflow. The ability to
record 96K audio seals the deal on the 3700’s
status as a mainline production camera usable
in multiple shooting scenarios .
Panasonic also rocked CES 2010 by show-
ing off a working prototype of a one-piece 3D
camera that records stereoscopically to dual, The Panasonic HPX-3700
Acacdeny Award® is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. All rights are reserved.

interal SDHC/SD cards in camera. A vastly

simplified shooting technology using a sin-
gle camera to capture both streams of video,
combined with a projected $21K USD price,
and Panasonic once again has chosen to lead
stereoscopic production, much like they have
done all along in HD. I am looking forward to
testing this camera for an extended review
here on the Cow later this spring.

[Editor's Note: for details on Panasonic’s re-
cently announced HD stereoscopic 3D offering,
please see the Industry News section elsewhere
in this issue.]

ARRI
When the world’s top manufacturer of film
cameras decides to revamp its digital camera
line, watch out. When the new Alexa camera
system was announced last fall at IBC, you
could almost feel the ground shaking on the
show floor — and I was 4 halls away!
ARRI came to fight, bringing a prototype
imager to the show floor with a baseline expo-
sure at more than 800+ ASA (2x faster than the
Sony F35), and an advertised latitude of more
than 12 stops.
With an as-yet unannounced tapeless
capture system, and ARRI’s long standing rep-
utation for unrivaled quality and meticulous
construction, I cannot wait to get my hands on
a model for testing.
The ARRI Alexa is set to give every other
The ARRI Alexa
camera manufacturer a run for image quality and versatility
when they release their updated RAW workflow for the cam-
era, which is 1080/60p capable with variable frame rates, live
video out, and an HD (1280x720) optical or electronic view-
finder. Here’s hoping that the new EVF is usable on other cam-
era systems, as, at first glance, I found it superior to the incred-
ible RED EVF
Industry watchers, note: ARRI USA has wooed HD guru Mi-
chael Bravin from his long-time association with Band Pro and
Sony to head up the marketing for their new camera. Things
are going to get very interesting, fast.
WORTHY EFFORTS
There are a number of other high end players to watch now.

Creative COW Magazine — The NOW Issue 11

While the high-speed footage from Vision Re-
search’s Phantom is still surprising any num-
ber of shooters, how many of you noticed that
the Phantom 65 has a true 65mm digital im-
ager? That’s over two inches across!
Silicon Imaging has been making inroads
with the SI 2K systems, especially in the 3D
space, because the physical design of their
cameras. The 2K mini is under four inches
long, including the PL-mount!
More important, by embedding the IRI-
DAS Speedgrade Onset directly into their
camera systems, SI has taken the lead on the
workflow side of high-end production. Non-
destructive “looks” can be added while shoot-
ing, with the full color management metadata
able to be passed through to post.

METADATA
The time has come for all manufacturers to
embrace the capture and maintenance of
metadata from the camera through delivery.
As it is, except when using a transfer-
ring function for the newest codecs like AVC-
I, PhantomCine, ARRIRAW or R3D, the NLEs
and post apps we currently work with have
the nasty habit of stripping off all incoming
metadata. No matter how carefully we guard
metadata through production, it is too often
decimated in post.
Manufacturers, start with this rule for
metadata management: Do No Harm. If you
don’t use it, don’t mess it up.
Above, James Cameron on the set of "Avatar." Photo courtesy
STEREOSCOPIC 3D
Mark Fellman, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
This is not your parents' anaglyph. No red and
Below, the Phantom® 65 Digital Cinema Camera.
green lenses. No spears coming out of the
screen to shock you like some amusement
park attraction. With over $1billion in ticket
sales for James Cameron’s “Avatar” world-
wide in 17 days, and with over 75% of viewers
choosing to pay higher ticket prices for the 3D
version, it is time for us all to see: 3D isn’t go-
ing away this time.
At 162 minutes, “Avatar” also proved to
me that a stereoscopic feature could run that
long without giving viewers the profoundly
pounding headache normally associated with
extended viewing of 3D content. Digital pro-
jection has helped make it much easier, by
combining cross polarization and brighter
projectors with specialty screens created to
enhance the visual experience and reduce fa-
tigue. Be thankful.
3D isn’t just for movies, either. Nearly
every manufacturer at the 2010 Consumer nels to their lineups by midyear, and with ESPN planning to
Electronics Show was showing some flavor broadcast 85 live events in 3D in the first year.
of home 3D display. This was mirrored in an- Expect 3D technology to take leaps and bounds using
nouncements from Discovery, Disney, HDNet newly-created post and production tools specifically designed
and DirecTV, all adding dedicated 3D chan- for this workflow.

12 The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine

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 Companies like Element Technica and PACE —
whose Fusion 3D system, co-designed by Vince Pace
and James Cameron, was used on “Avatar” — are at
the forefront, yet there are creative places for other
niche players. One huge leap in 3D came from IN-
2CORE, whose QTAKE HD was created to provide real-
time stereoscopic 3D video assist.
Funny as it may seem, this has been difficult, if
not impossible, until now. On “Avatar,” the produc-
tion crew had to use secondary Codex captures to be
able to provide real-time playback of the stereo signal
on set. That meant requiring both SRW-1 and Codex
recorders on every camera — a rather pricey way to
handle the issue, but at the time production on Avatar
began, it was the best way to handle the stereoscopic
playback process normally done by the video assist
person on set.
LENSES
All the talk about RED has helped make high-end PL
Mount lenses all the rage. Designed for the film com-
munity, ARRI’s Positive Lock mount has found new
life for lenses that had previously been reserved for
commercial and big screen productions. PL mounts
are available for digital cinema cameras including the
Sony F35, ARRI D-21, Vision Research Phantom, Silicon
Imaging SI 2K, and all manner of film cameras.
At least four new lens companies have sprung up
in the last two years to provide PL mount lenses and
conversions, but stalwart Zeiss released new Compact
Primes in an ultra-lightweight frame in focal lengths
from 18mm to 85mm that set the market ablaze.
(That's them in the title graphic for this article.)
Cooke also announced the S/i 5 with internal LED
technology that allow ACs and 2nds to see focus and
Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, Zoë Saldana as Neytiri in "Avatar."
Photo courtesy WETA, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
Creative COW Magazine — The NOW Issue
aperture markings in total darkness. They also brought
back the affordable Panchro series of lenses.
One other company that has come into focus for
me is Vision III imaging. I expect to see a lot from this
company in the next couple of years. Based heavily in
the defense and military sector, much like Vision Re-
search’s Phantom camera was in the early 90s, their
“v3” lens technology uses a rotating iris adaptation for
“parallax scanning:” incorporating parallax informa-
tion into standard images for enhanced realism and
dimension.
My early testing at Fletcher Camera in Chicago
showed a noticeable increase in the perceived sharp-
ness of the image as it was recorded. Vision III calls
this “textural depth,” and by the time this article is
published, I will have had time to work with their v3
technology more thoroughly, and to post the results
at blogs.creativecow.net/garyadcock.
AND TODAY’S HOTTEST TECHNOLOGY IS…
Anamorphic lenses — yes, you read that right.
With 2009’s “Star Trek,” J.J. Abrams reminded us
what anamorphic film looks like. Think of all the eter-
nally classic films that you have seen, iconic spectacles
like "The Robe," "Lawrence of Arabia," "Spartacus,"
"Dog Day Afternoon," "Sound of Music," "Marathon
Man," "Blade Runner," more recent films like "A Few
Good Men," "Unforgiven," "Terminator 2," "Titanic,"
"The Abyss," Star Wars Episodes 1 & 2, even indie films
like "The Kite Runner" — these were all shot using
Hawk or Panavision anamorphic lenses.
Anamorphic lenses are not truly wide angle, as
much as they are panoramic, designed to capture wide
vistas. Since 35mm film is essentially a 4x3-recording
medium, anamorphic lenses allowed for the various
14
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“Widescreen,” “Scope” or “Vista” formats to use every
single millimeter of the celluloid, not something truly
possible since the advent of sound on film. The advan-
tage when shooting film is not something to be over-
looked, since the exposed negative area is 52% larger.
But the process of squeezing and unsqueezing
images adds subtle, but aesthetically pleasing, dis-
tortions. We associate the soft edges and subtle dark-
ening onscreen, as well as the specific bloom of the
bokeh — the soft, out-of-focus areas of the frame —
with cinema. Anamorphic lenses can accentuate, even
exacerbate the separation between what is in and out
of focus, due to the optical properties of the glass, es-
sentially a “concave” grouping of elements forcing
the entire image into a more “square” shape as it is
recorded.
Since ARRI’s D-21 and VR’s Phantom cameras both
have essentially square imagers, and RED windows its
full 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.
16
I am all for a 50% increase in sharpness and res-
olution that anamorphic lenses bring, yet that is not
the only reason why I use them. It is about that look
the lens imparts on the image, the muted out of focus
highlights, or the resounding “pop” as the lens finish-
es “breathing” into focus, or those distinctive anamor-
phic lens flares.
It is also about getting away from the plastic
nature of how video often looks when it is shot, and
moving our images back to the “filmic” quality that is
associated with the most classic films we watch — not
the rate of the frames, but the look of the world in each
of those frames.
Lenses like the Hawk Anamorphics from Vantage
Film allow us to bring back many of the visual artifacts
like edge softness and chromic aberrations, in addi-
tion to the critically sharp but minimal depth of field
we associate with classic films, within the controllable
environment of state of the art digital recording.
For example, the Hawk 60mm Macro lens allows
me to set to its shortest focal length, then rack focus to
infinity, without any change in aperture — impossible
with older anamorphic lenses.
ANAMORPHIC
CINEMATOGRAPHY
As movies went widescreen, a question
immediately presented itself: what’s the best
way to get wider images into a 35mm frame
whose width remains the same?
One solution, shown at top, is to simply place
the wider image in the middle of the frame, and
mask out the unused space in projection. How-
ever, this both wastes film stock, and leaves over
half of the frame’s 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 frame. 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 of filmed images: sep-
aration between foreground and
vertically stretched background,
and aberrations including hori-
zontal and rainbow flares, veiling
light, and others, all of which are
often used as artistic elements.
Lower image of girl, as well as ad-
ditional information, courtesy of
ARRI.
The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine
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The Hawk 1.3 Squeeze series also

offers the ability to shoot 1.78 (16x9)
when using one of the square sensor
digital cameras I mentioned, but when
that same lens is used on a standard
16x9 imager, it allow use of the full sen-
sor to record the more cinematic 2:35
aspect ratio that we are accustomed to
in the theater.

