Another exciting day of NAB sent even more great news for Microfilmmakers everywhere, with both production and post-production related gear hitting the block. This year is as crowded as ever, with a bevy of interesting people and their cameras both purchased and on loan from the various companies fighting for exposure (no pun intended) crossing the floor to test, shoot vlogs, and hope to purchase at some date within the year.
The crowd floods through and around the BlackMagic Design booth.
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema
Blackmagic Design shocked the world last year when they revealed their 3k camera with a simple design, great price and a user-friendly interface that made people forget about the Scarlet promises that Red made the year before. This year they have unveiled two great cameras which are within range of microfilmmaker budgets and offer amazing capabilities. The first in that list is their new Pocket Cinema Camera,with a Super-16 Cinema 1080HD sensor with 13 stops of dynamic range, CinemaDNG RAW recording, SD card storage, Micro HDMI monitoring and a Micro Four Thirds lens mount. Using the simple and super-sharp touch screen interface perfected from the previous model and priced UNDER $1000, this is certain to be a hit among microfilmmakers when it hits the streets this July.
$995, Super16 sensor packs a punch!
New Tools from Adobe
Adobe continues to add functionality and real-world tools to their set of production tools. For the last few years Adobe has had their eye on “script to screen” tools that allow productions to stay within their software set throughout their entire process. Early iterations of this were a little clunky, but they are seriously coming into their own. Starting with the most exciting release, Adobe now has a live pipeline between After Effects and Cinema4D. Filmmakers, producers, editors and VFX pros collectively sighed in relief as they counted the saved hours of rendering in between programs. Prelude, which released with CS6 has added the popular ‘hoverscrub’ function that Premiere Pro editors swooned over since last year, and of course the amount of metadata, notes, and descriptions you would like to include with your footage is only limited by your want. Speedgrade, Adobe Creative Suite’s new color grading tool has had a complete overhaul since its release last year. The user interface is much more friendly to Adobe users with familiar tools, icons and buttons, which will lessen the learning curve that existed in the prior release. These are just a few of the most exciting changes that Adobe has made this year, for more you can check out www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud.html
Blackmagic 4k for $4k
If you want to step up and grab a 4k camera, now’s your chance. Or at least, July 25th is your chance. Blackmagic Design also showcased their 4k camera that costs, you guessed it, just under $4k. This bad boy has a Super 35 sensor with native Ultra HD and 4K support, a built-in SSD recorder, compressed CinemaDNG RAW and compatibility with EF lenses. Having yet to shoot with it, I can’t swear by it, but I guarantee you I WILL shoot with it and a full report will be headed your way.
4k for less than $4k? Yes. Finally.
Its an exciting year for gear and I’m going to see much more of it tomorrow! Check back here for updates after the show to find out about the new “One Man Crew” from Redrock Micro and the Movi from Freefly!
AJ Wedding
A.J. Wedding is a graduate of Western Michigan University and has won festival awards for his first feature film, "Pop Fiction". As a writer/director, he has won several awards for his short films, and recently garnered worldwide distribution for a feature film titled “The Disappearance of Jenna Matheson” releasing this year. His hit web series, “Infamous” created an instant fanbase, and spawned interest from networks to create a tv series based on it. A.J. currently works with The Production Green, directing and editing commercials as well as developing his next feature film, "Junior Crew."