What Wickedness This Way Comes

So, quite by accident, I think we recorded an entire album.

Note that what you hear above isn't mastered and could likely use some gentle caressing as far as the mix goes.
This entire record is Greg Bartus, Lily Kinner, Dave Wolfe, and me. 

Moar on GH3

Okay. So the slow motion is very cool. It works the opposite way that I expect ("40%" means overcranked, not undercranked) but it does work nicely. It sure is nice to be able to shoot in slow-motion again.

Furthermore, high ISO's work well. A 6400 ISO seems actually usable. And the close focus on a f2.8 zoom lens is pretty phenomenal.

I still have to get the HDMI transmission to work. I ordered a mini-HDMI cable when I needed a micro-HDMI cable. Or, maybe that's the other way around. In any case, I ordered the other kind.
The noise performance seems to me to be very commendable. This particular brick wall is the sort of thing that drove the GH1 to distraction.

We're shooting here wide open at 6400 ISO, f2.8, with a shutter at 1/50 (which is the rough equivalent of films 180-degree shutter at 24fps).
One of the other big improvements the camera has is that apparently (at least when shooting in Quicktime/.mov format) it assigns unique file names to each shot which don't get reset until the camera is deliberately told to reset them. This is a big deal for our file management as having all these dang files named exactly the same thing is pretty frustrating. We'll see how that goes.
The video image is still not happy with very low light. It gets grainy, and not in a good way. So, you know, we'll still have to actually light stuff.

Looking for Editors, GH3

We've posted an ad on Craigslist for the non-paid position of editor. The first posting got flagged, primarily because editors who aren't working get all angry that we aren't paying.

So as long as the ad doesn't get flagged, it's here.

This is a non-paid position. I know, we don't like it either, but we don't have the cash money to pay you. It's a gig primarily for someone just looking for credits or material for a reel, etc.
We make science fiction feature films, straight-to-video. There's a blog where you can find all our previous movies along with trailers: blog.pandoramachine.com (the blog and many of the trailers are rated R so they're not necessarily "safe for work"). 
We edit in Final Cut Pro 7. We have a cozy little edit suite in TriBeCa where we do all our post-production. We're looking for a serious and focused person to work on the picture edit of our 11th feature. 
Our schedule is flexible and we're are serious about getting this film completed speedily. The time commitment is also flexible. Typically we have more than one editor work on a project (each editor handling a different "reel".) But we're open to someone wanting to edit a small amount or a large amount of the movie(s). 
Interested? Do you think you can carve out some regular time each week to edit? Hit us up! 

Got the GH3 with the Lumix 12-35mm lens. The first thing I hadn't realized is that the camera will shoot in .mov format directly. We only get about an hour of footage on a 32GB SD card that way but otherwise it sure is less work and hassle.

3200 ISO, f2.8, 1/50 shutter

Good grief this lens will let you focus closely. In the regular motion-picture format (which I haven't set stills to yet) it'll look even closer because the aspect ratio will be 16:9 rather than the 3:4 which you see above.
With the GH3 Panasonic has changed some things from the GH2 back to the way the GH1 had them. Things I think were better on the GH1. Like flipping from AF to MF is a bit easier on the GH3 than on the GH2.
I'm eager to try the slow-motion on the camera. And I'm kind of curious to see where the ISO gets too noisy to use.
But getting back to the "shooting in Quicktime (.mov)" thing again. Boy, that makes using Final Cut Pro less annoying. We'll see.

While Waiting for UPS to Arrive...