YOUR FUTURE, NOW

Our future is here. It is now. John Cho as Ikaru Sulu in "Star Trek." Horizontal lens flare behind his
Advanced camera technologies al- ear and oval highlights in bokeh are distinctive artifacts of anamorphic
low us to strive toward new levels of vi- lenses. Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures Corporation.
sual quality. That does not mean that we
need to abandon our visual legacy. The
desire to overcome the limitations of analog filmmak-
ing does not require a new look that is too clean, too Ready for more?
crisp, just too flat on screen. We do not need to repeat Join Gary, Future Media Concepts
the mistake made when the print industry transitioned and Creative COW at the NAB
into desktop publishing, when the art of typography Director of Photography Workshop,
was very nearly tossed to oblivion.
As we move farther and farther into the digital
April 10-12 in Las Vegas.
age, we reach a point in time where everything old is
new again. We may not be shooting as much film as we For more information, visit
used to, but there is no reason the images should not forums.creativecow.net/nab2010
look as good.
n

Creative COW Magazine — The NOW Issue 17

HDSLRs for Video:
Beyond the Hype
“Blah, blah, blah!” You’ve 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.

H DSLR,” “VDSLR” or whatever you might call them

­— the interest in “still” cameras that can also shoot
HD video is growing fast...and so is their potential. I
liken it to the DV revolution that began with the Sony
DCR-VX1000, and again with affordable 24p produc-
tion using the Panasonic AG-DVX100. Both were truly
groundbreaking cameras that, at the time, were un-
paralleled in quality for the price. We are seeing the
same revolution begin with HD video coming from
these HDSLRs.
Amidst all of the interest in these cameras for
HD shooting, it shouldn't be forgotten that these are
DSLR cameras first, with still photography capabilities
that are nothing short of amazing. The full-frame sen-
sor and its 14-bit, 21 megapixel resolution is a recipe
for breathtaking results in skilled hands. Having both
tools in one unit is still mind boggling to me, even af-
ter over a year of using it.
The fact is that these HDSLR cameras should NOT
be shooting beautiful video at all. Their compression
rates are high, their chrominance sub-sampling is high,
their re-sizing from full-frame to 1080 isn’t smooth,
they’re 8-bit at the compression level, and choosing a
bad quality lens just compounds all of that. Yet the HD
video can still look breathtaking!
I have owned a Canon 5D Mk II for over a year
now, and love it. It shoots 1080p, and boasts the only
full-frame, 35mm sensor on the market — larger than
the RED ONE’s sensor or super-35mm motion picture
film, and about the same size as VistaVision. These

Marco Solorio
Walnut Creek, California USA

A COW member since 2002, Marco owns OneRiver Media, a San Francisco facility offering
services from pre-production to post. His background in audio engineering and music
composition includes advanced skills with keyboard/piano/synth, classical/electric gui-
tars, bass guitar, trumpet/flugelhorn, saxophones and percussion. Marco also founded
Cinesoft, developers of MediaBatch, enabling advanced collaboration, management,
review and approval.

18 The Now Issue — Creative COW Magazine

full-frame sensors are HUGE, and suck up so much be temporarily added to any lens (I use them), they’re
light that even a room lit with a single candle can pro- usually bulky, a drag to take on and off, and simply not
duce beautiful results. I’ve shot 1080p video in such as effective for follow focus and/or motorized control.
extreme low-light conditions that any other HD cam- The good news is that some companies can mod-
era, including a Sony F900 or a RED ONE, would have ify your photography still lenses to employ some of
quickly degraded to noise and artifacts. these cinema style features, including clickless aper-
ture stops and permanent ring gears.
Although I prefer Canon optics, I definitely prefer
LENSES Nikon mechanics in their F lenses. They employ physi-
HDSLR cameras have added a new dimension to the cal lock-to-lock focusing and a physical aperture ring,
idea of “revolution:” the vast choice in lens options is making them a good candidate for such cinematic
every independent filmmaker’s dream come true. No style lens conversions.
longer are shooters stuck with a fixed lens of dubious A trick I’ve sometimes implemented is using Nikon
quality or limited focal length. No more wide-angle lenses on my Canon body, by buying cheap Nikon F
adapters, or telephoto adapters, or even going the ex- mount to Canon EOS EF mount adapters. There are
tra step with secondary lens adapters. Now, you sim- some good buys on used F mount lenses if you’re on a
ply pick the lens you want, specific for the type of shot tight budget but want more physical lens control.
you want. The only limit is your budget.
There are even manufacturers developing lens
adapters to fit exotic cinema lenses (like PL-mounted WHEN IN DOUBT, HACK IT
Cooke, and Zeiss optics), which work well with smaller One of the strongest movements in the HDSLR world
sensor cameras like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 today is the development of third-party firmware.
and Canon 7D. Trammell Hudson is the guiding force behind the
I’ve been a long-time Canon SLR shooter (both “Magic Lantern Firmware” (magiclantern.wikia.com).
film and digital), so at this point, my lens arsenal is He reverse-engineered Canon’s first firmware release
quite large, and includes Canon FD, Canon EF, Nikon to bring much needed features to the 5D Mk II. He has
F, and Sigma mounts. With my 5D
Mk II, I purely shoot with Canon’s
best “L” lenses, mostly consisting
of their fastest primes and a few
zooms.
Although the imagery from
these still lenses is astounding,
there are differences between
them and film/video lenses that
you should know about.
You can twist the focus ring on
cinema lenses for days from lock
to lock, for detailed focus pulls.
The short twist on still lenses can
be a little annoying if you're tight
on a slightly moving subject (even
a talking head) with very narrow
DOF.
Annoying or not, at least
these focus rings move only from
start point to stop point. Compare
this to the electronic focus ring One of the menus for the Magic Lantern firmware for the Canon 5D Mk II
on a lens like the beautiful Canon
85mm f/1.2L II. Although one of the absolute sharpest also laid some initial groundwork for the new 7D.
and fastest lenses on the market for photography (I The Magic Lantern firmware does not replace
know, I have one), a lens like this can seem downright the camera’s own firmware and features, but merely
evil for video: the electronic focus ring just doesn’t adds his functions to them — more like a patch — in
have that physical feel and feedback to it, and worse, non-volatile RAM. In fact, the ML firmware needs to
will keep spinning forever, even when you can't focus be “added” to the camera every time it is turned on,
anymore. which for safety, is a good thing.
Controlling aperture with a physical ring on the Why would he bother to hack in so many features,
lens itself is also ideal, preferably without f-stop click- and why would you bother to reload it every time
points — rather than the push-pull mechanism found you shoot, when you could just buy a video camera?
on some photographic lenses. Although ring gears can As Trammell notes, “If you can find a camera that a)

Creative COW Magazine — The Now Living Issue 19

 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 $150K…then
buy that one instead.”
So what does Magic Lantern
add? Dozens of features that cin-
ema lens shooters expect. Zebra
patterns, for starters, with thresh-
old levels that can be modified to
your needs.
There is also recorded lens
data, live histogram, custom over-
lay crop marks for infinite aspect
ratios, automated focus pulls, focus
stacking, automatic HDR exposure
bracketing, and much more.
He is also working on timecode
integration – in fact, I’m letting him
borrow one of my timecode gen-
erator units to help with his devel-
opment.
Best of all, the Magic Lantern
Above, Magic Lantern firmware showing audio meters (upper left in Firmware is open-source and free
window) and histogram (upper right in window). to use under the GPL license. If you
do use the software, please do-
Below, a comparison of common camera frame and sensor sizes. Both nate. I did!
images courtesy of Marco Soloro.

