From CNN — A budding British director is enjoying success on a shoestring at Cannes with “Colin,” a new zombie feature that cost a scarcely believable $70 to make.

Japanese distributors are currently in negotiations for the rights to the film and buzz around the no-budget zombie chiller has attracted interest from some major American distributors — all of which is a very nice surprise for the team behind “Colin.”

Read the full story here.

Jim Jannard, founder of the RED Digital Cinema Camera Company and community appointed leader of the RED revolution has announced a new product which, once again, looks like it has the potential to shake the very foundations of both the production and post production industries.

As promised, at 12:01 AM, Jannard posted information about RED Rocket, a PCI-Express card for Mac, PC and Linux workstations. RED Rocket will enable those working with native RED R3D files to decode, debayer and playback high quality, 4K (at 30fps) and 5K (at 25fps) files in realtime. RED Rocket will also accelerate Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Assimilate Scratch, RED Alert! REDCINE, RED Rushes and any application using the REDCODE SDK. The card will sport Quad-DVI and Quad-HD-SDI and will sell for under $5,000.

Jannard and RED decided to skip the NAB conference in Las Vegas this year, opting to deliver this news about the company’s latest product directly to the faithful via the RED user community boards at REDUSER.net.

AJA Video Systems puts on a full court press by introducing several breakthrough products for Mac and Windows based digital content creators.

Io Express - Cross Platform, Portable Audio and Video Input/Output Device Ideal for File-Based Workflows.

Ki Pro Portable Disk DDR – Bridges Gap Between Camera Acquisition and Post, Recording Directly to the Apple ProRes 422 Codec and is supported by major camera manufacturers ARRI, Canon and RED.

Kona LHi - Mac Video Capture and Playback Card Adds Support for HDMI and 3G SDI,and 10-bit Up, Down, and Cross-Convert.

XENA LHi - Windows Desktop Video Capture and Playback Card Adds Support for HDMI, 3G SDI and Adobe CS4 Production Premium, Bridging the Gap Between Analog and the latest HD Formats.

Read the full press releases at the AJA Video Systems website.

Director, Stu Maschwitz, founder of legendary VFX shop, The Orphanage, creator of the Magic Bullet software suite and author of the DV Rebel’s Guide, spoke on a panel this morning at NAB entitled, Independent Filmmaking — A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget: 2009 Edition. He was joined by Rodney Charters, director of photographty on Fox’s, 24 and Charles Papert of Instant Films.

Recently, Stu directed a short film, more of a camera test as he describes it, with a Canon 5D Mark II HD camera. I thought it would be fun to show you what someone with some talent can do with this amazing new camera. Take a look and be sure to check out Stu’s new blog, ProLost.

Canon’s original 5D Mark II Microsite

More excellent resources from Canon

Today I’m excited to announce the soft launch of the HDFilmtools Gallery. Like other galleries ours is a place to showcase the efforts and talents of both established and aspiring artists. Unlike physical galleries the HDFT Gallery is virtual, giving us the benefit to display works to and from every corner of the globe. The objective here is to discover, promote and celebrate makers of the moving image, of sound, characters and stories.

How do you get your work into the Gallery?

Pretty simple, we encourage you submit your work for review. We prefer it be in HD, but all submissions will be considered.

Send us a link and a short synopsis of the project. Tell us about yourself, your background and the process of your work. Include any specific challenges, creative and/or technical, you had to overcome. The more information you can share with the community, the better chance we will be inclined to select your work for display.

Can I submit my demo reel?

Sure. All reels from individual artists will be considered free of charge. During our initial launch we will be hosting a limited number of reels for free, after which we will be unveiling a tiered services hosting plan. We are also happy to embed from established sites such as Vimeo and Blip.tv

What about my company’s demo reel?

Yes. Commercial work is accepted on a sponsorship basis. Please contact us for further details.

Why should I submit to the HDFilmtools Gallery when I can post to YouTube for free?

YouTube is a phenomenal resource, and it’s our personal philosophy that if you want to build a career as a filmmaker or other digital media artist you need to post and promote your work via as many outlets as possible. What makes our Gallery different from the vast amount of material at YouTube is that we’ll provide a filter. A way to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak and highlight the work of what we believe are the most exciting and talented writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, visual effects and motion graphics artists, sound designers, composers and animators.

There are no other restrictions for submission and we encourage filmmakers from throughout the spectrum to submit their work. In addition to the more traditional genres this includes, documentaries, social issue projects, PSA’s non-traditional/non-linear storytelling, trailers and even advertising.

Do I give up any rights as the content creator to display in the Gallery?

Absolutely not. The Gallery is just the beginning of a host of new features, resources and services HDFilmtools plans to launch over the coming year.

We look forward to your participation and to getting the word out about your work.

