16:9 Magazine has arrived - bringing with it up to the minute industry news, product reviews and in-depth articles from the worlds of Film, Television and Video Production. Whether you are after an exciting, behind the scenes look at the life of an indie film maker, fascinated by the workings of a commercial production house in full flight, or simply want the insider tips on making your own work more professional; 16:9 is all this and more.
We have a fantastic issue in store for you.
Including an in-depth lighting tutorial by award-winning Cinematographer Pieter de Vries ACS. We have part three of Avid’s complete guide to understanding HD, this chapter looking at video compression formats. Bob Fisher takes us on a detailed look at the filming of Baz Luhrmann’s new epic “Australia” with the film’s cinematographer, Mandy Walker ACS. Evan Powell considers the limitations of cinema’s vaunted 24fps and the format’s relevance in a cinematic world now liberated from some of its traditional constraints by advances in digital imaging.
It isn’t often that you come across computer programs that make you cringe, shudder and think the sort of dark and vengeful thoughts normally reserved for your mortal enemies and telephone companies. But Vertus’s masking software “Fluid Mask 3” makes you do just that. As you start to use the program, and begin to grasp the ins and outs of its operation a powerful sense of loathing will begin to sweep over you, a loathing for polygonal lassos and magic wand tools. Slowly, your heart will begin to ache; a slow throbbing ache for the countless hours, the days in fact, of your life that you must have already wasted masking out objects in Photoshop.
But then something strange happens; as a particularly tricky section of your selection, be it a wayward tuft of your subject’s hair, or a nightmarish clump of tree leaves, comes away clean from its surroundings; the ache in your heart begins to die away, and is gently replaced by a Zen-like calm. What should have just taken you twenty-five minutes with layer masks of varying opacities has just been knocked over in five. You begin to smile.
I sometimes wonder if it isn’t simply human nature to over-complicate things. A thought that I found myself thinking repeatedly as I made my way through the booths at NAB earlier this year. Take for example, Sony’s highly successful XDCAM EX camera the PMW-EX1, a superb piece of equipment that takes better-looking footage than any video camera in its price range ever has before. However, in order to try and give its users extra flexibility in the range of ways they can handhold the camera, Sony built a rotating handgrip onto the side of it – the grip works very well in and of itself, however it draws your hand’s support of the camera body so far away from its centre of gravity that only shooters with the vice-like grip of a seasoned rock-climber can hold it straight. A grip that simply attached your hand to the bulk of the camera’s weight would work much better, Sony simply over-complicated things.
For Sales & Advertising contact Paul MacLaine on (03) 9329 0727 or paulm@16by9.com.au | Submissions & Product Reviews: mark@16by9.com.au
