Cinema without Film--Digital Cinematography

The precision and relative simplicity that digital technology offers has finally caught up with the film industry. Many cinematographers and directors have resisted the transition to film-less cameras due to poor low light performance, or a shallow depth of field, in addition to the resentment that digital files did not have the "film look". Digital cinema has made great advances in recent years, with some of the newest cameras offering superior 4K resolutions, solid build quality, and the same features from all standard film cameras, not to mention a competitive price. Furthermore, using digital cinema cameras allows creative minds to record right to disk, bypassing the necessity for rolls and rolls of film and processing costs, which are all time consuming activities. Film-less cameras can have their footage imported directly into the non-linear workstation, for instant editing, especially when that workstation and editing software could be a modern laptop. Attached is a link to the outstanding RED ONE Digital cinema camcorder.

(Editors note: These cost around $17,000, when you include the lens, 4K sensor, body, and other essential parts, and if I had the money I'd buy one in a heart beat!)

"Present Theme: Digital Cinema"

My articles for the past highlighed the primitive beginnings of motion picture technology, starting at the very basics of persistance of motion, all the way to the first modern 24p film camera. Currently, the film industry is in the middle of several huge transitions. One is the transition from recordring to celluiod film stock to recording straight to hard drive. Second, is the transition from flatbed editing systems to non-linear computer editing workstations. Finally, the way in which films are shown in theaters are going through a digital transition, as more and more theaters are being outfitted with digital projectors, projecting films at 2K-4k resolutions (2-4x the quality of 1080p HDTV). The devices and software show in the following posts will be based around these important transitions.

Apology

To the viewers of this blog: my deepest apology for not having my my posts on time. I'm sure many of you were looking for posts to comment on this week, and you were severely limited due to the absence of my posts. Not to make any excuses, but with all of the craziness with the presentation preparation, the blog posts slipped my mind. Expect them to be up ASAP.

Cartoon Family Sit-Coms--AKA shows on Fox

The Simpsons, formed by Matt Groening, is an American animated sitcom for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a humorous sketch of a middle class American lifestyle characterized by its eponymous family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The show is places in the story bound town of Springfield, and makes fun of many aspects of the human condition including American culture, society, and television.

Newer, and more popular, Family Guy is an animated American television sitcom, created by Seth MacFarlane, is a staple of Fox Sunday nights. The Show features a strangely dysfunctional family in the town of Quahog.

Jumbrotron / Phanavision

A Jumbo Tron is a huge television, developed by Sony, is typically used in sports stadiums and performance venues to display close up shots of the occurrences on the field or in the crowd or ads and various other videos. " A trademark of Sony, "JumboTron is used to express assorted styles of large video screens. Each Manufacturer has their own name for their own version of the large screen. North America’s largest high-definition display is a Daktronics ProStar. University of Texas Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium hosts the Godzillatron.

When the philies Moved into their new stadium they also got a new video system. Largest LED video display board in the National League, 39'5" x 69'7"; 2,759 square feet; supplied by VMagic division of Venue1.

This wonderful public television hosts the infamous kiss-cam

Satellite Radio

A satellite radio or subscription radio (SR) is a digital radio signal that is broadcast by a communications satellite, which covers a much wider geographical range than terrestrial radio signals.

For now, satellite radio offers a meaningful alternative to ground-based radio services in some countries, notably the United States. Mobile services, such as Sirius, XM, and Worldspace, allow listeners to roam across an entire continent, listening to the same audio programming anywhere they go.

As of July 29, 2008 Sirius XM claims over 18.5 million subscribers.[1] One critical factor for the success of satellite radio is the deployment of in-car receivers. Sirius XM has attempted to convince automakers to equip vehicles with their receiver.

Entertainment Centers, no more

During the days of the cathode ray TV, which emmitted cathode rays from a tube, hence boob tube, TVs were size just right to fit into what we call an antertainment center, which would also house a vcr--eventaully dvd-players, stereo equipment speaker. It would also store movies & hide the wiring for the products.