20 The Now Issue — Creative COW Magazine

AUDIO
One shortcoming of these HDSLR
cameras is their lack of high quality
audio recording. Ironically, the audio
recording hardware isn't terribly bad,
and the final audio recorded is actu-
ally uncompressed.
The monkey wrench is that these
HDSLR cameras record the audio with
automatic gain control (AGC) always
on. AGC is a method of compressing
and/or limiting audio input levels so
they do not overload the camera's
audio preamps. Think of it as an au-
tomatic volume knob for incoming
sound.
This is normally a good thing as
it safeguards the camera's internal
audio hardware from inexperienced
users that may override the preamps
with signal that is too hot. However,
an AGC system that cannot be turned
off is a curse in any professional en-
vironment. It creates a noticeably Car mount of the audio rig, as described.
higher noise floor that can be very
annoying.
There are currently two ways to overcome this. tures that should have already been built in! Not out-
The first is the oldest method in the cinematic book, of-the-box by any means, but an excellent solution to
and works with any HDSLR: using dual system sound, the problem nonetheless.
whereby the audio is recorded on a separate, dedi-
cated device, where full control and sonic quality is
maintained throughout the entire audio path. MORE CHALLENGES
The second method combines the Canon 5D Mk The downside to the massive native resolution in these
II, the Magic Lantern Firmware and some additional large HDLSR sensors is aliasing that results from on-
hardware. In fact, the first features that Trammell add- the-fly downscaling to 1920x1080 (or 1280x720). This
ed to Magic Lantern were to defeat the ugly internal is roughly 2.1 megapixels, down-sampled, in the case
AGC system. of the 5D Mk II, from 21 megapixels!
The rig I use includes a JuicedLink CX231 micro The current workaround for any HDSLR is to try
mic preamp/mixer — a device with proven, low-noise to avoid shooting against things like brick walls, chain
isolated signal preamps — and a good quality micro- link fences, power lines, etc. If you must, try to distance
phone, specific for the sound environment I want to the subject further away from them, so that the back-
capture. I can hook up (for example), a Sennheiser K6/ grounds become defocused. In fact, even just a hair
ME67 combo (super-cardiod shotgun microphone) out of focus will completely solve the problem.
into one of the two channels of the JuicedLink CX231 Unlike traditional CCD sensors that capture the en-
via a balanced XLR cable. The JuicedLink is then fed tire image at once, HDSLR video is recorded by linearly
into the 5D Mk II into its line-level 1/8" audio input scanning across the camera’s CMOS sensor one pixel at
jack. a time, which can lead to “rolling shutter” distortions,
With the Magic Lantern Firmware, and ONLY with aka, “Jello-cam.” Although only microseconds, the
it, I can then monitor the live audio feed into the cam- scanning time it takes between the very first pixel and
era, as it’s recorded by plugging headsets into the 5D the very last pixel is long enough to create the visual
Mk II's external AV output jack, and visually monitor distortion. When objects, or the camera itself, move
with color-coded peak-meter VU overlays. faster than can be recorded in one pass, the image
We’re talking about a still camera, right? Amaz- becomes skewed or squashed. The faster the motion,
ing. the heavier the skew and/or squash. Unfortunately for
The result is the use of professional phantom higher-resolution cameras, larger CMOS sensors, with
powered microphones, an input trim mixer for both their longer distance to scan, are more susceptible to
mic channels, an optionally defeated AGC signal path this than smaller ones.
with audio and visual monitoring, ultimately record- As technology advances, CMOS scan rates will be-
ing to an uncompressed audio codec. come faster in these large sensors. There are also some
Firmware hackery at its best, for professional fea- new software solutions that can help "fix" the problem
Creative COW Magazine — The Now Issue 22
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in post-production, but it's an extra step, adding both THE FUTURE OF HDSLR TECHNOLOGY
time and a very slight reduction in overall image qual- I haven’t talked much about the RED ONE camera in
ity due to interpolated pixel reconstruction. this article, but if an HDSLR company really wanted to
The workaround for now is to keep your pans and build a “RED killer,” they could.
What would that entail? For starters, they would
tilts slow.
need to address many of the limitations above: reduce
Also, there is currently no support for live, uncom-
the amount of rolling shutter skew, implement a bet-
pressed HD output from any of these cameras’ HDMI ter down-scaling solution, support live uncompressed
port. This will be a huge leap forward, as it will allow audio and video output, and support timecode. In
for real-time capture to a much higher quality format fact, I could see adding a multi-pin “accessory port” on
the camera body that tethers out to a multi-port con-
than the camera’s built-in encoding format. Using
nection, which would then add XLR input, audio moni-
something like an AJA Ki Pro for direct ProRes record- toring, video monitoring, TC in/out, and anything else
ing would be invaluable, especially for chroma-key that might be needed.
production. From there, we need to go beyond 30 FPS in 1080
HD. Having true
variable frame-
rates in 1080 HD
would be ideal, like
1-60, 1-120 or even
1-240 and beyond if
they can do it with-
out melting the
hardware. Likewise,
going higher than
1080 HD would
really open every-
one’s eyes; 2K, 4K,
and even beyond.
The sensor is cer-
tainly capable of it,
even if recording
moving pictures in
that resolution has
not been enabled.
A flip-out
These are not still photographs. Rather they are unaltered frames from Marco's H.264 screen would also
footage of model Jackie Rivero, captured only using available light, with no post be nice.
processing. While we have done our best to show them to you accurately, be sure Seriously, most
to look for the full-size movie, and complete information about lenses, ISO, shutter of these sugges-
speed, white balance, etc. at magazine.creativecow.net. tions are features
already used in ex-
isting products.
Of course,
the idea of a “RED
killer” is somewhat
misleading. RED
will not be going
anywhere as far as
the industry as a
whole is concerned.
But for many shoot-
ers, the remarkable
quality of HDSLR
cameras mean that
investing in a RED
camera is a far less
compelling option.
I'm an example
of that. Investing in

24 The Now Issue — Creative COW Magazine

a RED with the necessary options to shoot even a sin-
gle frame is not cost effective for my business model.
If a RED ONE dropped in my lap from the sky, would I
use it? Absolutely.
And would I still use the HDSLR for shooting HD?
Absolutely. Am I ditching my Sony EX1 anytime soon?
No way. But with some of the advantages my HDLSR
gives me over a RED, even if just at a “paltry” 1080 HD
resolution, for a much lower price, with all the lenses
and bells and whistles I use in my camera rigs, there’s
simply no need for us to consider RED right now.
CONCLUSION…AND GETTING STARTED
Despite the technology’s shortcomings (and there are
many), shooters, developers and manufacturers are
all climbing aboard the HDSLR bandwagon because
of the great potential these cameras have now, and in
the future.
Even if you are only interested in experimenting
with them for video, these HDSLR cameras are practi-
cally a no-risk purchase: great quality, a lot of manual
control, and at a price-point that can't be beat. For
many people, the Canon 7D would be a good place to
start. It has full 1080p resolution, employs a gamut of
frame-rate options and can take advantage of lighter,
less expensive EF-S lenses. My suggestion would be to
pick one decent quality zoom in the 28-70mm range,
and one decent quality prime, maybe in the 50mm
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workflows, creative edits, effects, and transitions.
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You’re collaborating with your team to deliver on
deadline. You don’t want to sweat the asset storage.
Sonnet understands. We do one thing best.
We deliver more digital video streams to the post
team than anyone else in our class. Open a
Creative COW Magazine — The Now Issue
range, buying as fast of each of these (i.e., letting in as
much light) as you can afford.
For a 7D body, an inexpensive zoom and an inex-
pensive prime, you'll still only be around $2500 all in, a
far cry from the price of any other HD option, let alone
one with a removable lens system.
Don’t like it? Sell it right back into the hungry
market for used photography gear — the money you’ll
lose could be justified as a “rental cost” — or you can
keep it is a great still camera.
The most important thing to remember about
shooting with HDSLRs is true for every camera, but
ESPECIALLY so with HDSLRs. You have to understand
your shoot, and know how the advantages and limita-
tions of your camera play into those specific circum-
stances. Otherwise, you'll either shoot yourself in the
foot on production and lose a client, or you will miss
out on an opportunity to seriously raise your produc-
tion values.
I have a feeling that we’ve only seen a snippet of
what’s to come from the world of HDSLR cameras, and
from here, our jaws will continue to drop.
n
You can learn more from Marco Solorio at his own
website at onerivermedia.com and through his
other articles for Creative COW Magazine.
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25
This Way
of Life
A four-year journey by two families, one on each side of the lens, leads to new
perspectives on what we really need, the kinds of truths we can tell with film,
and what it means to live in this very moment.

