Monday, March 15, 2010

Copylights

See Children of Invention. Kathleen Kwan (who we killed yesterday -- twice, and who was the fabulous star of Solar Vengeance) is in it. It's playing in theaters in New York and LA.
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Chance Shirley turned me on to this lighting company: Rostronics. They seem to be a Lowell competitor and they have some neat lights for not a whole lot of money. I'm kind of interested in their fluorescent soft boxes.
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My friend writes a very well reasoned post on copyright (Jonathan Newman on copyright). In a virtual "roundtable" discussion he answers an interview with Nina Paley. (In short, she made a movie with a bunch of music that she was aware was copyrighted, but apparently -- from what I gather from her interview -- figured it would be easy to buy off the copyright holders). Referring to the publishers and the estates of the composers she says:

'It was just this dawning understanding that if no one gets to see my film, that’s fine with them. They don’t have anything to gain from my going forward. It’s not worth the trouble to them, but I could go to jail.
I could go to fucking jail.
'

To paraphrase the great John Mayer
If you're shocked that other people aren't first and foremost interested in helping you make your movie, life may continue to be hard for you.
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And I don't know what the deal is with the GH1. Everyone complains about the lossy codec it uses. Yep, you get a LOT of time on a 16GB card (I've never exceeded shooting more than 8GB in a day). But when I use NeoScene and make ProRes "SQ" files the picture looks... good. I mean really good.

But when I export as a .png sequence the picture really skunks. Now I thought that once you got into ProRes you could export to a lossless compressed format like .png can be, and you're not going to take much more of a loss. But when I look at the footage on the Mac in Final Cut it looks pretty darn good -- wisps of hair are all clear and clean. When I look at the .png sequence on a PC it looks stair-steppy and lossy and crappity poo. Shouldn't .png sequences be lossless (if set to the highest quality)?

Does this mean we have to do all our composites using ProRes "SQ" (and therefore stay on the Mac)? I... just... don't... understand...

4 comments:

Lindsay Stewart said...

hmm. the .png sequence... would seem like it should still look good. sounds very odd but i'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable/incomprehensible reason for that.

on a side note andrew, i'm in the process of rolling out a new album. the first 4 tracks are free, you can stream the whole thing and give a listen. there's 4 bonus tracks if you buy the whole album and unlike nina paley, if there's a track that would be of use to your movie, you have my permission to use it as i am sole owner of the rights. cheers!

http://www.lindsaystewart.bandcamp.com

Andrew Bellware said...

I dig your album. Love the guitar work on it!

Lindsay Stewart said...

cheers andrew! most of the good guitar playing is my cohort ron roy, he is a superb player and has great taste. i'm pretty much a strummer, which is fine by me because there are so many interesting folks to work with that can do the things i can't. we had a lot of fun making the record and as i say, if there's anything you'd like to toss in your soundtracks, i'd be thrilled and honoured.

so. finish movie. tyranomouse releae, yes?

Andrew Bellware said...

I don't know if I have a place for your music in one of our pics but if I find one I'll hit you up!

I think... our plan is to go right into production on our next picture.

Tyrannosaurus Mouse has been hindered by the bass player buying a new house. Now that he's all moved in hopefully we can get right back to loud and bombastic rok.