TOday i nthe day oh HI-Def TV, its no longer as practicle. Walk into a furniture store and you'll see an much lower amount of these things, most of them just left over. Today these flat HD TVs are mounted on a wall of just a stand since space lo longer availible because its taken up by the TV

TiVo

TiVo is the pioneer of digital video recording. TiVo allows people to search and record movies and shows. You can rewind, fast forward, and pause what you are watching. You can season pass your favorite shows. Now you can download movies off of Amazon and send the movies directly to your TiVo. TiVo does so much you can check it out at www.tivo.com. TiVo has changes the way we watch TV. Advertising on commercials is hurting because now people don't have to the commercials. I have had TiVo for about 4 years now and I honestly can’t stand watching TV normally. It’s great I can pause shows when I need to and fast forward through commercials.

YouTube

YouTube was first introduced to the community in February 2005. It was created by three former PayPal employees and later bought out by Google. I think it's safe to say that almost everyone has been on YouTube atleast once to view some type of video in the past four years of existance. The type of technology used to provide us with this immense amount database of videos is the Adobe Flash Video. The website is easy to use and is pretty much compatible to all computers. Videos avaliable to us are almost endless while including movie clips, TV clips, music videos, and even blogging clips. Ofcourse, in the past year many copyright issues have comes across YouTube's path enabling them to share some videos, but it still has alot of entertainment available to the public.

Blu-Ray

Blu-Ray disc is still fairly new to our community, but has had great impact toward the entertainment industry. With Blu-Ray's short existence they have already sent many companies packing and looking for new business. These companies are mainly producers of HD DVD players and recorders. So how did Blu-Ray put their enemies out of competition so early? Well, there are many technical ways of explaining how they did it, but to save you all from the over loading information that will do nothing but cause headaches, I will put it in simplest form. Blu-Ray, simply used a blue laser(Therefore it's name "Blu-Ray") operating at shorter wavelengths in order to make it possible to store more information on the CD. It's almost impossible to describe what the picture looks like, but it is truly remarkable. I urge you to witness this at first hand for yourself and let me know what you think.

Microsoft: Xbox 360

Microsoft first introduced the Xbox 360 in May of 2005. This was a huge outbreak to video game consoles of the seventh generation, and showed us what our technology is capable of creating. The Xbox 360 comes equiped with many different features depending on which model you were to go with. There are three types of models offered to us, which are Xbox 360 Arcade, Pro, and Elite. The Arcade addition is the lowest grade model of the three and includes a 256MB flash, with 5 Xbox arcade games. Next, is the Pro addition, which offeres two types of memory, 20 or 60GB, both vary in price. Last, is the best avaliable addition, the Elite. The Elite addition is the most expensive at $400, and provides you with the most amount of memory at 120GB.
With the release of the Xbox 360, it created a mainstream for other competeting companies to relinquish their products such as, the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3.

IMAX Theaters

More and more IMAX theaters are being built. IMAX stands for Image MAXimum. The traditional version of an IMAX theater has the capacity to record and display images of a greater size and resolution. There are different types of IMAX theaters which include IMAX Dome (using a tilted dome screen), IMAX 3D and IMAX Digital. These theaters are being built all around the world. The top Picture is the IMAX Dome, the second is IMAX Digital, and the last picture is IMAX3D.

iPod

Apple first introduced the iPod on October of 2001. With the creation of the iPod it provided a huge source of entertainment to the public. It wasn't any normal electronic that played MP3's, it had more to offer than just that. Apple offers many different models now of the iPod, the big difference between which model you choose would be the actual size of the iPod (Classic, Mini, Nano, Shuffle, and Touch). Next you would have to choose the memory size that would fit your needs, these sizes can range anywhere from 160GB - 1GB. Below, I have left you with a video to watch of the first ever introduction of the Ipod, presented by no other than Steve Jobs.

Netflix

This video just talks about Netflix and how it works. Personally I think Netflix is a great idea. My brother just got it for me as a holiday present. It was unlimited movies for 3 months. Now I changed the plan to just 2 movies a month because of school and its only $4.99 a month! The unlimited one movie at a time is just $8.99. This is way cheaper than renting one movie at a video store. There are so many packages you can choose from that fits your life style! On the down side this concept is putting many video stores out of business. Do you think it’s good or bad?

Nintendo

nintendo has touched many of our lives in some way. My childhood memories consist of a powerpad, similar to a DDR pad, used to perform track n field events for the system, the duckhunt game & of course constantly blowing into the console & cartraige until they finally operated. There has been a fierce competition between various video game console makers, each rying their own thing. Today nintendo stake claim to the inventive & inique Wii. Nintendo will always be present in the videogame world even as other come and go.