Can you have your cake and eat it too? In my case yes with the Blackmagic Designs Decklink Extreme3D I just got in today.

The advent of Resolve for Mac simply promoted me to get things I needed anyway- CUDA acceleration and better GFX power in Adobe, playout and monitoring in Adobe and Nuendo. All things I can use when that software moves out of beta into public consumption.

I got everything installed and running in a few minutes. Then went about updating everything and playing around with features and controls. I also got an HDLinkPro3D to round out my monitoring capabilities. That’s one COOL box incidentally.

After spending several hours calibrating all my monitors (and offsetting my HDLink monitor via LUTs for Rec.709 standards), I got around to checking out the Decklink in every app I use. I know it’s not working in Avid *yet* so I didn’t bother to test that- in addition, I tested all of it with my online codec: Cineform.

Premiere? Check
After Effects? Check
Neundo? Check (with photojpeg vs. Cineform).
Driver conflicts with my RME card? None. Check.

Wow. Really? I went round and round and round issues with my Blackmagic Intensity Pro and Matrox boxes. This setup with all my apps was issue free. Crazy cool.

Tags: blackmagic designs, tech, tools

As part of the eight, 35-minute session teaching resource, I put this promo together last week: motion graphics, color, kitchen filming, and online editing and grading. The dramatic vignettes and session recording was done by Scott Brignac at Introspect Media down in Houston (@brignac on Twitter). You can see more of his stellar work here.

Tags: Production, video

Walk down any city street in NYC, Chicago, LA and you’ll see flyers, stickers and banners advertising the next show of some unnamed band. You go to a bar or a club and there’s a band playing, they’re good. You pick up a record and start following them. The same scene exists for painters, writers, and sculptors.

What about filmmakers?

For instance, how record labels pick up bands. Rarely is it the new band out of nowhere. It’s typically a band that’s slowly over the years built up a steady and strong following, growing their fan-base with each new record. They write their songs, record them, book gigs, play shows, sell records and merch and people get to hear about them.

But for every 1 band on a label there’s 100 bands making money doing what they love.

If there’s one thing I say way too often it’s that it does you no good to make a film and have nobody watch it. I did some stints in the music scene so I end up approaching my filmmaking like an indie band: write film (“write” being loose in doc world), make film, set up a booking or “screening”. Sometimes there is no screening- it’s just online or it’s for a very select audience I know will enjoy it.

It works, each film is a success and with each new person watching, my audience is slowly being built. But unlike the stereotypical filmmaker who shoots for the big budget, career-making movie and is then let down because it flops, I’m shooting to make good films. 5, 10, 45, 90 minutes. Whatever.

And you should do the same.

Read this article from the New York Times and then ask yourself, how hard is it to call a few small theatres, pubs, libraries, art museums and have a film screening of my last 10 minute short?

Go indie style and perhaps, someone will come to you and say you’re worth the investment because you know how to get it done and make it happen- like a good indie band.

Tags: discussion, distribution, inspiration