Live Unicorn Coverage

Today promises to be a big day. At 3pm PST, Canon will make a product announcement at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. And although the slogan above is theirs, presumed to indicate a digital cinema offering of the kind we’ve been begging them to create, it could equally describe the state of the insular community of future-camera fanatics following Canon’s invitation. Jim Jannard of Red responded by declaring an event of his own later that same evening. At 6pm tonight, the details of Red’s long-awaited (and NAB-demoed) Scarlet will be revealed, possibly having been tweaked to better battle Canon’s offering, but not so much as to prevent Red from taking orders.

Then came the speculation. And the expectations. There’s a great summary of the Sturm und Drang over at FreshDV.

The venerable Mike Seymour will be covering both events and live-blogging them at fxguide. That’s where I’ll be watching.

Update on Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 12:14AM by Stu

Oh, and something from Avid too. Reister here for a 1PM EST webby-streamy thing.

Discover what has professional editors talking and find out how to edit like you’ve never been able to before. Join Avid for an exclusive webcast—Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 1 pm ET (10 am PT).

Update on Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 3:04PM by Stu

Fxguide is having server issues, but engadget is covering the event and surviving so far. You can also follow @fxguidelive on Twitter for updates.

Realistic Lens Flares

When technology and art intersect, its often the case that those who know how have no idea why, and those who know why have no idea how.

I can’t stop thinking about this SIGGRAPH video. It shows realistic lens flares being computed in real time using a ray tracing technique. There are some lens artifacts shown here of a complexity and beauty that I’ve never seen faked convincingly before.

Lens flare is caused by light passing through a photographic lens system in an unintended way. Often considered a degrading artifact, it has become a crucial component for realistic imagery and an artistic means that can even lead to an increased perceived brightness.

Jesus nerds. “Increased perceived brightness?” That was the best sales pitch you could give on why being able to synthesise realistic lens flares is worthwhile?

Lens flares are awesome because they are fricking crazy. They are completely unreal. They increase the veil of unreality between the audience and the movie. They are beautiful. They are tiny imperfections magnified by orders of magnitude. They are aliens. And scary buildings. We give them sound effects and music cues. They make movies bigger than life because they have nothing to do with life.

And I want yours.

In the Vimeo comments the poster said:

Anamorphic optics are currently not supported, but this is not a principal limitation of the rendering scheme.

If they had put anamorphic examples in this video I think I’d be standing on their lawn with a boom box right now.

Physically-Based Real-Time Lens Flare Rendering — Hullin, Eisemann, Seidel, Lee

FXPHD April Term, NAB 2011

FXPHD have announced their April term, which includes a course called Epic On Location, where Mike Seymour and I learn you up some Epic. FXPHD courses are always amazing. I have a friend who mastered an entire RED One feature on a single Mac Pro using the guidance of past RED courses. In this case, Mike literally got on a plane from LA, where he had just picked up his Epic, and flew straight back to the other side of the planet to start using the camera to shoot for the class. I landed in New Zealand a few days later and within an hour of stepping off the plane, I was hanging upside-down from cables with a camera. We had a blast shooting some amazing footage, from cars, ziplines, and helicpoters, on rigs designed for much larger cameras and rigs designed for lightweight DSLRs.

I can’t recommend FXPHD enough, but in this case, this course truly is the only game in town when it comes to learning about this revolutionary new camera.

I will be at NAB for one day only (I’m slowly learning how not to go), Tuesday, April 12th, joining Mike on stage at the Post Pit (Booth SL12205) to talk more about the camera. Come by and say hi and then push right past me when you realize that the Epic is also there. I’ll understand.

I will also mention a few cool new things from Red Giant Software. Stuff you’ll like.

HD Magazine has an article about our New Zealand shoot, featuring some photos of and by me. More photos can be found at my Flickr site.

Sony NEX FS100

I think Sony may have just made the ultimate DV Rebel camcorder. Check out this video from Hangman Studios and F-Stop Academy:

Price for the body is rumored to be in the $4,500 range.

Update on Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 11:12AM by Stu

Big, grumpy review here.