Dreamcore – "Lights" from Tom Lowe on Vimeo.

I have two friends who put videos up yesterday that I wanted to share.   They also happen to be interestingly connected with one another.

The first is by Tom Lowe of Dreamcore.   You may remember Tom from TimeScapes – an amazing film comprised of gorgeous live action and time lapse sequences from around the United States – notably national parks and our nation’s natural treasures.   I realize I never reviewed his film on my blog even though I attended the premiere and I consider Tom a close friend.   So if you haven’t checked it out I highly recommend you do so – the film is available in a multitude of formats all the way up to 4K (and was notably the first 4K film ever sold the to the public) for those of you with a fancy new 4K television hungry for content:  the visuals in the film are stunning and won’t disappoint.  The music is done by yet another friend John Stanford who was also the executive producer, find out more about how this film was made here.

Above, you’ll find another video that Tom worked out with several friends of ours (it’s a small incestuous little world this film business.)  DP, editor and unit director: Tom Lowe Director: Kevin Kerslake Crew: Jon Bregel, Kevin Packer, Josh Owens, Dustin "Dr. Kanab" Kukuk, Marcus Del Negro, Eric Hines.

It’s also worthy camera porn if you will as it combines the old world with the new.   Many of these shots were made with the Leica M Noctilux f/0.95 lens combined with the Red Epic and a then prototype Leica mount for the cine camera.   While the Noctilux lens has definitely been modernized by Leica, it has always been a lens of desire as one of the sharpest and "brightest" lenses in the world.   Combined with 5K imagery and high frame rates (120 frame per second) the results are quite unusual – notably the bokeh.   It’s important to realize that this is cutting edge cinematography – without the f/0.95 aperture that allows a tremendous amount of light to reach the digital sensor, the sensor would not have been able to capture enough light at the evening events at the high frame rates (which let almost 16 times less light in than a traditional 24 frames per second.)

Filmed at Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas, 2012 –  Download the 4K H264 (1.28GB) file here: eveninfinite.com/tom/lights.mp4 or torrent: thepiratebay.se/torrent/8377852 and Follow Dreamcore at: facebook.com/DreamcorePictures and Follow Tom Lowe at: twitter.com/DreamCorePics Special thanks to Agata Alexander  Music: "Lights" by Ellie Goulding (Bassnectar remix): 

beatport.com/track/lights-bassnectar-remix/2054773

Second is a recent video collaboration between musician Moby and Mark Lanegan. As some of you may know I got to know Moby following the release of "Reverie" 5 years ago. He e-mailed this video to me yesterday and I thought it would be a great time to put both of these friends’ work up on the blog. The fact that they were both released on the same day and that Tom photographed so many of the same location in Moby’s video in Timescapes makes this all come full circle somehow. Enjoy the awesome cinematography within both of these videos – and I’ll go ahead and add the TimeScapes video for good measure at the end of the post to help come full circle.  Music: ‘The Lonely Night’ by Moby & Mark Lanegan – Cinematography & Direction: Colin Rich (deer-dog.com)

I was going to post a video today that Tom Lowe and a few mutual friends filmed a little under a year ago that has just been released.

I thought it best to hold off for a a little bit given the events in Boston today.    

As many of you know I covered many of the events post-9/11 overseas and lived in New York City most of my life and why this hits close to home and I chose to write about it.

I  simply wanted to say that while the psychological effect of these attacks can be significant, their long term affect on our quality of life can be one of the single biggest threats to all of us. I hope we don’t give these people the satisfaction of knowing that they can successfully dictate how we live our lives.

I think we should take a pause today to send our condolences and best energy to the victims and families involved in today’s events.

That’s enough politics for me.  To that end, back to technology and filmmaking very shortly.

Vincent Laforet

Wow.  

That’s seems like the only appropriate word to describe what’s happened in the past 7 days since the release of the MōVI film and stabilized gimbal.  The videos that I’ve included in this Vimeo Gallery have been seen 1.6 million times in under a week’s time.   

First a few important  updates:

Ship times / deposits / availability:

Freelfy is taking pre-oders on the M10 and MR (RC Helo) units now here:  movirig.com    

The deposit is for $2,500 and is fully refundable.  It simply ensures your place in line and allows Freefly to properfly set their production lines and order proper quantities of parts.

 Both units are selling for $14,995 and come with a remote control and batteries for the unit.