So it turns out that Apple actually is going to update the horribly outdated Mac Pro line. My question is: what software are you going to run on it? Looks like the hardware designers at Apple have been busy working on their high-end but not their software engineers. Because really the only software that's going to take advantage of that power is all made by Adobe.
I suppose Maya, Blender, 3dsMax, and the like will be happier with an updated Mac Pro. Not any happier than with my i7 liquid-cooled Windows 7 PC, but happier than with my (at this point) ancient dual-quad-core Mac (which I'm typing this on.)
For straight-ahead editing though I don't know if we really need much more computer. I know that my PC (using Samplitude) can handle whatever audio I realistically want to throw at it. We've finally found the practical limits of data bandwidth (that being 48kHz, 24-bit per channel) as my exhaustive and completely subjective testing have demonstrated that we don't get any benefit from higher sample rates or bit depths.
As for picture, yeah I suppose we'll end up with 4K resolution -- if only to have the option of re-framing shots -- but we can edit that kind of resolution now. So newer and faster machines aren't that exciting to us yet.
3D effects, and even 2D compositing can and will slow any machine down to a crawl. So yeah, we can always use more power there.

If that Adobe Anywhere service actually, well, actually starts to exist, we might be very interested. As we're shooting in .mts formats it sure would be easier for us to edit in the same format rather than converting to Quicktime and taking up much more drive space.
It seems to me that the video world is sort of catching up with what we've been doing in audio since the practical advent of 32-bit float, and that's going ahead and processing the video image in whatever the highest bit depth the editing system can handle (no matter how low a bit depth the video may have been shot in.) I mean, it's high time for that, isn't it?
Well, it's after 8pm and although UPS says the order is out on the truck, I just don't believe it. I'm going home.

D-Day in the Machine

Kevin Kangas interviewed about his Kickstarter campaign.
++++
I was going to shoot a short for Rebecca Kush this weekend.
Unfortunately, most of my sound gear is in Allentown at Joe Chapman's studio.
Fortunately, Rebecca had a sound guy all set.
Unfortunately, the sound guy fell through.
Fortunately, I have just barely enough sound gear in order to do the shoot.
Unfortunately we don't have an experienced boom operator.
Fortunately, we ordered the new GH3 camera to show up on Friday.
Unfortunately, UPS tried to deliver before the office was open.
Fortunately, I could drive back into the city in order to pick it up from the UPS service center.
Unfortunately, when I drove through the incredible storm to get there, UPS didn't actually have the camera yet.

So that shoot has been postponed. Sheesh.

Pandora Around the World

I just thought this page was kinda neat. So I took a screenshot of it.

Japanese versions of Pandora Machine movies.

Samanament

Rehearsal Wednesday night. Schecter bass going into the Aphex preamp (I'm sort of under the impression that only the right channel of that preamp works as it should, but it may be simply that it never warmed up properly.)
Lou likes his cymbals low. Normally that might be irksome for an engineer trying to record toms separately from the cymbals but since we go with a simple 3-microphone setup on the drums it actually makes life easier because the cymbals are about as far from the overhead mics as the toms are -- making the cymbals relatively less loud in the recording.
Other than being scolded for my general lack of musicianship the rehearsal went very well.
Of course, this helped:

My view of the rehearsal with Lou.

No, the Avalons are not ours. We don't use them. The bourbon, however, was Bulleit.

Above this text is (or should be) links to songs we recorded. That Bandcamp album will be getting updated with more materials over the next several days. 

Musical lubricant with Greg and Lily.

More Costumes

Caitlin set us up with moar costumes!

"Android outside wear". Surely this is Vicky's outside wear, no? Because the android costume already exists. Right?

Barbara's "hospital" wear.

Doctor Lake's uniform.

Linus' uniform. Nice long coat.

Ryan Tanner's medical uniform.

Day II et Jabon

Here's a thing for me to keep in mind. My name is typically transliterated into Japanese as
アンドリュー・ベルウェアWhich is good to know if/when I'm ever tying to look up artwork for our movies online.
Although I don't quite get what that ・ is all about.

Juliette Valduriez

I offer this compelling and definitive evidence that the Fender Stratocaster is not required. Now a Gibson SG with P-90 pickups would in fact be cooler, but the SG is naturally groovier than a Stratocaster. Don't believe me? Re-watch video evidence.

