More on the WGA strike.

The wrong aspect ratios on DVDs and lying covers

This is one of my pet peeves these days and it really is very frustrating to people like me who give a damn. Lucky for me though it's only happened one time when I actually purchased a dvd and the other times where when I rented them. 

My Latest encounter unfortunately was with the Black Sheep Collectors edition, I don't want to single it out but it's the most recent example. Black Sheep is actually a double whammy, The Film was shot on Super 35 for the 2:35:1 aspect ratio which I loved and enjoyed in the film

. Then I go over to my friends place to watch his copy of the movie which is apparently the "Special edition" and despite the fact that it says 2:35:1 anamorphic wide screen on the box...

The Film is presented in 16:9 widescreen! 

The average Joe Blog or Joe Blows or whatever you want to call the chap might not care but when I purchase a DVD I expect to watch the film as it was intended to be seen in the cinema. 

Come on guys pay attention when you make these things. 

Finally I understand the writers strike!

At first I didn't really understand it, what do they want? turns out those scum bag studios have been holding out on them! 

Check out this video it explains all. 

A Fistful Of Zombies

I have come to decide that my first feature film should be the most ridiculous Zombie film ever created and after about 5 minutes of thinking the title hit me and stuck. 

Obviously with all things film making it is possible that one day I during production or post production I'll suddenly go "The title is shit! this one is much better" this is how it sticks for now. 

I've posted my little Call out notice for crew etc. here on the Headstrong forums in hopes for cheap labour... I mean an awesome capable crew but in any case if funding magically comes along there will be beer and pizza and maybe even pay for all who join the crew. 

Here's a crappy photoshop for those interested. 

We're Here to help, My take

This is my review of We're here to help written for Black Magic.co.nz you can find it here, http://www.black-magic.co.nz/home/?p=609

Regretfully I spelled Jonothan's name wrong  in that article so sorry about that.

 

“No you listen to me you clown, you talk to one of my people like that again and I’ll come down here and kick your fat ass from one end of Cashel Street to the other… is that clear?”
These are the angry words of Businessman Dave Henderson (Erik Thomson) before he leaves the IRD offices in Christchurch after his girlfriend Kath (Miriama Smith) had received some rather unprofessional and suggestive comments when she had come to collect a refund that Dave’s company had been owed.
Unfortunately this leads to Dave being audited by the IRD and ultimately leads down a road that only gets worse and worse however Dave will not give in and Fights back until he ultimately wins.

We’re here to help is a film is a true story based on Dave Henderson’s book “Be Very afraid” Directed by Jonothan Cullinane is a true David and Goliath story with the biggest bureaucracy of all… The Tax Department.
Dave refuses to give into their pressure and keeps on fighting and keeps his sense of humour on the way.
In the process he begins taping every conversation with the department as well as every demand and scrap of paper this leads to some very funny scenes with IRD employees all squirming at the thought that they can’t just bullshit their way through the conversation.

The light hearted comedy is very well made the story is interesting funny and the acting is solid.
One of my favourite moments in the film is during one of the scenes during one of the IRD meetings.
Dave announces that he is sick of being lied to and decides to start recording their conversations so that he has proof of what they are telling him.
The man who’s come into the room with him suddenly becomes very nervous and without saying much quickly leaves the room and is soon replaced with someone else.

Being Jonothan’s first feature film it’s definitely a winner. I can’t think of a single actor who delivered a sub standard performance and I never once lost interest in the movie while I was watching it.
I found it really interesting to see the difference in how the IRD handled themselves whilst they knew they were being taped versus when they were not being taped, going from very confident and precise to unorganized and nervous often just trying to avoid the questions.
Unlike other comedies which have been developed in New Zealand in the past the film isn’t bogged down by lot’s of Kiwi jokes which international audiences wouldn’t understand and I really like that about the film international appeal is something I believe all Kiwi films should aspire to.

Bottom line is this, David and Goliath stories are always fun especially when they’re about the little guy taking on the Tax department well worth watching come November 8th I may even go see it again.

The Dollar sign comes before the number, idiots!

Goddamn I swear I see this stupidity (or maybe laziness) all over the internet.
"blah blah blah 800$" SON it's $800 your suppose to put the dollar sign in front of the number and the cent sign after the number.
Why am I so frustrated by this small small detail? It just looks so stupid my years of the internet be it on the forums or reading some blog I have come to expect or at the very least want quality writing.
Now I might not be the most amazing scholar of grammar but small things like this should not slide Thumbs down, you know whom you are.

