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Tonight I did a quick test/playing around with the Canon 5D Mark II, using Pica as the test subject…he didn’t seem to mind too much.  I wanted to see the video in low light with the ISO cranked up.  In addition, I wanted to give the new anon plug-in for FCP, the EOS Movie Plugin-E1.

Everything went rather smoothly.  The recording, of course went easy.  It helps to have the kittie just lounging on the floor.  Bringing the footage into FCP using the new plugin was just as easy as bringing in P2 material -- actually it uses the same ‘Log and Transfer’ window.  There are limitations to the plugin but for straight use of the footage without any time remapping or frame size it works like a charm.  Oh and the camera setting were for 1080 at 24fps.  I just pulled a quick 24 seconds and threw it up -> no color correcting, no pre-planning, just a quick fire and upload.

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It doesn’t look like there will be any easing into the show with a course here or there.  Looking over the schedule of classes and events it looks like I will have several sessions to attend while still saving time to hit up the show floor a few times.

There appears to be a big draw to the 3D world this year.  Many of the sessions and speakers are focusing on generating 3D, where it stands in the market place currently and its expansion.  I decided to stay away from these areas only because I don’t see a huge draw for us to start creating 3D videos here at the Department.  Yeah I know, I’m being short-sighted…umm, guess again.

However, I am choosing the conferences that deal more with Documentary-style, lighting with smaller, portable rigs, and DSLRs with video, and using Motion and AE.  Because there is a greater demand now at work for us to tell stories I figured it would be a smart idea to get more info, tips, and training on documentary creation.  It is getting a little tiresome to lug around all the heavy lighting, so getting pointers on using a stripped down inventory (especially when it comes to travel) is something that really grabs my interest.

I want to increase the visual ‘flair’ that our video have.  I have dabbled in typography and virtual 3D photos and want to continue to branch out.  The Motion and AE sessions should, I hope, give me the kick in the right direction.  There is no better way to learn then by sitting down with the people who do this every day to watch and learn.   My use of After Effects and Motion are somewhat limited so getting some of the finer details on the hows and whys of the programs will be a boost to my confidence level and hopefully begin to stave off the intimidation these systems create.

The world of photo and video have never been closer.  Now that we have DSLRs shooting HD video a whole new world of multimedia content has been born.  In addition, there are all new approaches to shooting an event that was not there previous – do I break out the video cam or just take the Canons?  We are employing a couple of the Canon 5D Mark II cameras here in the shop and boy are we impressed.  there is more that we want to do with these little guys, we want to push them further than we currently are.  I’m glad to see that there are a handful of sessions that I can attend that will give more insight to supplemental equipment to help elevate our use of the cameras from grabbing ‘just some b-roll’ to completing quality products with the gear.

All in all, I am feeling more confident in the class choices this year over what I chose last year.  I was, somewhat, haphazardly picking and choosing classes that looked fun and interesting without planning out what I was looking for or wanting to accomplish in the big picture last year.  This time around I looked at everything offered and created a game plan on what to see.  Sure, I will be missing out on some fun sessions because the times conflict, but you can’t always get what you want I suppose…but I can try.    Because of the schedule I think I will miss out on the session with some of the VFX people from “Alice” but I will have the opportunity to sit in on a discussion with some of the makers of “Zombieland” – namely the VFX supervisor, the Cinematographer, and the Director, and there is a discussion with Stan Lee which should be cool too.  So I won’t miss out on everything cool.

As the photo world and video world coalesce even deeper more and more people are working to bridge the two styles together.  One of the ways motion in images is being created is by animating 2D, still images.  By ‘converting’ the images to a 3D space there are new avenues open for using the image.

This is an area that I have been interested in but never took the time to really see how to make it all come together.  I admit that After Effects intimidates me so I am always looking for a way to avoid using it and found myself shelving ideas that I wanted to bring to life.  With the want and desire to bring more life and spice to our videos here at work I decided to take a couple hours, search out some tutorials and see what I have to do…yes, even if that meant having to use After Effects.

This afternoon I had some kinda/sorta downtime as I wait for some footage to be sent to me so I put the nose to the grind and cooked up a quick 2.5 second virtual 3D photo.  This is a rough looking vid but at least I now have the basic of basics down and it is all fine-tuning from here on out.

Test video of Virtual 3D photo:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SIooi3lbnQ

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