February 15, 2009

The Big Picture

Digital Cinematography Arrives

By Nick Dager

The two movies widely considered the frontrunners for this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture – Slumdog Millionaire shot by Anthony Dod Mantle and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button shot by Claudio Miranda – have several other things in common. Both could loosely be described as urban fairy tales, in which the hero ultimately wins the lifelong girl of his dreams. Both are also in contention for the Oscar for Best Cinematography. And both were shot, at least in part with digital cameras, which the filmmakers of both movies say were the right creative tool to use each time they did. Clearly, digital cinematography has arrived.

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Feature Stories

Digital Intermediates
Fine Tuning the Look

Lowry Digital Played a Key Role in the making of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Lowry Digital collaborated with award-winning director David Fincher on Paramount Pictures' epic feature film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. “As the creative community continues to accept new media methods for their creative options, early adopters of electronic capture understand its advantages, but sometimes encounter limitations and compromises inherent in this developing technology," says Lowry Digital's Alan Silvers. "That creates a compelling need for Lowry Digital's proprietary image processing, which is custom designed to compute away artifacts, manage grain and noise levels, expand dynamic range, and find and reveal greater picture detail – typical challenges that arise from electronic capture."

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Technology
The Final Frontier

JVC Unveils Two Professional Cameras that Record Native Final Cut Pro Files

JVC has unveiled two cameras – the GY-HM700 and the GY-HM100 – both of which record directly to inexpensive SDHC memory cards in the QuickTime (.mov) format for Final Cut Pro. The compact shoulder GY-HM700 can also record to SxS media compatible with Sony's XDCam EX format.  The GY-HM100 is the industry's first professional hand-held model to record files directly to solid-state media in the native format of Apple's Final Cut Pro editing system.

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Exhibition
Seeing the Future

XpanD Launches X101 Series of 3D Glasses Technology

XpanD has announced the official roll out of its newest model of 3D glasses – the X101 Series – calling them the most sophisticated technology in today’s marketplace for viewing stereoscopic 3D digital cinema. XpanD supplied the new glasses to patrons of Europalaces Theaters in France attending the new Disney animated movie Bolt 3D. The Europalaces installations have also been equipped with 20 DCP-2000 digital cinema servers from Doremi Cinema.

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Coming Soon

The Silver Screen

The kind of screen an exhibitor chooses can be critical to the 3D experience.

Complete story in our next edition

News Stories

Offhollywood South Brings Production/Post-Production Services to Louisiana

Leading digital cinema company Offhollywood announced today that it has officially launched Offhollywood South in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Phuket Film Festival Looks to Aid Thai Tourism

The second annual Phuket Film Festival is set for June 4-11 with a line-up of international films and activities that organizers expect to cause an up-tick in tourism numbers arriving on the island in June.


Cineplex Entertainment Adds Digital 3D in time for Jonas Brothers Concert

Cineplex Entertainment is adding 22 new digital projection systems, enhanced with Real D 3D technology, to 22 theatres located in 21 cities across Canada over the next few weeks.

U2 3D Nominated for VES Award

National Geographic has announced that U2 3D has received a nomination for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project from the Visual Effects Society of America's 7th Annual VES Awards.

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