A battery of flatpanel TVs, looking very much the same, at J&R in lower Manhattan.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

In Cinematography Corner #4, “Screens large and small,� I wrote about the centrality of scale to classic Cinema and, conversely, the recent adoption of the A/153 ATSC Mobile DTV Standard, poised to usher in an era of wallet-sized TVs.

Similar thoughts regarding screen size and digital wizardry filled my head as I helped a close friend shop for a large flat-screen TV in the run-up to Christmas.

In a basement showroom at J&R, a large electronics emporium in lower Manhattan, we stood mesmerized in the glow of dozens and dozens of large fluorescing LCDs, tiled across walls, along aisles, in every visible direction.

All the usual Japanese and Korean suspects were there: Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, JVC, Toshiba, Coby, Vizio, LG, and Samsung. more

Leitner and Coyula on the set of Memories of Overdevelopment, the cover photo from the May 2006 debut issue of Digital Content Producer.

The May 2006 debut issue of millimeter’s sister publication Digital Content Producer featured a cover story entitled “First-hand HDV: A Year in the Life of an HDV Producer/DP,� written by yours truly.

I still don’t know what an “HDV Producer/DPâ€? is—I’ve directed, produced, and photographed in 35mm, 16mm, and nearly every video format—but it is true that by 2006 I had grown terribly impressed by professional HDV camcorders starting with Sony’s original HVR-Z1U.

They were far better than they had any right to be at their price point; they were strikingly compact; and, hand-in-hand with Apple’s popular Final Cut Pro, they were toppling barriers to low-budget production in high definition.

HDV, you’ll recall, is a marketing brand for HD captured as either 1440×1080 at 25Mbps or 1280×720 at 19.7Mbps using MPEG-2 long-GOP compression. Recording media is the same 1/4in. metal evaporated MiniDV tape cassette used by consumer DV. more

Sony’s 21st Century Erector Set—the SRW-9000.

In Cinematography Corner #8, “NX = Next Leap in Low-Cost Flash Recording”, I marveled at 11-plus hours of 1920×1080 AVCHD recorded to a Sony flash device the size of a MiniDV cassette.

Setting aside for the moment the image-capture anxiety of all-your-eggs-in-one-basket (it was never before possible to have 11 hours of footage slip from your pants pocket into the fold of a taxi seat), I continue to find this development jaw-dropping. I well remember lugging boxes of 16mm negative around the world. Eleven hours would have required 66 taped 400ft. cans in 14 cardboard boxes … a veritable trunk’s worth.

Last week I encountered another flash memory milestone, this time at a technical presentation at Abel Cine Tech in New York. Front and center was Sony’s SRW-9000, first seen in April at NAB. more

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in the black and white prologue of Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist.

If names like Truffaut, Godard, Fassbinder, Scorsese, or Almodóvar mean anything to you—directors whom the annual New York Film Festival helped introduce and promote—you’ll realize what riches await at Lincoln Center every September for those lucky enough to attend.
Unlike other film festivals, the NYFF doesn’t hawk premieres. Instead, it skims the cream off the best festivals in the world, particularly Berlin and Cannes, and assembles a premium slate of about 30 features, mostly dramas, with a few documentaries thrown in for good measure. Which is why, for me, NYFF selections are essential viewing each year. more