Look baby 13 stops dynamic range! get that red one outa my face!

In an interview with FreshDV a sony interview revealed that Sony's F23 has a whopping dynamic range of 13 stops.
And those red guys where excited about RED one having 11 stops! holy crap!

"Most of the HD cameras on the market will provide you with about 9 stops of dynamic range, this camera actually gives you 13"
- Jeff Cree

In the commentary for Deja' Vu Tony Scott commented on Panavisions Genisis camera saying that it performs amazingly at night but HD isn't quite there when it comes to dynamic range so it's not as good for a day light shoot as film.

In the reduser.net forums is was said that film has a dynamic range of roughly 13 stops so this puts the F23 in very favorable eyes for a cinematographer I think.

3. Dynamic Range- advantage 35mm film
Film is roughly 13 stops. The RED camera is currently 11.3 (although we are working on improvement in this area).

Time will tell if Red one is able to match this but for the time being Red one fans have one less thing to rag on Sony about.

Update Heres the interview right here.

New Macbook Pros from apple

With WWDC Less than a week away apple has Just announced an update to their Macbook pro line which has proven to be a very exciting update.
Although there is still no Blu-ray drives on these computers an update to the DVD player software could quickly make the 17 inch Macbook pro a decent option to go along with an external drive.

Along with a new Geforce graphics chip, Display upgrades including LED backlighting for 15 inch models the Macbook pro also sees a small boost in processor speed and a 4 GB memory limit up from 3 GB.

The 2.4 GHz, 15-inch MacBook Pro, for a suggested retail price of $2,499 (US), includes:


15.4-inch widescreen LED-backlit 1440-by-900 LCD display;
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor;
2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 4GB;
160GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor;
a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive;
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB GDDR3 memory;
DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately);
built-in Dual Link support for driving Apple 30-inch Cinema HD Display;
built-in iSight video camera;
Gigabit Ethernet port;
built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot;
two USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, and one FireWire 400 port;
one audio line in and one headphone out port, each supporting optical digital audio;
Scrolling TrackPad and illuminated keyboard;
the infrared Apple Remote; and
85 Watt Apple MagSafe Power Adapter.
The 2.4 GHz, 17-inch MacBook Pro, for a suggested retail price of $2,799 (US), includes:


17-inch widescreen 1680-by-1050 LCD display;
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor;
2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 4GB;
160GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor;
a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive;
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB GDDR3 memory;
DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately);
built-in Dual Link support for driving Apple 30-inch Cinema HD Display;
built-in iSight video camera;
Gigabit Ethernet port;
built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
ExpressCard/34 expansion card slot;
three USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800 port, and one FireWire 400 port;
one audio line in and one headphone out port, each supporting optical digital audio;
Scrolling TrackPad and illuminated keyboard;
the infrared Apple Remote; and
85 Watt Apple MagSafe Power Adapter.

introducing itunes plus... from apple

itunes plus is apple's new DRM free high quality music format, The lack of DRM on the files will essentially allow users to do what ever they please with the music.
Even if they want to put it on their new Zune or PSP for example, granted they may have to convert the format a little.

This announcement comes about with the release of itunes 7.2 which is available for Mac and Windows on apple.com as usual.
Currently only EMI is bringing out DRM free music this way however high sales may prompt other record labels to follow suit.
We may still see DRM in our lives for years to come but this could potentially be the beginning of the end of DRM.

Lets hope the Movie industry does the same these Dinosaurs are going to make themselves go under if their not careful.

48 hours is over!

And Team Spielberg, my team has finished on time.
I had my camera a spare tape and a full tape come time to deliver so what do I do?
I take the camera along with me baby! Heres a look at what happens in the final moments of the competition.
One dude showed up with a laptop Avid running trying to borrow a camera and buy someone's mini DV tape.
I assume he had a finished film on there to dump onto it or something but even if the man had succeeded he had no envelope or finishing documents.

No dice

Final Cut Studio 2 is here, And it's Amazing

If anyone was wondering why apple was taking so long with it's latest update to the Final Cut series they need not think any longer because this latest update is proof that it was worth the wait.
Not only have we gotten updates of our same old favorites we one again have a new entry to the bundle "Color".
Color is a high end Color correction tool which naturally is seamlessly mixes in with the previous final cut pro work flow and as to be expected 32 bit float rendering.

