I had the pleasure to be part of a panel at the Sundance Film Festival last week.   Adobe invited filmmakers Sharlto Copley, Rob Legato, Jacob Rosenberg and myself to share some of our thoughts on where all of this new technology is taking us as filmmakers.

You might recognize Sharlto as the lead actor in District 9 and more recently "The A-Team."  Rob Legato has worked on just about every major movie it seems as VFX Supervisor – from  Titanic, Apollo 13, to Avatar and Hugo – he’s a VFX guru and he is a successful Director/DP as well.   Jacob Rosenberg works with Bandito Brothers and heads their technology amongst many other things and most recently with DP Shane Hurlbut on "Act of Valor" which was shot mostly (70% or so) with Canon HDSLRs.   Jacob also has a great documentary coming out soon at an upcoming festival – but I have to let him make that announcement himself.

This was a really great group to be a part of – I was definitely honored to be part of it.   We had a great discussion on where technology is taking us, some of the challenges and successes we’ve experienced as filmmakers, and I think most of you will find some very good nuggets of wisdom in the video as well.  I know I had a blast being part of it and can attest to it being an unusually good panel in terms of the content that was shared. 

Over the next few weeks you’ll see a few posts on the gear we used on Mobius, as well as the pre-production we did on it as well as the post workflow.   First – here is a video on rotoscoping that you might find of interest.

A few months ago we did a piece on dynamic linking between Adobe Premiere and AfterEffects.   In the above video, Jon Carr, gives a more practical breakdown of how these features were used on our latest film, "Mobius" – notably in terms of rotoscoping.  During a particular scene in the film our protagonist (David Lyons) is taking pictures of a Cartel execution from an outcropping of rocks.  Unfortunately, the rocks that we used on location were covered with graffiti (the location is usually a well trafficked off-roading recreation area).  

However, in the film, this location needed to sell as the middle of nowhere, not to mention Mexico – so the graffiti had to go.  The above video walks you through the workflow of this: linking the footage out of Premiere and into After Effects, from there exporting a still from the footage into Photoshop, and then using the photoshopped version of that still in After Effects with the rotoscoping and tracking tools.  The end effect is unnoticeable – but that’s the goal – as it sells the scene as being in a remote location.  This workflow will work for you no matter what effects you are trying to achieve, and shows just how seamless the Adobe workflow is across the multiple application in their Production Premium suite.

LED Lighting will continue to grow in my opinion and become a greater and greater part of how we light things in the cine/docu/photo world.  To date a major limitation has been power…  most LED cannot output enough light to fight daylight.   But as you’ll see in the upcoming year or two – that barrier is about to be breached.    That makes things very interesting as we will need to rely a bit less on hot lights (literally burning hot lights) as well as generators as many of these lights can be adapted to work of batteries such as the Anton Bauer Dionics all the way up to the big Anton Bauer "lunch box."

Litepanels has recently released two new lights that are pretty cool for filmmakers.  The first is the Sola 4, which is the younger sibling to the Sola 6, a DMX controllable light, with an embedded touch screen.  And while the Sola 4 does not have the touchscreen control, it does have DMX input for control from a lighting board which can make this a pretty versatile tool especially if you don’t have easy physical access to the light.   What I find of particular interest for filmmakers is that they are fresnel lights, which are a staple of Hollywood and the film industry.  They are named "fresnel" for the lens that the lights have at the front of their casing.  This lens provides a uni-directional source that can be more accurately controlled than say the 1×1 Series lights, which are less controllable in terms of how focused the light is.  A significant improvement over traditional fresnel lights is of course the fact that these lights are LED – so they don’t get incredibly hot.  A Traditional 1k fresnel pulls 1000W of power out of the wall, and outputs an equivalent amount.  The Sola 4 pulls just 30W from the wall, and outputs up to 300W (the Sola 6 is 75W/650W).  You can also dim these light from  0 – 100% brightness, which is not possible on traditional 1k fresnels unless you have a separate ballast.   Therefore these lights give you a pretty incredible level of control relative to traditional lights.

The other light is called the Croma.  This light appears to be an evolution of the MicroPro.  Like the MicroPro it is either stand- or camera-mountable, can be run off AC power or AA batteries, draws 9W of power, and outputs approx. 50W of soft LED light.  The added advantage of the Croma is its adjustable color temperature (like the 1×1 Bicolors) – from 3200 to 5600 degrees (tungsten to daylight).  Also like the MicroPro, this light seems to be most valuable to documentarians or photojournalists in run n’ gun shooting conditions.  However, with the aid of the Croma, they will now be able to adjust the temperature of their camera-top light so that it can match the ambient light and look more natural.   I’m not as in love w/ the design of the Croma as I am with the MicroPro (it’s built like a tank – or a brick to be more accurate) but the ability to adjust color temperature is a big plus…  to some AAs may also be welcome.   Like the MicroPro it does have a 1/4-20 mounting port on the base of the unit.