Reign o' Dragon

Check it out, there's a little write up of Dragon Reign on Dread Central. This write-up is based on the trailer.

Here is my favorite quote:

"I had to do some Google searching to try and find any other information about the film since it does not yet have an IMDB page and Halcyon couldn’t be bother to list any credits on its website. I do believe my Googling turned up confirmation that Dragon Reign is directed by Andrew Bellware (Prometheus Trap, Android Insurrection, Alien Uprising). As for the cast, I’m sure they’re all fine people whoever they are."

I can assure you, the cast are delightful people. 

Dreams of Space

Brian Schiavo turned me onto this trailer. I thought it was for a feature. But it's for a TV show.
Which is, you know, pretty interesting.

Last night I had this vivid dream about a 70's/80's John Carpenter movie that I'd "forgotten about" (meaning it doesn't exist in real life). A crew on a long-term space voyage find a derelict ship. It's an action movie with lots of guns. I was all like "Oh man, Chance Shirley has to write the unofficial remake of this."
But then somebody woke me up after I'd only seen the first 20 or 30 minutes in my dream. So I have no idea how it ends. And before you ask; no, I can't go back to sleep and pick up a dream where I'd left off.

Hey -- does anybody know what happened to the two space helmets which were on top of the set at the shop? I know about the helmet in the office, it's the other two I can't find.

Via Italia

Foist Send the lovely Jessica Laliberte on to Italy!
(There's supposed to be a widget here. I don't know why it doesn't work.

Not quite Italy, Croatia instead.

Wherein I finally weigh in on the Zack Braff thingy

I thought the most interesting thing Zack Braff said about wanting to do a Kickstarter campaign for his new movie was that it would enable him to have more artistic freedom than if he'd just gotten regular financiers to back the picture. I have to admit, that's a pretty compelling reason to go with Kickstarter. 
It's no secret that the filmmaking business is a difficult one. I mean, shooting a movie is physically and mentally taxing. But getting the money to make one + getting it distributed is an exercise in Promethean frustration.
The fact is the numbers don't work out. Right now in the "indy" film world the movies which are made for between $2 million and $12 million are getting $100,000 domestic distribution deals. And I'm actually being charitable, those are the best deals those guys are getting. Those are straight-to-DVD with maybe some cable VOD and Redbox.
So between 2 million dollars and 12 million dollars you're getting maybe a quarter-million dollars in return. Every few years one of those pictures gets a theatrical deal (and I'm not counting a deal with IFC because those deals are in the order of about two thousand dollars thank-but-no-thanks). But those theatrical deals are super unlikely to pay the producers any real money.

The thing with a Kickstarter campaign is that they're expensive. Because you have to offer something in exchange for someone putting money into the campaign you're looking at T-shirts and jackets and promotional DVD's and such. And suddenly with a successful Kickstarter campaign you're not in the movie business, you're in the T-shirt distribution business. Did you want to make T-shirts for a living? Because now you are.
Still, even with the relative "expensiveness" of the money from Kickstarter it is money with no additional strings attached. And if you're making a movie for several million dollars and are aware that at best you're only going to make a couple million dollars from it through distribution, it makes economic sense for the producer to go that way.
Because otherwise you have just a couple options. One option is to go after unsophisticated investors who want to be in the movie business and who have too much money on their hands from whatever legitimate or illegitimate businesses they may be in. They won't know that their two million dollars has about an equal chance of getting paid back as hitting the Powerball this weekend. And, they may not care.
The other way is that you go with a sophisticated investor. Those people will be a problem for you. They're going to look at a picture like Garden State and say "Look. This picture grossed $35 million. In some wild fantasy world it means the producers saw maybe $20 million with cable and DVD. Probably more like $10 or $12M. And it probably took upwards of 5 or 6 years to see that money. So lessee, getting out my financial calculator and running the numbers against my money-market account: you better make a straight-up romantic comedy. I wanna see some people falling down."
So yeah. The movie business. Right on.