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All photos by D.W. Leitner

I write this as Halloween looms once again, lining neighborhood stoops with scary pumpkins and pint-sized goblins targeting a sugar rush. Halloween is our Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, which Mexicans celebrate as an embrace of the role death plays in life, both as last stop and final transcendence.

Which got me to thinking: in a way, life is like a reel of film on a projector. There’s a beginning, middle, and end. Then the reel runs out and the projector’s empty gate flashes white. more

Large outdoor 3D display at Sony’s NAB booth in April.
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All photos by D.W. Leitner

Last November I wrote a column, EX3 x 2 = DIY 3D, about two talented and resourceful New Jersey filmmakers who fashioned a homebrew 3D rig from two Sony PMW-EX3s in order to film a striking 6-minute paean to Newark in the mold of Paul Strand’s classic Manhatta (1921) for the Newark Museum.

What a difference a year makes.

Avatar hit theaters in December, becoming, in one month, the highest grossing film of all time.

April’s NAB waxed giddy with 3D fever. Nothing like a box office bonanza to plant dollar signs in the eyes of broadcast manufacturers, consumer electronics giants, Hollywood, anyone seeking the next big thing. more

Shadowstone’s Paul Distefano demonstrates ARRI’s compact LoCaster, with onboard selection of six color temperatures from 2800K to 6500K and continuous dimming.
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All photos by D. W. Leitner

NAB’s show floor last April signaled new directions in LED lighting. I’ll get to them below, but first a few thoughts on the evolution of electric lighting itself.

We complain we live in a time of dizzying change, but the 1880s were equally disorienting. Edison had patented his carbonized filament and Eastman his flexible roll film within a few years of each other. Electric lights, practical photography, motion pictures had arrived all at once it seemed. Modern times at mach speed.

It’s happening again, as digital imaging eclipses photochemical and filaments white-hot from electrical resistance yield to cool, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and LEDs five times as energy efficient. more

Illya Friedman of Hot Rod Cameras at Sundance, previewing his prototype PL-mount adapter for Canon EOS 7D. Dual Grip Hand Held kit is in foreground.
Photo D.W. Leitner

Before the lights dimmed at each Sundance premiere this year, a ribbon of text resembling a CNN news ticker marched across the lower third of the empty screen: “This is the recharged fight against the establishment of the expected.� “This is cinematic rebellion.� “This is the renewed rebellion.�

Virtually identical ad-speak marked the launch of Red Digital Cinema’s Red One in 2006. Red honcho Ted Schilowitz’s business card even read “Leader of the Rebellion.â€? Which raised eyebrows in an industry skeptical of H. R. Giger design if not pointed abandonment of conventional camera technology.

Calling yourself a rebel is like calling yourself a maverick—an exercise in preening if not brand marketing. Insurrection is serious business. Breaking with convention risks breakdown of convention, revolution sows chaos; both inflict unforeseen consequences. Which brings me to HDSLRs.

With Sundance receding in the rearview mirror and the gravitational pull of NAB upon us, I want to share one last bit of business from Sundance concerning these small cameras with supersized sensors—a topic that will figure prominently in any discussion of new digital cameras at Las Vegas two weeks from now. more

“What if Cinema had been invented 100 years earlier?� asks editor extraordinaire Walter Murch.
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What if Cinema had been invented 100 years earlier, in 1789 not 1889?

Who would ask such a question?

If you’ve read his ontological discourse on editing, In the Blink of an Eye, or novelist Michael Ondaatje’s book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, you know the answer to the second question. (Ondaatje also wroteThe English Patient.)

Walter Murch is many things: poet-philosopher of the Moviola and lately Final Cut Pro, the guy who coined “sound designer,� recipient of two Oscars for sound mixing and one for editing for the likes of The Conversation, American Graffiti, Julia, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather (parts II and III), The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ghost, The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Cold Mountain. more

Indie feature filmmakers set their calendars by Sundance.

Most of the world follows the Gregorian calendar, at least since the sixteen century, with the notable exception of indie filmmakers, who follow the Sundance calendar.