by Barbara Sumner Burstyn & Thomas Burstyn

This Way of Life is a film about a family. Mum, Dad, six
kids, 50 horses, a mountain, a beach and a burnt
down house.
horsemanship. We knew that the magical relationship
he had with horses was unique, and we quickly formu-
lated a plan to produce a little instructional DVD on
Shot over four years, against the backdrop of a how to break in a horse.
remote New Zealand mountain range and a hidden It was to be a casual thing, fitting around Tom’s
beach camp, we explore Peter and Colleen Karena’s day job as a cinematographer. But the minute we
connection to nature, their survival skills, and their turned on the camera, it was obvious that Peter had
intimacy with each other and their horses as they at- something: a presence, a way of ignoring the camera
tempt to navigate the discord between Peter and his and engaging with it at the same time. However, it
father. would be almost a year of shooting before we realised
Though European, Peter was adopted into a Maori that the DVD had turned into a real film, about a real
family, and is Maori in all but skin. He is a horse-whis- family, and their remarkable way of life.
perer, philosopher, hunter, and builder, a husband and Perhaps because of the long shoot, the film is
father. Despite seemingly overwhelming challenges, characterised by an intimacy, not only with the cam-
Peter refuses to compromise. Especially troubling to era, but also clearly with us as filmmakers as well.
Peter is his broken relationship with his adopted father, For example, for the first year, Colleen would qui-
etly turn away when-
ever we arrived with
the camera. She was
kind and polite, but
very clear that she
did not want to be on
film. Then, one day we
called her to test the
water. Something had
shifted. Sure, she said,
come on over.
It was at this
point, almost a year
into the process, when
we realised that, while
we had been observ-
ing the Karena family,
the Karenas — and es-
pecially Colleen — had
been watching us.
I understood then
that we had entered
a type of contract not
covered by law, or by
the usual dictates of
documentary film-
making. This could not
be a portrait from the
a malevolent man who refuses to leave him alone. outside. We had to be on board with all elements of
We follow their family up into the Ruahine ranges our lives or nothing.
and down to their hidden beach camp. We watch as And of course, as filmmakers, this was where we
Peter and Colleen, both in their early 30s, celebrate were most challenged. There is an expectation of pu-
the birth of a child and cope with a late miscarriage. rity in documentary making, that there is an absolute
Their attempts to navigate the discord between Peter truth, and if the filmmaker can just find a position of
and his father culminate in the theft of Peter’s valuable sufficient height to both observe intimately and not be
herd of horses and the burning of their beloved family observed, they will capture that truth.
home.
Now homeless, we watch as Peter steers his fam-
ily toward a new way of living and being. Regardless TOM: ON RESPECT
of their hardships, the Karenas manage to never lose The true fiction is to believe that anything captured on
sight of the magic in the everyday. camera is fact. The moment you isolate a shot, remov-
The question everyone asks is: why? Why dedicate ing it from its time and space, you give it a bias.
four years to make a “slice-of-life” documentary about As a very young filmmaker, I was on a festival pan-
a local family? It began with Peter Karena’s incredible el with Albert and David Maysles (“Gimme Shelter”). In

Creative COW Magazine — The Now Issue 27

my youthful naivety, I challenged them on
the voyeuristic nature of their 1975 docu-
mentary “Grey Gardens,” and my linger-
ing feeling that they had taken advantage
of their emotionally vulnerable subjects.
I remember the cold stare that one of the
brothers gave me — but that sense of how
the film invaded the subjects’ privacy with-
out respect, as if their only value was as a
source of amusement, stayed with me.
One of the first docos I made, “Flash
William,” was for the National Film Board
of Canada, also in 1975. It was the story of
a hermit who lived in a coal mining ghost
town in the Canadian Rockies. He made fea-
ture films, some in 35mm, some in 3D, all by
himself. He played most of the roles, includ-
ing the two leads in “Dawson City Joe,” who
were identical twin brothers and who ap-
peared, thanks to in-camera split screen techniques, make a film about the helpless and the ludicrous with-
in the same frame throughout the movie. out delivering a message of hope, or without ­seeing
He was also cameraman, sound recordist, editor, the subject finding a solution to their problems, was
art director, costume designer, composer and distribu- untenable as a documentary subject. That simple hu-
tor of his films. man respect remains my guiding light to this day.
He was a funny old man, and there were plenty
of opportunities to poke gentle fun at him. One shot BARBARA: ON CHOICES
I wanted to use was of Flash bending over, bum to Peter lives by an internal code of values and honor
camera, rummaging through an old steamer trunk, largely lost in modern times. Colleen is the keeper of
searching for a particular piece of wardrobe. He was her family’s taonga tuku iho (heritage). A true matri-
grumbling and throwing clothes left and right over his arch, she sees family as the center of the universe, and
shoulder, and it was a very funny image. mothering as the world’s most important job.
The producers vetoed this shot, saying that it was The parents allow the kids to be exposed to risk,
disrespectful of our subject. The Film Board had a strict but only after careful instruction in the function and
rule that respect was more profound than showing operation of the “dangerous” thing (horse riding,
someone in a funny position. They were clear that to bow and arrow, rifle, climbing on rocks, unsupervised

28 The Now Issue — Creative COW Magazine

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ocean and river swimming), and then instilling a sense
of responsibility in the children, both for themselves
and their siblings.
We know that we walk a thin line here, but we
decided early on to tell the story from their eyes, to
represent the family the way they see themselves.
We could have chosen to reflect the hard reality more
clearly, more honestly even, but that this would have
been a form of judgement, a way of imposing our life-
style choices over theirs.
As a way to acknowledge the issue of subjectivity,
we chose to have the eldest son, Llewelyn, narrate the
film. Even though the parents are eloquent and heart-
felt in many ways, the film is a child’s eye view. It is
feathered with a magical quality, the unrealistic view
of the child who can never see the big picture.
There is a scene in the film where, after becom-
ing essentially homeless, the family sets up camp near
the beach. To the kids, it’s a time of great adventure,
and even Colleen chooses to imbue this hardship with
deeper meaning.
In a sense, we only lightly touch on the real diffi-
culty of raising children in such a challenging situation
— but then the strength of the Karena family is that
they also brush over these things, as if they are merely
annoying details, a part of life.
We have found that the most common reaction to
the film is one of self-reflection. “Why do I live my life
like this?” “What’s stopping me from living a simpler
life?” “Do I need all this stuff to be happy?” “This Way
of Life” seems to become a reflection of each audience
member’s differing ways of life.
We were not unaware that people might react in
such a way, but we did not set out to make a film that
would preach a simplistic lifestyle over a more complex
30
one. We always wanted to make a film of true intimacy,
using the remarkable medium of film to craft a tale
that is satisfying on a human level, in the way that a
blockbuster can never be. We wanted to engage head
and heart, and do it with great gentleness, so that the
sense of this one family’s values could percolate into
our everyday lives.
TOM: ON POST, LOGIC, AND FEELING
With this film, more than any other of our productions,
we operated from a place of feeling, rather than logic,
or time and motion. It was a grand departure from the
usual process of logging material, making lists and
thinking that some piece was missing, an additional
interview required, etc.
Our project management consisted of putting all
the tapes into a box and not viewing them for almost
four years, until we felt that filming portion of produc-
tion was complete. By then, we had 60 hours of original
material. 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 from any kind of
review. Don’t ask me why. I don’t have a clue!
Structure was difficult. Because we were making
a life story, we had no idea what was going to happen
next as we shot. More importantly, because getting to
know reclusive people takes time, the longer we spent
with the family, the more intimate we became, and the
more they revealed their deepest feelings to the cam-
era. The structure only revealed itself in the editing
room, navigated by Cushla Dillon, our stalwart editor.
When I started shooting “This Way of Life” in
2004, Sony had just come out with their new HDV for-
mat camera, the Z1U. It was small and manageable,
and the quality seemed quite astounding for such a
The Now Issue — Creative COW Magazine
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tiny, cheap thing.
When I was next in LA to shoot a film, I bought a
Z1U and put it through its paces alongside the cameras
we were testing, a Thomson Viper and a Sony Cinealta
F-950 recording to SR tape. I wasn’t out to prove any-
thing — I just wanted to compare my little Z1U to cam-
eras I knew well.
Obviously, the Z1U doesn’t have the latitude or
colour space of the 4:4:4 camera, but it was sharp and
had a look of its own. After some careful massaging in
32
post, we got an image that cut in quite favorably with
the larger, more expensive camera, and we ended up
using the Z1U as our 3rd camera on that production.
My digital philosophy is to gather as much infor-
mation as possible during photography, and finesse
later — an approach that applies to prosumer cameras
as well as high end ones. I set the exposure to avoid
any clipping, and the camera delivered a picture I
could manipulate effectively in post. Areas that were
seemingly underexposed could later be brought up to
a pleasing level, noise reduction applied, and to finish
with quite a good range of latitude, maybe 8 stops.
The big drawback with the Z1U for me was the
tiny hair trigger buttons all over the camera. I’d inad-
vertently press one at exactly the wrong moment and
have to live with the results. The viewfinder is also very
difficult to focus through, and the lens focus scale has
nothing to do with the actual distance from focal plane
to subject. However, by the time I returned home and
started photography on “This Way of Life,” I knew my
camera pretty well.
The style of shooting called for in “This Way of
Life” is simple and clean. With the exception of exist-
ing lighting, we shot without artificial light.
My kit consisted of a small shoulder bag, contain-
ing the camera and a wide-angle adapter (which was
expensive, of poor quality and rarely used), seven bat-
teries, a high quality stereo shotgun microphone, a ra-
dio microphone, some cloth baby diapers (soft and ab-
sorbent for cleaning the camera), spare cables, a little
flashlight, and a Leatherman tool. I have a good Vinten
tripod with carbon fibre legs, and sometimes used a
FigRig, although this device proved ungainly to pack
on a horse when travelling through dense bush.
The HDV footage proved its worth during colour
correction. Gary Shaw, chief colorist at Technicolor,
Vancouver used his outstanding talent to massage
every last pixel of quality out of the material, making
“This Way of Life” worthy of large screen projection.
The Now Issue — Creative COW Magazine
We used power windows, sharpening and noise re-
duction to get the most emotion out of each shot. We
finished up by mastering out to HDCAM SR. The end
result is fantastic.
Unlike mechanical motion picture cameras that
withstood the test of time, the digital cameras of to-
day are a movable feast. HDV was cool for a moment
but, this week, the Sony EX-1 is my favorite flavor. The
Ikonoscop A-cam dII is coming soon, and looks in-
teresting. I’ll probably switch allegiance many more
times before I lay down my camera.
After years of shooting 35mm film, I’ve never re-
gretted going digital. Certainly the technology made
our film possible.
BARBARA:
ON DETAILS AND DISTRIBUTION
“This Way of Life” has played to sold out houses at the
New Zealand International Film Festival and the Van-
couver International Film Festival, among others. We
have selected festivals that focus on the audience, be-
lieving that the audience will bring the sales, and so
far, this has turned out to be true. We have a handful of
theatrical distribution offers 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 of windows for ourselves. It
means that we don’t just hand the film over, but remain
active in promoting the film to communities-of-kind.
We have a hybrid distribution deal for 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
Creative COW Magazine — The Now Issue
someone or doing it ourselves.
This model enables the filmmaker — the person
or company with the most at stake — to keep control
of the process, and not see their potential profits eaten
up in promotion.
For broadcast and other windows, such as airlines,
we have hired a sales agent for New Zealand and Aus-
tralia who takes a straight fee. No fuss, no percentages
clawed from every level of the deal. We then retain all
other rights ourselves, such as DVD and non-theatre
screenings.
We are yet to find a North American distributor
who will do that, but we are working on it, discussing
with the distributors who are interested in the film 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 fees. All non-theatrical and DVD rights have been
split off 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 film to: broad-
casters, airlines, US/UK TV buyers, etc. Also ask
for an outline of expected earnings from each of
these.
2) Once the agent gets a deal, he gets your approval
on license fee, terms and any commercial deal
points. The agent will coordinate contracting the
deal, but will get filmmaker final sign off on the
contract. Collections from Exhibitors can be the
responsibility of either party. Who gets first re-
coupment is also a point to negotiate on. Use a
lawyer at this point to check off the details.
33
 3) Agent will arrange with filmmaker to ship any re-
quired materials. In our part of the world, this is
typically a PAL DigiBeta copy of the feature. Ma-
terials and shipping are at filmmaker’s expense,
and are typically on loan to buyers.
4) Agent arranges for filmmaker to provide an in-
voice for the license fee when due. Once the film-
maker is paid, agent will invoice filmmaker for his
cut of the net license fee. If you can get an agent
for 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 off, 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 of Life.” It’s a baby, and still
needs lots of nurturing. For independents like us, the
process of filmmaking includes sometimes years of
promoting and marketing your film.
The film we wrote about for the Cow Magazine
nearly three years ago, “One Man, One Cow, One Plan-
et,” continues to grow. Just this year, we were selected
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Barbara and Tom founded Cloud South Films as a “mid-life love
child,” to allow them to make films together, and have previ-
ously written articles for us separately.
Barb wrote about their documentary, “One Man, One Cow,
One Planet” in our 2007 “Power of Artistic Passion” issue, which
features the remarkable story of Peter Proctor’s trek to India to
help restore traditional farming there.
In addition to her research, writing, directing and produc-
ing for Cloud South Films, she is a columnist for the New Zea-
Barbara Sumner Burstyn
Thomas Burstyn
Bay View, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
34
for festivals in Spain, France, Italy and India, includ-
ing the Mumbai International Film Festival. We’ve
even won a new environmental award for it and the
film continues to sell in stores, on our website, and on
Amazon.
As we completed this article, “This Way of Life”
was accepted into the Berlin Film Festival.
We also just received our first commission, to
make a documentary I wrote seven years ago called
“Leonard’s Lovers.” It came about from going to din-
ner parties when we lived in Montreal, and people
talking about the highly regarded and influential —
and famously reclusive — singer-songwriter Leonard
Cohen. Somebody always remarked that they slept
with him, and the idea for the documentary grew from
there. While Mr. Cohen is the conduit to the stories the
film is a journey into the sensual and sexual transitions
of the mature woman.
It sat in my drawer for 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 we’ve proven that, with diligence and
consistent attention, you can make documentaries
work financially. It has ended up being very worth-
while for us, in every way.
n
land Herald, where she was named “So-
cial Issues Columnist of the Year” in the
Qantas Media Awards, and was a finalist
for “Columnist of the Year.”
For our 2008 “Music Videos” issue,
director and cinematographer Tom wrote
about working with the Arri D-20 digital
cinema camera on “Tin Man.” Among his
many awards and nominations, he won a
US Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinema-
tography for a Miniseries or Movie for his
work on “The 4400;” won a Genie award
(the main Canadian national film award)
for Best Achievement in Cinematography
(“Magic In the Water”) to go with two ad-
ditional nominations; and won the Cana-
dian Society of Cinematographers Award
for Best Cinematography in a Dramatic
Short (“La première fois”). Tom is also a
fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.
As they told us, “Our documentaries
are personal, well researched, visually
compelling and socially relevant. For us,
this is the only medium worth investing
in.”
n
The Now Issue — Creative COW Magazine
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 One Story, Two Perspectives, Three Turntables, Four Screens,
and an Unconventional 7.1 Surround Sound Mix