Apple has also announced Final Cut Server, A media management app which has clients on both Mac and PC which may finally give those stubborn Avid users a reason to give Final Cut a look.

Along with this AJA Kona is set to bring out an HD IO box which is portable enough to bring it with you in the field and has native support for apples new ProRes HD 4:2:2 codec allowing you to pretty much take your 4k footage onto a macbook pro and start editing it whilst still on location.
If you prefer however Final cut pro will cut the REDCODE codec natively for those of you who don't want to lose the benefits of the 4:4:4 compression.

Although there doesn't seem to be any support for authoring Blu-ray disk in DVD studio pro perhaps it could be added in a future update or something.
If I am somehow able to get the money together I may be using this for my 48 hours movie this year but I don't mind if I don't as I still want to get some projects edited out of this version to make the purchase worth while.

Development of the iphone has Delayed the OS 10.5 release

"iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned.

We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned.

While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait.

Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones. "

Although I am disappointed by this announcement I hope it means that the iPhone will be a highly polished product worth the $600 their going to charge for it.

This will probably be $900 NZD in my case, I should also have a lot more time to save up for a macbook pro or something.

100 million ipods sold

As of today Apple inc. Has sold it's 100 millionth ipod, Thus making the ipod the fastest selling music player in History.
Released in 2001 the ipod has had 10 different generations and 5 different models.

“It’s hard to remember what I did before the iPod,” said Mary J. Blige, GRAMMY Award-winning singer. “iPod is more than just a music player, it’s an extension of your personality and a great way to take your favorite music with you everywhere you go.”

I myself own a 30 GB ipod and I can say with out a doubt that the ipod is the best portable music device that money can buy.

Every ipod features seamless integration with the itunes 7 software available on both Mac OS and Windows.
The itunes music store which is built into the device gives you access to the world’s largest catalog with over five million songs, 350 television shows and over 400 movies. The iTunes Store has sold over 2.5 billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies, making it the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store.

Apple also plans to enter the gigantic mobile phone market with the launch of it's revolutionary iphone which is slated for release some time in june.

PS3 is here baby, I went to the launch party and tried it out

Originally I wasn't going to go to the local PS3 launch but my friend was picking his up on launch night so I decided I would take my camera phone and take some snaps of the event for my blog.
Why did I not buy one myself? ....... Well it's elementary my good sir and or madam I have not enough money for a PS3, And even if I did have enough I should probably put it towards the Nintendo Wii I need to finish paying off.

But anyways on to the launch of the system, All and all it was a little more than I expected they had a DJ and a PS3 set up on their crappy Trinitron TV which they probably picked up who knows how many years ago and they had all the games you can choose from lined out on a table.
Wasn't too bad though as it gave me an chance to pick up Motorstorm and Sonic for a quick play.
Not only that it was encouraging to see that they are going to be stocking Blu-ray titles in store now even though they are around $49 NZ.

TV is here...... Yes in NZ to

Finally after a few delays and set backs apple is shipping it's TV, A set top box which allows you to view your itunes content on your widescreen TV.

Priced at $498 NZ dollars or $299 in the US it comes with a 40GB HDD built in so that you don't have to stream everything off you computer.

There are a few downsides however as although it has HDMI it only supports a maximum 720p at 5 MB/S and if you've looked at the NZ music store there isn't really any video content unless you opt for only music videos, Pixar shorts or Podcasts.

Hopefully more local content will be put up, I see there being a lot of potential for selling short films etc.

Lets Get it On!... The preperation period of 48 hours Begins

May 18th is the date and to save Myself the troubles of last years 48 hours I am about to embark on a brand new Team Hunt.

I am determined to do things different this year New name, New crew, Early start and High Definition.

Once again I will be directing etc. but this year I am going to get a writing team of at least 2 people. I am also going to be starting the Location scout almost immediately.

A detailed photo book will be prepared of all the locations that could be potentially available so that we can write the script accordingly and no vision will be compromised!

10 Minute Cooking School

I have chosen this video as my first blog video as I have decided that one day I shall make puerco pibil!
The Famous simple roast pork dish on once upon a time in mexico.... Robert Rodriguez shows us how it's done.