Sundance is so consequential to the career prospects of aspiring filmmakers that entire production schedules are calibrated to match the Sundance calendar. Would-be Sundance filmmakers, after all, must defy impossibly long odds. Out of 3,722 feature-length entries, Sundance in 2010 accepted 113, or 3 percent.

The Sundance calendar begins three weeks after the Gregorian and contains a season of submission, August to September, a season of announcement, early December, and for those lucky enough to be invited, a two-month tour through the outermost Inferno, leading up to the festival’s late-January opening night. more

Wait-list line in front of the Eccles Theatre.
Photo D.W. Leitner

Sundance remains the preeminent festival for independent filmmaking anywhere. I ought to know. I’ve attended virtually every one since 1987.

In past years I’ve written daily blogs from Sundance for Millimeter, but this year, with a dramatic feature in the New Frontier section (my sixth Sundance premiere as producer), reporting wasn’t in the cards. So I’ve decided to dedicate the next four columns to a look in the rear view mirror at Sundance 2010.

In these paragraphs I’ll note tech trends and shifts in the culture of indie filmmaking, last-minute techniques invoked to finish our own super low-budget film, differences between cinema and video as elaborated by legendary editor Walter Murch before a packed morning session at the Filmmakers’ Lounge, and a brunch on Main Street I had with Illya Friedman of Hot Rod Cameras, for a sneak-peek at his Canon EOS 5D Mark II mod for PL-mount lenses.

Sundance was once a laid-back gathering of the indie film tribe in a declining 19th Century silver mining town. Then came Miramax, Hollywood, a dot-com bubble, the 2002 Winter Olympics, major corporate sponsorship. As quaint Main Street was doubled in length, development exploded in the surrounding Wasatch Mountains. A local library, a high school, a hotel, a racquet club, even a synagogue were pressed into service as screening venues for the ballooning festival. more

Manual back-focus adjustment on a Sony HVR-Z7U, using a 46in. Samsung LED TV to verify the results. (Click photo to enlarge.)
Photo D.W. Leitner

I began my last column with the question, What is auto back focus?

I compared depth of field to depth of focus and described the lens factors that impact both of them. I defined correct back focus as a function of precise lens mounting, accurate to within microns of spec. And I made the case that for any given angle-of-view, the smaller the sensor, the shorter the lens focal length—and therefore the less depth of focus available at the sensor surface.

Less depth of focus always means tighter tolerances in lens mounting, which is why 1/3in. camcorders are far less forgiving of back-focus errors than 2/3in. camcorders.

Ironic, isn’t it, that smaller, consumerish camcorders require tighter tolerances in lens mounting than larger 2/3in. cameras.

So, what is auto back focus? more

The author at DuArt Film Laboratory in New York in the early 1980s, demonstrating the first lens test projector in New York.

The term “back focus� gets thrown around a lot, mostly by people who little understand it. What, then, is auto back focus?

First let’s cover some lens basics.

Lenses are two-way streets. Light can enter or exit either end. That’s what makes lens test projectors possible—the type you encounter in camera rental houses. They’re basically slide projectors, with a super-precise focus chart deposited on a glass slide. The camera lens takes the place of a projection lens.

What’s great about a lens test projector is that you can fiddle with focus, iris, or focal length (in the case of a zoom) and see with your own eyes what sort of optical gremlins reside within.

For instance, stopping down the iris, even slightly, often crispens the image by choking off residual spherical aberration—which you can easily notice as an improvement in contrast and edge sharpness. more

Sony SxS Pro card, 32GB of eggs in one basket, meant to be emptied sooner or later.

Since this is Cinematography Corner #13, I thought I’d share a cautionary tale bristling with misadventure and dunder-headed mistakes.

I had the privilege of touring Canon headquarters in Tokyo in November 2008, and one take-away from this visit was that solid-state flash recording is not only here to stay but positioned in product road maps to replace tape, sooner than later. And not just in consumer and low-end professional camcorders—as past months have demonstrated. more