Okay this is clearly not your average Go Pro Hero camera! This is the work of Chris and Jonathan Watts at British Technical Films. The lens is a 10mm aspherical and the GoPro has been fitted with a C mount to accommodate it. Truly wonderful, though I am yet to see some images from it. Chris tells me the plan is to fit the lcd backpack to it and to build a new mount for their Skybot system so the camera can fly. Expecting this to be a vast improvement on the GoPro lens! We will do a comparative video this week hopefully.

There are some elements of the camera style seen in this video that I will be using on my upcoming major PhD film production, I really love the crop and the slight shakey feel to the handheld here.

Had a quick tour of the Arden factory before Christmas and cut this quick edit for them.

I’ve finally purchased a Lilliput monitor and articulating arm to complement my 7D rig and it’s not disappointed me. I’m really pleased with the quality of the image and the scaling given the low price of the monitor. The supplied cable, hood, long life Sony type battery, and the ball head mount are all of good enough quality. I’m especially impressed with the cable as I was worried about the reliability of the HDMI connections. This tripod rig is going to be my A rig for shooting my next PhD film production, the hot shoe extension allows for mounting of a radio mic receiver to input into the zoom, so probably going to input a boom radio for drama production.

Okay – so I’ve really geeked out this morning with the exciting sneak peak at the new fully re-designed Final Cut Pro. So there were some rumours that Apple were totally destroying the app and that they were going to risk alienating dedicated users/followers! Only Apple could pull off a move this bold and it looks from what we see here that they will indeed pull it off. There is a lot of information missing from this presentation – no mention of the other ancillary programmes and it looks as though the new release will be a move away from the ‘all in on box’ production possible with Studio 2. However, the new release price point for fcp at $299 will certainly get many hot under the collar. Personal favorites here are – background rendering, the new ways of linking to secondary layers on the timeline, compound clips, the magnetic timeline, the look of the interface and some of amazing automatic features that will allow processes on ingest. Looking forward to hearing about the other apps and of course new ways of outputting and sharing our media…. blu ray anyone?

Larry Jordan has a great detailed review here http://www.larryjordan.biz/app_bin/wordpress/archives/1452

There were some interesting and highly emotive subjects and debates surrounding the impact of the move to digital, the arrival of 3D and the shortfall in costs of equipping cinemas with new projection systems. And the same traditional debates about whether digital technologies will ever match the richness and the clarity of film. The conference was encouraging in terms of my research as it confirmed that my arguments are extremely valid and current and will be valuable within the academic study of digital film.

The problem of digital archiving reared its ugly head in discussion and this seems to be one of the stumbling blocks of the digital age. Film is indeed a great medium for archiving and maintaining our digital works for future re-release and mastering on future formats presents the greatest challenge to contemporary practitioners. This is not something I had previously thought of integrating into my thesis (other than the problems of storing ever increasingly higher resolution media) but it is an issue I shall need to address in my thesis on ‘Digital Fluidity’.

I’ve moved the arm to mount on the left side of the body so took a little getting used to; the arm seems more isoelastic on the left side than the right which is odd and is going to mean modifying the vest as well but it’s starting to behave more like a steadicam! Running with the rig is interesting – fast running not possible to get continuous smooth shot yet partly due to operator (me) skill level and fitness (though at the end I’d just run a couple of hundred meters at full pelt!) and also partly due to the fact that the arm still isn’t doing it’s job properly. However the results here are vastly improved – can’t wait to get a monitor now so I can see what I’m shooting. Today I had to use the LCD VF to expose and focus a shot and then pretty much shoot blind as the cameras LCD is useless in direct sunlight.

STILL TO DO LIST:
Sled

• Cut bottom off the post to shorten by 10inches find another post that goes inside it to make it quick release extend-able
• Make monitor mount on standard 15mm rod assembly
• Make battery mount with 12v dtap for monitor power (current plan is to buy IDX and Vmount Plate and screw this to the Flycam’s provided battery plate
• Embed HDMI mini to HDMI cable and an RCA cable

Arm

• Replace steel cables with 3.55mm cable and add an additional spring in each arm section
• Re-grease bearings and replace bolt on the main gimbal arm attachment, look into getting a better fitting stud machined

Vest

• Replace standard webbing. Now that I’ve moved the arm to the left side of the vest the buckles on the vest are kind of in the way. Either get some new webbing sewn up with standard fittings or replace with ratchets
• Open up stitching and insert more padding

Here’s a selection of my show highlights. Worth a mention has to be the lovely Hocus Focus remote follow focus unit for DSLR or larger rigs such as RED. Of course the Arri Alexa is something to behold as you’d expect. I love the Kino grips and the movie tube stuff but the Panasonic AG-AF101 also turned my head packed full of all the pro features that you want in a video camera and with your DSLR lenses.