HVX200s at Telluride Film Festival

[Barry_Green]

Been spending the last few days here in Telluride, CO for the Telluride Film Festival, one of the premiere film festivals in the world. The Telluride folks decided they were going to document the festival using HVX200s, and Apple (the "Presenting Sponsor" of the Festival this year) decided they would do the same thing, so I was brought out to consult and work through the workflow and train the camera operators.

This production is pretty big -- there's a veritable fleet of HVXs (at least five) and scads of cards, lots of shooters and tons of footage. Everything's being shot on stock HVXs using 8gb cards, and being offloaded on a G5 Quad using the 5-slot reader for Telluride, and on an MBP using a P2 Store for the Apple group. All editing for both groups is being done on FCP 5.1.1. Apple is shooting hourlong multicamera presentations of all the Made On A Mac sessions, and Telluride is documenting presentations, films, filmmaker interviews, all sorts of things, and they're sending the cards back to "base camp" and importing, editing, and posting the footage right there. They're cutting immediately and uploading some snippets on the web; you can see some of the stuff that Telluride is shooting by going here and clicking in the "Visit Our Video Showroom" section in the upper right, or going directly here. (the HVX ones are dated September 1st, 2006 or later.)

To see what Apple's shooting, check out their Telluride page and look for the "podcasts" button, or jump straight to it here.



side note: Telluride is an amazing place; it's the tiniest (pop. 2500) and most picturesque little city. At first glance the entire town seems to consist of Main Street. Everything's in walking distance, although you do have to watch where you're walking or you may find yourself almost running into Hollywood megastar Penelope Cruz (I speak from experience here ). It's nearly two miles above sea level, so hiking the trails (or trying to keep up with the local crew as they dash around the festival grounds) can leave us sealevel dwellers gasping for oxygen! And the festival has a deep love of films themselves; sure they have premieres of big-budget films starring the likes of Brad Pitt, Kate Winslet, and Nicole Kidman, but you also get to see things you wouldn't experience anywhere else, like today's screening of "The Sentimental Bloke", a recently-restored classic Australian silent film from 1919 which was presented accompanied by a live music group, who played along an original score continuously throughout the 108-minute film. I love Australian cinema anyway, so this was probably the highlight of the fest as far as I'm concerned. And the staff -- they have an operating staff of around 600 people (full-time employees and volunteers). Consider that they get about 2,000 people attending the festival, and you can see that they've got one staffer for every three patrons, which is really, really cool!

[imgentertainment@mac]

Wow Barry sounds really cool. I checked out the apple stuff. Looks like a grate festival to go to. I have never heard of it befor now I'll have to check it out next year.

[Ralph Oshiro]

Very cool, Barry! How's the "scenery" there?

[David S.]

Interviews and pans on the podcast.

Is there something else being produced?

[turing]

yo,

I'm running post for the Podcasts being produced for the festival, sitting next to the editor that's doing the Apple stuff, which we have "cross posted" to the showrom site:

http://showroom.telluridefilmfestival.org

It's been a lot of fun - Telluride is amazing. But I'm biased; I've been coming here since I was 18.

_a

[turing]

Barry, BTW, it was fantastic to meet you and thanks for training everyone. I was not looking forward to being the local HVX guy, and you obviously filled that role more than perfectly

Hopefully next year we can work to bring you back and keep you here longer

best,

_alex

[n8ture]

Barry you lucky dog! Can't wait to watch all the action. Wish I was there!

[FlintMI]

Originally Posted by turing

yo,

I'm running post for the Podcasts being produced for the festival, sitting next to the editor that's doing the Apple stuff, which we have "cross posted" to the showrom site:

http://showroom.telluridefilmfestival.org

It's been a lot of fun - Telluride is amazing. But I'm biased; I've been coming here since I was 18.

_a

hey man, I went to the site and checked the vids... great stuff... but... they're a bit blurry, blocky, and grainy... maybe a little less compression?

is anyone else noticing these are pretty low quality for HVX?

[xray]

wake up flintMi ;-) "(the HVX ones are dated September 1st, 2006 or later.)"
He told you, the thing you are talking AND SHOWING about is from last year 2005 ...

(but look at the Walter Murch interview on 3 sept, its all nice except the shoot of the interview with a white wall in the background, there you see the famous 'gradients' that shows you its a HVX200)

[FlintMI]

Originally Posted by xray

wake up flintMi ;-) "(the HVX ones are dated September 1st, 2006 or later.)"
He told you, the thing you are talking AND SHOWING about is from last year 2005 ...

(but look at the Walter Murch interview on 3 sept, its all nice except the shoot of the interview with a white wall in the background, there you see the famous 'gradients' that shows you its a HVX200)

LOL, wakin' up is hard to do.

here is a grab from 2006. they are overcompressing. apple can do better.

bad comp from HVX output (blocky, artifacts, blur)




good comp from HVX output (razor sharp)