Coacoochee’s STory
Highly complex multi-media installations — at least the successful ones — are only possible
through careful planning, intense cooperation, and a willingness to turn the picture on its side.

M y boss came into my edit room to discuss the proj-

ect I was about to begin for the Tampa Bay History
Center in Tampa Florida.
“The show is about the Seminole Indian Wars in
the 1800’s. About 15-20 minutes, four screens,” he
said. That’s not unusual. I’ve cut many multi-screen
projects, from two to my current record — 16. He
went on, “The two outside screens will be rotated 90
degrees and displayed vertically.”
Now we’re getting interesting.
“And there will be three large turntables, about 10
feet wide or so, with 2 or 3 life-size dioramas on each
one that will spin into place at different parts of the
show.
“The entire stage will be behind a scrim with
a painting of Tampa Bay circa 1840. We will use the
scrim to hide the movement of the turntables, but only
sometimes. Other times I want the audience to see the
turntables move. Plus, there will be show-controlled
lighting, rotating gobo effects, strobes and fire effects
"We’ll figure all that out during the edit.”
Just another day at the office at Boston Produc-
tions.
BPI has been producing highly interactive, highly
complex, multi-disciplinary projects for museums, vis-
itor centers, and theme parks for over 20 years. For the
Tampa Bay History Center project, we worked close-
ly with exhibit designer Christopher Chadbourne and
Associates and Set Designer Jonathan Bean Design
Ltd. to create a new and exciting way to tell the ­story

Mike Sullivan
Norwood, Massachusetts USA

Mike has been Senior Editor at BPI for over 10 years. His other installations in-
clude the Smithsonian Institution, The International Spy Museum, and The Na-
tional Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. A Cow member for years, he says, "I
especially like the Art of the Edit forum. I wrote this to give back to everyone who
helped me figure out ways to make some of these Gordian projects become a
reality."

36 The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine

of Coacoochee, a Seminole Chief who escaped
prison and a death sentence to lead his people
during the Second Seminole War.

PRODUCTION
All of the dialogue and narration was taken
verbatim from a series of interviews that Coa-
coochee gave to US Army Lieutenant John T.
Sprague in 1841, after Coacoochee had been im-
prisoned for the final time. He and Lt. Sprague
would be the conduit of the tale, each telling
their sides of the story, a back and forth narra-
tive of the events that led to Coacoochee’s cap-
ture, and the forced exodus of his people from
their homes in Florida.
Production was divided into two parts:
a studio shoot in Massachusetts and location
shooting in Florida. The actors who were cast to
play Coacoochee and Lt. Sprague came to the BPI
studio in Norwood, Massachusetts for the shoot.
We shot them against green, so that I could com-
posite them in their various environments later.
Most of these shots would be used on the two
rotated screens, which, once rotated, would be
about nine feet tall, by 4 feet wide.
In order to get a full resolution image for
these screens the Director, Bob Noll, had a new
mount designed and manufactured that allowed
him to mount the Panasonic DVCPRO HD camera
on its side. Coacoochee and Sprague would be
the same scale as the visitor (actually a tiny bit
bigger, you know, for the drama) that would give
the show an extra bit of verisimilitude.
After the studio shoot wrapped, it was off
to Florida for a few days of battle, where re-en-
actors had been recruited to portray the Semi-
Top: custom designed mount allows the camera to
noles and the US Army Soldiers in two major bat-
shoot on its side, to create vertically-oriented out-
tles taken from America’s early history. The new
put. Above: Coacoochee on the greenscreen set.
vertical camera mount got quite a workout dur-
Below: one of the dioramas as seen in the finshed
ing the battle re-enactments.
production.
I wish I could say that I took a trip to sunny
Florida for the shoot myself, but alas, they don’t
let me out of my dark, windowless edit room
very often. Anyway, they came back with hours
of footage of Native Americans fighting the US
Army in the woods and wetlands of 1830s Tam-
pa: rifles, cannons, explosions, the dead and dy-
ing — lots of great stuff, both vertical and hori-
zontal.

