News

Sony's PXW-X500 solid-state memory shoulder-mount camcorder offers superior picture quality with three-chip 2/3-inch type new CCD image sensors. The camcorder is designed to be a flexible 1080p acquisition tool for a broad range of HD production applications such as TV dramas, live productions, ENG and sports productions. To be available in October 2014.

Metabones released the new Canon EF to Micro-4/3 mount Speed Booster adapter. The adapter makes the lens 0.71x wider, increases maximum aperture by 1 stop, and also increases MTF. The adapter features built-in electronics to control lens aperture by the controls on the camera body, and is also powered by the camera's body. The adapter is an ideal companion for Blackmagic Cinema Camera MFT or the mirrorless Panasonic GH4 models.

Press Release

London's Goldcrest Post continues the expansion of its Academy Award and BAFTA winning post production services with the addition of three new digital intermediate (DI) theatrical grading suites featuring DaVinci Resolve.

Goldcrest has already used its theatrical grading suites for the DI on Kingsman: The Secret Service, Inbetweeners 2, Breaking the Bank, Suite Francaise and Stephen Frears’ Lance Armstrong biopic. With access to the very latest in DI creative technology and workflows of DaVinci Resolve 11, Goldcrest’s Lexington Street picture post department, which includes leading colorists Adam Glasman, Rob Pizzey and Lee Clappison, is now the only facility in Soho to offer its clients complete audio and picture finishing services for major theatrical releases all under the same roof.

The DaVinci Resolve workflow for Goldcrest’s main DI suites relies on multiple 4GPU Linux DaVinci Resolves for editing and grading, and also includes multiple 1 GPU Linux and Mac Resolves for preparation and lab work. Goldcrest’s two main DI suites feature a 10 meter throw with 6.5 meter screens including the latest Barco DCI projector. All DaVinci Resolve workstations are connected to a half Petabyte San Media storage system insuring playback and realtime grading for multiple 4K streams.

Blackmagic reseller Jigsaw24 proposed the highest specification DaVinci Resolve servers to run the grading and online suites, all on Linux. “This ensured a uniformity across the creative suites, providing easier support and interoperability in the facility,” explained Jigsaw’s Jamie Allan. “The grading and online systems were all built identically, so online playback could be achieved in realtime, without the need for rendering from a grade. All of the systems are powered by Nvidia Titan GPU processing cards.”

“The scope and scale of the features that will go through our facility means that our project management has to be watertight,” said Laurent Treherne, chief technology director of Goldcrest Post who oversaw the upgrade “Using DaVinci Resolve throughout our editorial pipeline has given us a more efficient and flexible workflow because we are using a centralized database. DI, online editing and conform can now be done using the same project files without the need to render any files or translate and check XML data. Jigsaw’s technical consultancy and extensive knowledge of DaVinci Resolve has been essential to the project’s success.”

“This new post production infrastructure demonstrates our commitment to entering the UK picture post arena. As we have secured some of the very best talent in the industry, we had to ensure that our colorists, editors and assistants had an environment offering the highest technological and aesthetic qualities in which to work,” explains Goldcrest Post managing director Patrick Malone. “Our heritage in film financing and distribution establishes our credibility within the feature production industry, and by adding world class post production services to our facilities, clients will have access to a unique, fully integrated service.

Press Photography

Product photos of DaVinci Resolve are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

About Goldcrest

Goldcrest is a vertically integrated entertainment company. From offices in New York and London Goldcrest offers a unique integrated solution for producers of filmed entertainment globally. Highly skilled talent, expertise and experience underpin the company’s activities in three distinct operational areas:

– Goldcrest Films oversees the distribution and marketing of films produced by Goldcrest and third-party acquisitions in addition to monetising Goldcrest’s celebrated library of over 100 titles and recently announced they will be financing and distributing Brooklyn Bridge to which Daniel Radcliffe is attached to star, starting at the forthcoming European Film Market in Berlin.

– Goldcrest Post is a market leading supplier of Academy Award and BAFTA winning post-production services.

– Goldcrest Finance raises funds and structures transactions in the media sector and has funded films ranging in budget from $3 million to $98 million, of which four have opened at number 1 at the US box office.