The MōVI M10 supports the weight of a system that is 10 lbs – that roughly equates to a RED Epic with Cine Primes and Follow Focus + wireless transmitters. That weight range of course encompasses all Canon & other brand HDSLRs, C100,C300, C500 there with regular lenses and cine lenses (and similar systems of the same weight and size) that don’t exceed 10 lbs total.  The rig itself weighs 3.5 lbs and can travel with you in the overhead compartment of an airline.

A MōVI M5 (that supports up to 5 lbs) and a MōVI M20 aimed at heavier camera systems such as the Arri Alexa or an Epic Camera with a zoom lens will be announced at a later date.

Ethos:

The Ethos of Freefly is to under-promise and over-deliver.   Right now they have announced that the first units will start to ship in the third quarter of this year (that is the July-September range.)  

They are also a company that have built a pretty sterling reputation in the RC Helicopter market and they are a bit obsessive with quality of manufacturing, software, and customer support.   There is absolutely no room for error when you fly six figure cinema cameras in the air over an open field, let alone over a production.  So these are not the type of people who tend to take any shortcuts regardless of momentum of demand – and I respect them tremendously for that.

If you were to order a MōVI today you should expect to receive yours within a reasonable period of time after the first ones ship – especially compared to general expectations of what other companies have done.  (That’s as non-specific a way for me to say:  put your name in line now,  you can always change your mind and get your deposit back,  once you do so you’ll have to wait what I would call an "industry standard" waiting period for any popular product – but if you choose to wait to put your order in you’ll obviously have to wait quite a bit longer as demand is quite strong and growing.)

MōVI M10 Giveaway:

One twitter follower was selected at the conclusion of NAB yesterday to win the very first MōVI M10 off of the production line.   We used a random number generator app based on the total number of their followers at the time and have a winner.   We just need a little time to track down who follower number "X" is without having to do it the hard way…   and then we need to contact them to make sure their account is valid of course before we announce.     We also have a fun idea for announcing it – so basically RELAX.   You shouldn’t need to refresh your Direct Message queue on twitter every ten seconds… as some apparently have been doing.

There is still a second change to win the second MōVI M10 off the production line – all you need to do is to follow both @freeflycinema and @vincentlaforet on twitter and we’ll pick that winner within a month from now.  

Demo requests / Production inquiries etc:

We’ve gotten a good amount of request to use the MōVI on some pretty um… let’s just say "respectable" movies and commercials.   Kindly forward your requests to the following e-mail address: movi at freeflysystems.com and they will get back to you as soon as possible.    The group at Freeflfy is passionate about filmmaking, and has a strong interest in getting these units out to as many productions as possible who would make the best use of their MōVI.

Awards: 

Freefly received 3 significant awards during NAB this past week – notably the prestigious Digital Video Black Diamond Award, the Mario Award and the InBroacast Editor’s Awards.

As Jon Fauer of Film and Digital Times said:

"If FDTimes gave awards, MoVi would probably win most innovative new product of the show."

You can read his full article here.

Final Word:

Freefly is a company that started under a different name under a decade ago in a garage and that quickly grew to being one of the pre-emminent RC helicopter companies out there.  

They employ some of the brightest engineers in the world – I’ve worked with engineers at Apple for 5+ years and I can confirm this from first hand experience.

They were anticipating strong demand (but not QUITE this level of demand) and they are already in production on getting these units out to everyone as soon as possible.    

Two of the founders are filmmakers and have worked on some of the biggest hollywood productions and they understand our needs extremely well.   One was a highly skilled Steadicam operator and one of the best I’ve had the chance to work with.  

Their goal is to get these units to as many filmmakers as possible, as quickly as possible.   They have a passion for filmmaking and want to make sure they can get enough high quality product out there without a hitch, so that they can eventually get it inthe hands of filmmakers of every budget level.  

More posts to come soon on gear that we used on the two shoots – the original MōVI shoot in New York City on the Canon EOS 1DC and a commercial we shot together the week before NAB with the RED Epic. 

If you’d like to download some additional footage and make a charitable donation to the Lollipop Theater on behalf of the cast and crew –  please click here to see and download footage shot with the GH3, raw takes of the Roller Blade shots from MōVI and 2 others (ungraded) as well director and inventor’s commentary click here.

MōVI from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.