BUILDING THE EDIT

The immersive theater experience was designed
so that the video screens would be seamlessly
nested into the scenery of the stage. That is, the
show is not just a video on a screen: it is the en-
tire theater.
As a result, I could not edit the show in the
typical way, with a timeline with a video track
and two audio tracks. I needed to recreate the

Creative COW Magazine — The NOW Issue 37

theater, virtually, inside the computer, so that I could
place the imagery inside the environment.
In the past, it used to take several different pieces
of software to create a virtual stage. Now, however, I
was able to do the entire show, start to finish, from ed-
iting to final composite, in the Avid DS. BPI invested in
the DS a few years ago and I have become a huge fan
of the system, and node-based editing and composit-
ing in general.
The Set Designer gave me stills of all of the diora-
mas as well as the entire theater set. I fed these into a
3D DVE node in the DS. Inside the DVE, I could posi-
tion the stills and a layer for video to form a rudimen-
tary 3D object that I could then rotate and spin when
necessary.
I have done this kind of thing before, but this the-
ater had a new component to deal with — three mo-
torized turntables. Two of the tables were bookends
to the stage, and each held a vertical screen and two
dioramas. The third turntable sat off-center, stage left,
and contained three dioramas: Coacoochee in chains
on the ship that was to take him from Florida; Coa-
coochee in his prison cell; and a Seminole warrior with
a rifle hidden among some trees.
(The dioramas were created by the fine artisans at
Jonathan Bean Design in Yorkshire, UK.)
There were moments in the show when Bob want-
ed the audience to actually see the turntables move.
For example, the first time that Coacoochee and
Sprague each appear on screen, he wanted them to
fade up just as the turntable settles into its position.
38
To correctly achieve this, I needed to find out the
speed of the real, physical turntables, so that I would
know how much time I had to play with to properly
time my fade.
Unfortunately, the compacted production sched-
ule meant that I was never able to get a decent answer
to that question. That meant that the guys who actual-
ly did the programming on-site ended up trying to get
the real turntables to match the moves I had created
with my virtual turntables months earlier. I had figured
that these turntables wouldn’t be pivoting around like
giant tops and then be able to stop on a dime, and
luckily, my guesses proved accurate.
The next step was to hang the virtual scrims. For
the uninitiated, theatrical scrim is a material that, when
lit from the front, allows whatever is painted on it to be
seen, but when lit from behind, you can see through
the scrim to whatever is in back of it — in this case the
video screens and/or the dioramas.
I was also provided a graphic of the painting that
was to be reproduced on the scrim, which I used as the
top layer in my stage composite. By varying its trans-
parency, I could achieve the illusion of lighting chang-
es for the purposes of the edit.
Finally, I placed the two horizontal screens: an 8x5
foot LCD mounted near the top of the stage, and a larg-
er projection screen mounted below and ­off-center
stage right.
I finally had my virtual stage. Four screens in their
proper positions, two of them rotated 90 degrees, all
as 3D objects that I could control in nearly any way that
The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine
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 deck of a prison ship
when we first see
him. Again, I was giv-
en stills taken on the
deck of an actual ship
from the correct era.
Finding one that was
the proper angle, I
doctored it up a little,
changing the lighting
to a blue for a night-
time feel and adding a
soft mask to vignette
the shot so there are
no hard edges.
The final detail
was to knock out the
background from the
ship photo and re-
place it with time-
lapse clouds mov-
ing very slowly. That
gave the scene a nice
sense of movement,
while still retaining
the “theatricality” of
the composite. I gave
One of the turntables, offstage. a similar look to Lt.
Sprague, except that
his background was a
I wanted. Now I could actually start editing the show! campsite on the shore near the ship.

TELLING THE STORY THE BATTLES

“Coacoochee’s Story” is obviously not your typical
documentary, but it does begin like one. We open
with a crawl on the top screen, and a narrator describ-
ing the time and place.
At this point, the audience, who are seated in the
set themselves, on log benches with mighty trees of
Spanish moss hanging over their heads, are unaware
of the other screens or the dioramas because the scrim
is lit from the front.
Suddenly, powerful cannon shots crack and
echo throughout the theater. The second screen is re-
vealed, quickly followed by the first diorama, stage
left, depicting the great Chief Coacoochee, held in
irons aboard a US ship. We hear him begin to tell his
story as the turntable begins to slowly turn, and see
him fade into existence right before our eyes, as the
audience quickly realizes that they are in for some-
thing special.
This was the idea anyway, and it comes across ex-
tremely well when you see the show.
Throughout the presentation, Coacoochee and
Lieutenant Sprague were composited into the envi-
ronment. However, we were not trying to create some-
thing photorealistic. The idea was always to keep the
entire show theatrical, so Bob asked me to treat the
backgrounds as such.
For example, Coacoochee is standing on the
Bob had a very clear vision of how he wanted the bat-
tle scenes to play in the theater, and he shot them very
specifically to accommodate that vision.
The first battle was to be a fairly straightforward
montage of battle imagery, but I was instructed to only
use the two center screens. It was a fun scene to cut.
Who wouldn’t want to put together a “cowboys and In-
dians” mêlée with guns, screams, and explosions?
The second one would prove to be more of a chal-
lenge.
On Christmas Day 1837, 800 members of the 6th
US Infantry, struggling to get through the water, mud,
and saw grass that encircle Lake Okeechobee, found
themselves surrounded by Seminoles. It was your ba-
sic turkey-shoot. The Seminoles opened fire from both
sides, and soldiers started dropping like flies. How to
recreate this in the theater?
An entire day of the production in Florida was
spent filming Native Americans and Soldiers in front
of a portable greenscreen. The Seminoles were shoot-
ing, and the Soldiers were getting shot.
Using this material to create the Battle of Okeecho-
bee, I re-cut the entire sequence three times before I
had what Bob was looking for. The Seminoles would
occupy the two vertical screens, their guns pointed in
towards the center, and the Soldiers lived and died in
the middle two screens. This was symbolic of the situa-

40
40
The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine
The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine
tion that the 6th Infantry found them-
selves in on that Christmas morn of
1837.
The sequence starts slow-
ly: BANG…BANG… BANG, BANG…
BANG, BANG, BANG — then a cacoph-
ony of gunshots coming from all sides.
The two vertical screens are just the
Seminoles, keyed over black, popping
on and off screen in 8-10 frame edits
as they fire, with some white flashes
thrown in for good measure. The cen-
ter screens are the soldiers, also keyed
over black, as they fall.
During the battle sequence,
Bob added a bunch of strobe effects,
centered on the diorama of a Semi-
nole Warrior among the trees. The
sequence is quick, a few seconds at Mike Rafferty
most, but the effect is powerful, jar-
ring, sudden, loud and theatrical all at
the same time. going to get lost between the cushions, or go through
I eventually move away from the greenscreen the laundry, or something like that.
material, and bring in footage of the Seminoles firing
from the woods across all the screens as they complete AN UNCONVENTIONAL 7.1 MIX
their attack, fade away, and disappear into the woods. At BPI, we also do the sound mixing for all our shows.
Once I finished the on-line and color-correction, I We have a complete Pro Tools HD mixing suite, and a
converted each screen to an MPEG-2 and copied the full-time audio mixer on staff, Mike Rafferty, who has
files to flash cards — like the kind you put in a digi- done the final mix on every show I’ve cut since 1999.
tal SLR camera — which plug into an Alcorn-McBride His final mix on “Coacoochee’s Story” was just as chal-
MPEG-2 player. lenging for him to mix as it was for me to cut.
In fact, most of our shows are running off those As the work we do is designed for one specific
tiny flash drives these days. I always worry that they’re theater, Mike cannot do a basic 5.1 mix as if the show

Editor's note: We first met Mike in 2008, as a part of our "Non-Broadcast Video" issue. He shared a story
of a multi-screen project he had worked on that was shot on both 35mm and 16mm film, offlined in Avid
Media Composer, and onlined in Adobe After Effects! Here's more on his process...

If I had to choose one word to describe what has changed the most in Museum Exhibit Media over the
past few years it would be, "Interactivity." Every project of late has had more multimedia interactivity than
the last. And I'm not talking abut simple track-balls or touch-screens here either. No sir, the interactive
exhibits have become very complex and very powerful.
As with linear video programs, museums count on us to deliver an immersive, interactive experience
unlike anything the visitor can see elsewhere or at home. For example, at the Hoover Dam Visitors Center
in Boulder City, Colorado, the visitor must manually turn a hand-crank to generate the electricity to run
the appliances inside a virtual home. The more appliances you turn on, the more difficult it is to physically
turn the crank.
The new Connecticut Science Center in Hartford has over 25 multi-media interactives, including a
station where visitors slide a scanner along a full-size human body model to diagnose athletic injuries,
and a green-screen TV studio where visitors can record their own weather broadcasts and download them
from the museum's website.
This last example brings up the latest needs of the Museum Exhibit Media world — extending the
visitor's museum experience. Burning DVDs on-site, printing photos, e-mailing Quicktimes to family and
friends, uploading images and videos to Facebook and other social-networking sites or ftp sites to be
downloaded on the visitors' home computers — all these things keep the visitor's experience going long
after they have left the Museum.