Press Release

Blackmagic Design announced that the music visualizer for Owl City’s newest track, “Wolf Bite,” was shot on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (EF) and color graded on DaVinci Resolve 11. The video is one of the first projects in the world to be finished on the newest version of DaVinci Resolve.

Following hits like “Fireflies,” “Vanilla Twilight,” and the Carly Rae Jepsen duet, “Good Time,” Owl City’s latest track, “Wolf Bite,” comes from the recently released Ultraviolet EP. The video for “Wolf Bite” features people dressed as wolves riding bikes and dancing throughout the streets around New York City. Shot by Director of Photography Tim Buttner and directed by Andrew William Ralph, the video contains dramatic artistic elements, harsh and low lighting and a number of visual effects.

“When I spoke with Andrew leading up to the video shoot, we talked about the look being pretty artistic and open, considering he was going to do some stylized animations over it,” said Tim. “The first thing he asked was for me to shoot the moon; however, the full moon had just passed. Luckily, I had shot the full moon over the winter in RAW at 24fps on my Blackmagic Cinema Camera for my own purposes. This gave us a great shot of the moon to start with and set the frame rate for the project.”

The video’s nighttime bicycle shots proved to be challenging due to lighting restrictions. To get the footage, Tim sat with the camera on the back of a moving vehicle with a work light shooting out from underneath him. While recording the time lapse footage seen in the video, Tim used the Blackmagic Cinema Camera to capture out of focus lights to be used later in the video as an overlay effect.

“We were happy that the Blackmagic Cinema Camera did very well in low light even at 800 ASA,” said Tim. “I decided not to go above 800 ASA to ensure little to no noise, and in post I pushed the exposure a bit more by roughly a half stop. A lot of the street lights gave a nice look on the road, but I emphasized that in DaVinci Resolve.”

For the scenes with the dancers, Andrew asked Tim to find lights that could simulate car headlights for the scene. Tim quickly found a solution that worked: he used actual car headlights. According to Tim, they were bright enough and the camera was so good in low light situations that they were able to pull off the shots without any cinema lights.

Tim also used the Blackmagic Cinema Camera to shoot the footage of a wolf mask with glowing eyes that appears overlaid in certain shots of the video. He shot the mask against a green screen background that he then keyed out so that he could do a glow effect inside the mask’s eyes.

“The quality provided by the Blackmagic Cinema Camera made that job so easy, especially the extra pixels from the 2.5K resolution for masking the shape of the eyes for the glow effect,” said Tim. “Overall, I love using the Blackmagic Cinema Camera because the footage looks so amazing. It’s so affordable, good in low light and easy to use, but to me the biggest selling point is the 13 stops of dynamic range and the ability to shoot RAW, which allows me to do whatever I need to do in post.”

During the color grade, Tim used the VisionColor ImpulZ LUTs on a few shots as a base starting point, and then used the Power Windows and color picker in DaVinci Resolve 11 to emphasize various elements.

“DaVinci Resolve 11 allowed us to give the bicycle sequences a distinct look compared to the dancers,” said Tim. “I was able to emphasize more blue tones in the dancers to contrast to the red and orange tones of the bicycle sequence. And for the bicycle sequence, I was asked to emphasize the wolf’s fur by making it more of a brownish red color, and being able to pick that specific part of the image and use a Power Window to track the head was great.”

Tim also used Resolve 11’s new media management duplication feature extensively. This allowed Tim to securely back up and save digital camera files through a clone tool that copies media drives, memory cards and camera packs to multiple destinations simultaneously. In the office, he had two hard drives, so while he worked on one of them he had everything copied to another as a backup. Once the color grade was finished, he exported the files to be edited. Per the client’s request, the finished project was delivered to BitMAX in Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) 23.98fps in 1920X1080.

“All the color grading was done before editing, which isn’t a normal procedure, but for this project it made the most sense,” said Tim. “DaVinci Resolve gave us so much control over the RAW images and it made life so easy to be able to use such a powerful tool.”

Press Photography

Product photos are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Some time ago, we brought yousamples of footagefrom several cameras from our offer. For each model you will find a brief description of the format in which we recorded the footage. After you start the video demonstration, you can then download the unedited footage (see picture).