Archive for November, 2005

dreaming of Stallone

Wednesday, November 9th, 2005

okay, last nite i had a dream with Sly. He’s sitting at a bar with some impossibly-tall blonde, & I’m some distance away, talking smack about him to a friend I’m with. About how horrible an actor, director, etc. he is… & that if he really wrote “Rocky”, why hasn’t he found (let-alone written) anything watchable since. Rather boring, booze-filled monologue, really.

But then there’s one of those epic silences you find in bars sometimes, & suddenly my voice isn’t so hushed by crowd walla anymore. & I look up, & Stallone is staring at me… w/ tears filling his eyes. & I suddenly feel ashamed.

For the life of me, I don’t know why.

Does this make me:
a) a terrific Producer (ie, knowing what & on whom to not waste $$),
b) a terrible Director (making an ‘action character’ cry spells putrid box-office), -or-
c) frickin’ deranged & in desperate need of revising my ‘meds.

I’m just asking.

Thoughts on the new HVX200 “true HD” camera

Saturday, November 5th, 2005

Lots of noise is flying around about the Panasonic HVX200 “true HD” unit… from the ‘reasonable’ price ($6k) to its need for pricey P2 cards ($2k for 8min at full HD). And whereas lots of ppl are ecstatic at the thought of true 100Mbit/sec HD in a DVX100A form-factor, the thought of having to cough-up $2k for each 8min-capacity P2 card is generating a bit of ire. “Why can’t we just connect a harddrive to the unit” ppl are asking.

Actually, the technical reason for the P2 card in the HVX200 is that of bandwidth… b/c there ain’t a drive in existence which could handle ‘true HD’ (ie, 100Mbit/sec, vs. the 25Mbit/sec of HDV) on an ongoing basis… & certainly not via firewire. The way the Kinetta solves this, is via multiple drives striped in raid-3. So regardless if the costly P2 is Panny’s ‘stealth markup’ for the HVX200, it also solves the issue of how to handle 4x the bandwidth DV/HDV/firewire can do.

The more interesting question is that of optics & imager of the HVX200… Who really cares if a P2 can record 4x more data than an XL2 (or DVX100A), if the resulting image just looks like an upsampled DVX100A. Considering Panny’s track-record of not really matching the viewfinder & lens well in the DVX100A (ie, don’t even try to get critical focus w/ that v/f; you need an on-set production monitor)… i’m expecting the HVX200 lens to drastically outperform its v/f.

What i’m hoping the HVX200 does well is DV50/24p. At 4:2:2 colorspace, that P2 card should hold 40min+, & [should] outperform Sony’s Z1… if not the SDX-900.

But don’t count-out a good v/f & solid manual lens… repeatable rack-focus is a pearl of great price, creative-shooting wise. Ie, that JVC camera (even using 25Mbit HDV) could beat them all…

listening to…

Friday, November 4th, 2005

at some point, it seems, all writers on the ‘web detail a bit of what they’re listening to. makes sense, really– a friend’s cd-rack & book-shelf are the first things i check-out when i’m over. so w/o further ado, here’s what’s currently spinning chez dave:

Amadou Et Mariam — Dimanche À Bamako (Avec Manu Chao)
La Mala Rodriguez – Tengo Lo Que Tu Quieres (from ‘that scene’ in “Sex & Lucia” :-D )
Devo – Are we Not Men?
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue, Dark Magus
McCoy Tyner – Song of the New World, Extensions
Black Flag – First 4 Years
Big Black – Atomizer
Brian Eno – Another Green World
Hugh Masekela – Stimela (early compilation)

…& what am i ‘reading’, you ask? well, it’s mostly (re)reading, writing, & editing. My own book, actually. About meditation, ‘natch. Well, you asked… :-P

Whoops! Sorry for the delay…

Friday, November 4th, 2005

…it’s just i’ve been busily hacking-away on this silent short for the LVE Shorts Project. It’s called “Stuck in Mom’s Dream”, & you can check it out here.

The actors were terrific, & had quite a blast playing with the roles. The more I do this ‘filmmaking’ thing, the more impressed I am with what everyone brings to the table. Any writer/director who ignores their actors’ impressions/thoughts/feelings about their roles will just never get the superlative performance, i’m learning…

anyway, pls forgive me. I’ll have more wip clips up soon.