Creative COW Magazine — The NOW Issue 41

 Forget Sneakernet -Use Ethernet to share
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production using Small Tree’s GraniteSTOR.
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was playing in a movie theater or a living room. Every
show is as unique and different as a fingerprint.
For this venue, Mike would be creating what he
calls “an unconventional 7.1 mix.” The speaker place-
ment is thus: center, left front, right front, left sur-
round, right surround, sub-woofer, and then two more
speakers — one placed in each of the outside turnta-
bles. “I used those rarely,” says Mike. “Mostly when
Coacoochee or Sprague was speaking, and I wanted
the sound image to be very focused on the character.”
From the beginning, it was obvious that library
music just wasn’t going to do the project justice. Di-
rector Bob Noll decided that an original score for “Coa-
coochee’s Story” would be the final element to fully
complete the experience. Composer Ruth Mendelson
was brought in as the edit was coming together, and
she knocked the ball out of the park. She wrote 10 cues
of music for the18 minute show.
I provided all the sound effects material in the
form of an OMF timeline from the Avid DS, as well as
the sounds effects that Mike would add himself. Ruth
provided the stems for all the individual instruments
from her scoring session. All told, Mike ended up with
a Pro Tools session with 44 tracks.
In the past, the radical differences between the
shape of a particular theater and the shape of the mix-
ing room have lead to a few unsatisfying mixes and
some late night reworking of sound. To remedy this,
BPI had a custom traveling case designed and built for
42
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the Pro Tools system. The case holds the Mac Pro, mon-
itor, keyboard, mouse, and a FireWire drive, as well as a
Mackie HUI mixing board and 192 I/O Box.
Now, Mike can do a mix at the office, and can then
travel to the venue with his equipment, connect the
speakers to his I/O box, and do a final mix in the ac-
tual room where the show will be played. “This way,
I hear the way the sound lives in the space. Where are
the speakers really placed? Are they further apart than
I thought? Does the sound bounce off the walls in a
strange way? Is the sub-woofer more powerful than
I planned?
"Any problem can be addressed right there.”
ANY GOOD?
Although I said I’m not usually let out of my edit room,
I did get the opportunity to see this show in its proper
venue. I was waiting in line for the previous show to let
out, and I overheard a few people talking behind me.
“What’s this show about?” an old man wondered
aloud. A father with two kids, maybe age 7 and 10, an-
swered, “It’s about the Seminole Indian Wars.”
“Any good?” asked the old man.
“Oh, yeah,” the Dad answered. “This is our third
time seeing it."
I thought that was pretty cool.
n
The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine
INDUSTRY NEWS: F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0

BAND PRO OFFERS NEW SET OF

4K “MYSTERY PRIMES” LENSES
www.bandpro.com

After three years of design and prototyping, Band Pro Film and
Digital has introduced a groundbreaking new brand of ultra-high
performance PL mount prime lenses, designed to deliver optical
performance for true 4K imaging and beyond.
The new T1.4 lenses are fully developed and 3 focal lengths
are due to be demonstrated on the F35 camera at the event. The
series of prime lenses, still code named “Mystery Primes” within
Band Pro, will eventually total 15 different focal lengths, ranging from 12mm to 150mm. Delivery of production
models of eight of the lenses will begin in early summer of 2010.
The entire set of “Mystery Primes” features unified distance focus scales, common size and location of
focus and iris rings, and a 95mm threaded (for filters) lens front —all allowing quick interchange of lenses in a
busy production environment. Designed to be light in weight yet rugged on the set, the mount and lens barrel
are manufactured using lightweight high strength titanium materials. For example, a typical Mystery Prime
weighs just 3 lbs (1.4kg).
The core set of “Mystery Primes”, which will start delivering by June 2010, includes 16mm, 18mm, 21mm,
25mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 65mm, 75mm, and 100mm lenses. Additional focal lengths will be delivered in
a second phase.

AJA RELEASES FREE iPHONE APP

FOR VIDEO PROFESSIONALS www.aja.com
AJA DataCalc is a free storage requirement calculator designed for
video professionals and is available now as a free download from the
Apple iTunes Store. Designed as a fast and simple tool for audio and video
professionals, AJA DataCalc can be used in the field during acquisition, or
in the edit bay during post-production, allowing the user to effortlessly
calculate their storage consumption and data capturing requirements.
“We’re all big fans of the iPhone and wanted to create an application
that would be useful to our customers in professional digital content
creation,” said Nick Rashby, President, AJA Video Systems. “DataCalc is
right in line with AJA’s product philosophy which aims to deliver products
that simplify and streamline the often complex workflows of video
professionals. It’s a simple little application, that has already proven to
be very handy in the field!” AJA DataCalc supports a wide array of video
compression formats such as Apple ProRes, DVCProHD, HDV, XDCAM, DV, RGB and YUV Uncompressed and
more. Video standards supported include NTSC, PAL, 1080i, 1080p. 720p, 2K and 4K.

STEFANI RICE JOINS CREATIVE COW TEAM www.creativecow.net

Stefani Rice has joined the Creative COW Team in January 2010 as a member of our web development
and magazine teams. Stefani will be assisting Abraham Chaffin, Creative COW’s technical director, in the
development of new systems and infrastructure for our members, and will also be assisting Tim Wilson and
Ron Lindeboom in the development of Creative COW Magazine. Stefani has been a part-time member during
years past and now joins as our newest fulltime member of the industry’s leading media professionals support
organization. “With a broad skillset and strong technical and editorial skills, Stefani will be a great addition to
the Creative COW Team,” says Creative COW CEO, Ron Lindeboom.

43 The Non-linear Creativity Issue — Creative COW Magazine

INDUSTRY NEWS: F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0

PANASONIC UNVEILS WORLD’S FIRST

INTEGRATED FULL HD 3D CAMCORDER
www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/home.asp

Pictures like these have been circulating for a year now, but in
January 2010 came the official announcement: Panasonic will
release the world’s first professional, fully-integrated Full HD
3D camcorder in Fall 2010.
Engineering samples of the solid-state camcorder will be
exhibited at Panasonic’s booth at NAB 2010, from April 12-15.
Panasonic will also begin taking orders at the show, with the
first cameras planned to ship in the fall.
In addition to the release date and a chance to see the
thing, what have we learned in the past month that we hadn’t
heard in the past year? We know what Panasonic calls it: “Twin-
lens Full HD 3D camcorder.” We now know that the suggested
retail price is $21,000 for the main unit, and that the cameras
will be built to order.
While early reports indicated that recording would be to P2 media, the camera will in fact use less
expensive SDHC/SD memory cards, in an integrated dual recorder configuration. The lenses, camera head,
and the dual Memory Card recorder are integrated into a single, lightweight body – 3 KG, under 7 lbs.
Until now, professional 3D rigs have been complex, expensive, often difficult to manage, and above all,
proprietary. Building your own custom rig has been the only alternative. With a few exceptions, these have
been large-scale setups in which two cameras are fitted to a rig in parallel, or vertically intersect across a
half-mirror. There are challenges related to matching lenses, and precisely controlling their relative horizontal
and vertical positions. Making convergence adjustments has been problematic. Separate recorders are also
required.
The twin-lens system adopted in the Full HD 3D camcorder’s optical section allows the convergence point
to be adjusted. Functions for automatically correcting horizontal and vertical displacement are also provided.
Conventional 3D camera systems require these adjustments to be made by means of a PC or an external
video processor. This new camcorder, however, will automatically recalibrate without any need for external
equipment. Professional production still calls for more than a camcorder alone, of course, so Panasonic also
plans to offer a professional-quality 3D Full HD LCD monitor for field use, as well as a professional HD digital
AV mixer for live event production.
So, why was a $21,000 professional camera officially rolled out at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show?
Because it is part of a much larger set of initiatives dating back to 2009, when Panasonic was virtually alone
in its commitment to 3D production, distribution and home consumption, and entirely alone in the scope
of these commitments: the world’s first home 3D theater systems, based around Blu-ray disc recorders, and
plasma TVs. The following month, they established the Advanced Authoring Cneter, Panasonic Hollywood
Laboratories, for authoring 3D Hollywood movies on Blu-ray disks. Panasonic’s 2009 CES fetivities included
a video presentation by “Avatar” director James Cameron announcing his support of Panasonic’s 3D
equipment.
At this year’s CES, in addition to the Full HD 3D camera, Panasonic also showed a new line of 3D-compatible
plasma screens, the VT25 series, with sizes up to 65 inches — 64.7 inches, to be exact — diagonally. (The sets
work dandily in 2D as well, of course.) The sets will include one pair of glasses using an active LC shutter system.
These achieve their 3D effect by alternately brightening and darkening the right and left lenses synchronously
with the TV. These will be available in the US this Spring, at roughly the same price as their current high-end
2D sets.
Panasonic also showed a Full HD 3D Blu-ray player and wireless home theater system, and announced
with partner DirecTV the launching of three new 3D channels in the US by June 1.
ESPN has also announced a 3D network to launch this year in time for the World Cup in June, with a commitment
to air a minimum of 85 live events in the next year. Discovery, Sony and IMAX have also announced a letter
of intent to create a new venture to launch in 2012. By then, there will surely be a number of additional 3D
networks. continued on the following page

44 The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine

 CREATIVE COW MAGAZINE
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Media Anywhere Artistic Passion More Than Film Look
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7th Issue: 48 pages 8th Issue: 48 pages 9th Issue: 64 pages

Commercials: History, Music Videos from Non-Broadcast Video:
Craft & Innovation Around the World Sports, Elvis, & More
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10th Issue: 48 pages 11th Issue: 52 pages 12th Issue: 52 pages

Workflow 3.0: How TV Visual FX: Exploring New Visions: Break
Shows Are Managed Analog & Digital FX Thru Cameras & More
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13th Issue: 52 pages 14th Issue: 52 pages 15th Issue: 52 pages

Games: More Viewers Stereoscopic 3D: Heavy Lifting:
than Film or TV An In-Depth Look Redefining ‘Heavy Iron’
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16th Issue: 52 pages 17th Issue: 52 pages 18th Issue: 52 pages

Think Big: Artist Success Non-Linear Creativity: DSLR & 3D Cameras:
in Today’s Marketplace It’s More Than Your Tools The Future Is Now
AVAILABLE AVAILABLE AVAILABLE