Today I present Part I of a III-Part interview with Scott Kirsner. Scott is a noted author, journalist, blogger and digital technology expert who has written about innovation for publications such as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, Wired, Variety, Fast Company, the Hollywood Reporter, Salon.com, BusinessWeek, and Newsweek and his own website Cinematech.com, for nearly the last ten years. Much of his insightful work chronicles emerging trends in media and entertainment and the new artists and business models the Internet is giving birth to. He is the author if several books including; The Future of Web Video, Inventing the Movies and his most recent work, Friends Fans and Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age.

In this first segment, I ask Scott what interested him in the sometimes arcane world of cinema technology, talk about his first book, Inventing the Movies, in which he tells some of the never-before-told stories of the innovators who shaped Hollywood. For anyone interested in the future of media, movies and entertainment, I think you will find this an informative and enjoyable series.

More from this series
	QuickTime Movie HD 768×432	Part I	Part II	Part III
	iPod/iPhone/iPod Touch 640×360	Part I	Part II	Part III
	Windows Media Format 640×360	Part I	Part II	Part III

Alex Proyas has never shied away from utilizing the latest digital technology to make his films. I remember getting a call from him back in 1994 when I was cutting “Civil Wars” for Steven Bochco Productions, one of the first network shows to be edited digitally on the Avid. The company had given the director my name to give him some feedback on what is was like cutting long-form on the Media Composer as he was considering using the system on his first American feature, “The Crow”.  So it came as no surprise to me when I heard he and his cinematographer, Simon Duggan were shooting his latest film “Knowing” with the RED ONE digital cinema camera. The film, which opened last week, is the largest budget film to date to shot with the RED.

From Wired

Alex Proyas has made plenty of films in traditional fashion, shooting Dark City, The Crow and I, Robot on old-fashioned celluloid.  For his new sci-fi thriller Knowing, the Australian director decided to go digital for the first time and put the ultrahigh-resolution RED camera to the test.  Now that he’s worked out the kinks, Proyas says, “There’s no going back.”

From The NY Times…

The activist filmmaker Robert Greenwald has tried for years to speed up the production process for his documentaries. Now, he says, he is creating one he can release almost immediately, in stages.

Mr. Greenwald is showing “Rethink Afghanistan,” a skeptical view of America’s war strategies, in five parts on the Internet, with the implied hope that it will contribute to the foreign policy debate.

Part V of my interview with Chris Dickens. In this segment I ask Chris if he had any indication that the film was going to be the worldwide phenomenon it has turned out to be. I also ask him what it is like to be in the center of the awards season vortex.

More from this series
	QuickTime Movie HD 768×432	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V
	iPod/iPhone/iPod Touch 640×360	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V
	Windows Media Format 640×360	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V

As editors, who often live with a film for an extended period of time, it becomes like one of your children. In this segment I ask Chris about sequences from Slumdog he is especially proud of, or ones that hold a special place in his heart. We talk about some of the directors he admires who have influenced him, his fondness for stories told in a non-linear way and how his director Danny Boyle encouraged him to take risks and try new ideas while cutting the film.

More from this series
	QuickTime Movie HD 768×432	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V
	iPod/iPhone/iPod Touch 640×360	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V
	Windows Media Format 640×360	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V

In Parts III and IV Chris and I go on to speak about technical issues and the fact that the film was a hybrid; shot on both 35mm film and digital. Chris cuts on the Avid, and the complexity of post production was compounded by the fact that the 35mm elements were shot 3-perf, a technique where the exposed image fills the entire surface area of the frame without any matte area or “wasted space”. 3-perf is an excellent solution when shooting in 1:1.85 aspect ratio because it reduces the cost of film stock and processing by 25%. The digital acquisition was done with Silicon Imaging’ SI-2K MINI, a new camera from a German manufacturer which is gaining popularity for it’s flexibility and size. The entire “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” portion of the film was shot with the SI-2K MINI, in addition to much of the breathtaking material captured in the slums of Mumbai.

More from this series
	QuickTime Movie HD 768×432	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V
	iPod/iPhone/iPod Touch 640×360	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V
	Windows Media Format 640×360	Part I	Part II	Part III	Part IV	Part V

Here is Part II of my interview with Skywalker Sound supervising sound editor Matthew Wood. In this segment we focus on Matthew’s work on Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E. Matthew worked closely with his mentor, the lengendary Ben Burtt, on the project, who supervised the sound design and also played the voice of the lead character, WALL-E.

We go on to talk about how he managed multiple projects of such a large scale (he was simultaneously doing WALL-E and Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and some of the cutting edge tools he learned, including Symbolic Sound’s Capabara Kyma. Matthew also give us some insight into working in animation and the unique approach he and Ben were able to take to create the audio environment for the film. Enjoy!

By Lawrence Jordan

iPod/iPhone/iPod Touch – Small
Windows Media Format

Link to Matthew Wood Interview Part I