AVAILABLE FOR SALE AT WWW.CREATIVECOWMAGAZINE.NET/BACK-ISSUES

Got Moo?
INDUSTRY NEWS: F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0

PANASONIC HD 3D CAMCORDER — continued from previous page

The HDMI 1.4 spec is also being updated to
accommodate the dual 1080p streams required for Full
HD 3D programming.
A number of commentators have opined that
glasses will be an obstacle to adopting 3D in the
home. The fact is, though, that the number of people
watching 3D with glasses in theaters, including repeat
viewings, has been skyrocketing. The more important
consideration is the contrast with the adoption of HD:
when the first HD networks launched, there were fewer
than 2 million HD-compatible TV sets already in homes.
Contrast this with as many as 150 million HD-
compatible sets already in homes! Even though HD is only on a handful of channels, and many of those channels
are a long way from offering 24 hours of HD programming, HD is indisputably “here,” right now. Within just
a few months, 3D will be in largely the same state: a handful of 3D channels, with limited 3D programming…
for now, with more on the way.
Just as Blu-ray adoption is now well ahead of DVD adoption at the same point in its development, it is easy to
imagine how the “here now”-ness of 3D could happen even more quickly than it did for HD. Quantel has just
released a new version of software for its eQ, iQ and Pablo systems which, among a number of other useful
new features, also includes support for the RED Rocket accelerator board. Quantel is the first manufacturer
to release software that supports it, allowing Quantel users to benefit from the much reduced loading and
conform times RED Rocket enables with RED-originated material. The new software release - V4.1rev6 - also
includes the Cubebuilder, which enables Pablo users to build, manipulate and apply 3D Look-up Tables (LUTs)
entirely within Pablo. It also supports process re-ordering in multi-layer timeline effects for more flexibility in
effects creation, nine new blend modes, improved conform and file handling features, and new export modes
to simplify Blu-ray and DVD generation.

SONY UNVEILS HRX-NX5U

SOLID STATE CAMCORDER
pro.sony.com

Sony Electronics is expanding its line of solid state

camcorders, introducing its first professional camcorder
that implements the AVCHD format, the HXR-NX5U.
The professional HXR-NX5U model is part of Sony’s
NXCAM family of video products for professionals. It
features Sony’s Exmor™ CMOS sensor with ClearVid™
array, to deliver full high-definition resolution and low
light sensitivity with low noise. The camcorder will
record AVCHD up to 24Mbps, delivering 1920x1080 high
definition images with both interlace and progressive modes along with native 1080/24P, 720/60p and MPEG-
2 standard definition recording.
The NX5U camcorder includes both HD-SDI and HDMI outputs, as well as two-channel linear PCM audio
capabilities. Other unique features for the professional NX5U camcorder include 720/60P recording, built-in
GPS function, SMPTE Time Code I/O and an upgrade option for 60i/50i switchable.
(Sony has already introduced one professional AVCHD-based model: the compact POV camera and solid-
state recorder combination, model HXR-MC1.)
The new NXCAM model also shares the 20x optical zoom G lens used in Sony’s HVR-Z5U professional
camcorder. The camcorder uses two types of consumer media along with an optional HXR-FMU128 128GB
Flash Memory Unit for more than 11 hours of recording time at 24 Mbps. The HXR-FMU128 unit can be easily

46 The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0 INDUSTRY NEWS:
SONY HRX-NX5U PRO Storage for the Pros
CAMCORDER
— cont. from previous page Generation 2 is here
A new lineup - all metal drive tray products.
removed and simply powered
through a computer’s USB
connection, to make file
PCIe RAID PRO RX
downloading or editing 760MB/sec
easier and faster. Besides Super Fast
16 drives rackmount
the Memory Stick PRO Duo™ PRO DQ
media, users are also able to 580MB/sec
record HD content on class 4 Very Fast
or higher SDHC cards. Sony 8 drives tower
is also expanding its industry
leading line of consumer
media with the addition of five PRO FC
new SD/SDHC memory cards Fibre Channel PRO IDC
550MB/sec 900MB/sec
for digital imaging products, SAN Ready Super Fast SAN
including camcorders. 4Gb Fibre Channel Independent Dual Controller
The new HXR-NX5U
began shipping in January
2010, at a suggested list price
of $4,950, which is the same as

Sony’s highly successful HVR-
Z5U. The HXR-FMU128 unit
also shipped in January, at a
suggested list price of $800.
Acacdeny Award® is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. All rights are reserved.
9620 Topanga Canyon Place - Suite E - Chatsworth, CA 91311
www.dulcesystems.com 818-435-6007

RE:VISION EFFECTS, INC., RELEASES TWIXTOR OFX VERSION FOR THE

FOUNDRY’S NUKE AND AUTODESK’S MAYA
www.revisionfx.com

RE:Vision Effects
RE:Vision Effects has released
Twixtor as an Open FX (OFX) plug-in
set; Foundry’s Nuke and Autodesk’s
Maya Composite (Toxik) are currently

TWIXTOR
™
supported, with other hosts to be
added as Twixtor has been verified to
work properly within them. In order
to achieve its unparalleled image
quality for speeding up, slowing down, and altering the frame rate of footage, Twixtor synthesizes unique new
frames by warping and interpolating frames of the original sequence, employing RE:Vision’s proprietary tracking
technology that calculates motion for each individual pixel.
The new OFX version of Twistor adds support for marking material, so that Twixtor does not motion-interpolate
inappropriately across a cut or other transition. It supports up to 3 foreground mattes for up to 4 layers of individual
tracking, and also supports motion vector import and export.
[Editor’s Note: Creative COW Magazine’s “Visual Effects Issue,” RE:vision’s Pierre Jasmin discusses the Academy
Award®-winning optical flow technology that he developed with his partner Pete Litwinowicz, which is incorporated
across all of RE:Vision FX’s product line, including Twixtor. You can find them hosting the RE:vision Effects forum at
CreativeCow.net, and you can also find numerous Twixtor tutorials at library.creativecow.net.]

Creative COW Magazine — The NOW Issue 47

 Get
Your
FREE
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Guide!

To find out about placing your ad in Creative COW Magazine,

please contact: Tim Matteson <tmatteson@creativecow.net>

48 The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine

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Creative COW Magazine — The NOW Issue 49

 T H
Ron Lindeboom
Paso Robles, California USA
2010: The COW enters its own Year 10
A FEW SECRETS OF WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR THE COW AND ITS MEMBERS IN 2010
C hange. It’s a word that seems to be in
the air lately. And when you have been
building media professionals communities as we
have since June of 1995, you learn that on the web,
change is a constant. And in 2009 and 2010, change
is speeding up in ways never seen before.
Creative COW is entering its own 10th year dur-
ing 2010, and as we enter 2010, we have the biggest
changes in our history to roll out. Some changes
will come earlier in the year, others will come later.
But change will be a constant, one piece at a time.
But when the calendar closes on 2010, one thing
will be quite sure: Creative COW was never busier,
or as evolutionary as it was during 2010.
We realize that it would be nearly impossible
to take the COW on the road — at least in the sense
of actually getting everyone together in one place.
So we have been working to add features that al-
lows our members to easily interact with “birds of
a feather” in their own local area. We hope to one
day see many local COW groups around the globe.
It’s just one small but important part of the
new interface we are working on, an entirely new
interface for The COW that will allow our members
to opt-in (or out) of features that will give them the
ability to meet with COWs from their own area. It
could be for local user group meetings, or you
might want to meet with other COW members in
your area that use DSLRs. It could be to help staff or
promote a film festival in your area, or any event of
interest to COW members in a geographical area.
The possibilities are endless.
Our new interface has been in the planning
stage for much of 2009, and began development
in the last quarter of 2009. Its planned completion
date is slated for early Q3 of 2010.
Even our popular video reels area is slated for
an upgrade in both backbone and feature support.
These video features will then be leveraged by
other new areas of our redesign. For example: we
50
E B A C K F O R T Y
are developing new camera areas into which you
might upload your test footage if you elect to.
This requires a huge redevelopment effort on
the part of the COW and is not a simple tweaking
of our existing interface. This is a major redesign
of nearly every system and sub-system that now
makes up Creative COW.
We have “master-planned” the kind of design
and feature-set that we believe is indicative of what
social media communities will be in the future.
It is an interface that we have code-named
our “nonlinear” interface and it allows our mem-
bers to interact in many entirely new ways. It bears
no resemblance to anything that we have seen
elsewhere on the Net. It allows us to leverage The
COW’s enormous amount of support and informa-
tion, and serve it to our visitors within an interface
that “takes them from question to answer” in the
fewest number of steps possible.
If you hate change, don’t worry, as you will still
be able to access the classic COW interface.
We hope to have the completed nonlinear in-
terface fully implemented by Q3 2010.
An earlier mentioned contributing “piece” will
roll out shortly: our new professional camera site.
We have built a database of nearly every pro-level
camera and lens in the market and we have many
ways that we will later leverage this information to
the benefit of our members. Stay tuned.
You learn a few things in 15 years, and one of
the things that we have learned is that Neil Young
was right: rust never sleeps -- and neither does the
internet. You can’t rest for long on the internet.
2010 will be the year in which Creative COW re-
defined itself in ways that leveraged its powerful
legacy of linear forums and millions of questions
and answers, and tied it to an artificial intelligence
engine that took media professionals to a far more
powerful and supportive future.
n
The NOW Issue — Creative COW Magazine
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the shots
consolidate your acquisition options. sacrifice none.
Unifying all your video sources and cameras has
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With the new HPM200, you can play P2 and
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**Panasonic markets its professional AVCHD products under the AVCCAM brand name
master-quality footage and FTP low bit rate
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With the most diverse I/O connectivity of
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