Category: Production Services

Faces Behind The Camera – Brett Frey

Posted on by Oriana Chacon

Capturing some of South Florida’s well-known film professionals in action — from DP’s to producers to food stylists to makeup artists — we are bringing a series of insightful portraits as photographed by David Wells.

[caption id="attachment_947" align="aligncenter" width="471"] Brett Frey at Moving Picture Rental[/caption]

We begin with Brett Frey. Brett has been at this for over 30 years. He has the patience of a saint. Portrait shot with a Canon 5D Mark 2, Zeiss ZE 50 MM at F1.4 at Moving Picture Rental for an Alexa check out. …

Moving Picture Rental Offers DP’s Custom Case Integration

Posted on by Oriana Chacon

Mike McGowan, Director of Photography came in for a C300 and Zeiss CP.2 prime rental camera checkout — part of a much bigger shoot hopefully in Miami to come!  We offered up a custom case integration with back packs and hard cases on wheels for Mike’s shoot to minimize checked baggage and add ease-of-use on set as Mike was not shooting in Florida.  We also provided a lite panel Bi-color 1×1 kit.  We packed light-weight extension cords, flex fill, matte box and Red Rock follow focus. After the job wrapped Mike McGowan commented, “ The wh …

Phantom Flex 2K Provided to Oida Studios for Mizuno Golf Shoot

Posted on by Oriana Chacon

Oida Studios of Japan traveled to sunny Florida for a small shoot with PGA Tour pro Luke Donald.  High-speed Phantom shots were the order of the day for a Mizuno golf club commercial.  Then Mr. Donald played a few holes while being filmed by DSLR’s for a web series of instructional videos.

Moving Picture provided a Phantom Flex 2K camera package with a Phantom Tech, a Sound Mixer, and a Phantom 1st AC / DSLR Camera Operator. Call Moving Picture for your next Phantom Flex rental.  Available in both 2K and 4K camera bodies.

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NAB 2015 Impressions: Sony PMW-PZ1 4K XAVC Player

Posted on by Oriana Chacon
[caption id="attachment_838" align="alignleft" width="350"] Sony PMW-PZ1 at NAB 2015[/caption]

 

When Sony released their F5 and F55 camera systems, they rolled out yet another video codec in the form of XAVC.  While the XAVC codec sports excellent quality and compression characteristics surpassing their legacy XDCAM format, it still has a major weakness.  You can’t easily watch the footage.  Either the Sony Content Browser or an editing suite such as Abode Premiere must be used.  And 4K footage wont even play in the Content Browser …

Digital Media Archiving, Storage and Preservation for the Modern Age

Posted on by Oriana Chacon

The Irony: Analog recordings made 100 years ago are more likely to survive than digital recordings made today!

The Truth: There is not a “Magic Bullet” solution available today that will work for everyone. The digital formats you have recorded your material on coupled with the amount of digital material you need to archive and digitally preserve will dictate the solution and practices that will work best for you.

 
What is digital preservation?

Data backup: Making multiple (two or more) copies of a digital file. The copies should be st …

A Producers Guide to Timecode: The Who, What, and Why of Timecode and Framerates

Posted on by Oriana Chacon

Time code is one of those technical topics that is commonly misunderstood by many production industry professionals.  What is it? Why is it important?  Where does it come from?  What will happen if I don’t have it?  We’ll try to answer all those questions for you, and with any luck, help you avoid time code based pitfalls in the future.

Time code is an electronic means of determining an exact location in digital audio and video recording.  The current time code standard was developed in the 1960’s by the Society of Motion Picture …

Free Video Tools for the “Budget Challenged” Production

Posted on by Oriana Chacon

At Moving Picture we are all too aware of how expensive it can be to create art. So, for the budget minded filmmakers out there, we’ve provided a few useful free video tools for you to try out.
MPEG Streamclip
(http://www.squared5.com)
MPEG Streamclip is one of those oddly versatile tools that should be installed on every computer you use. It will play nearly every sort of digital media you throw at it. This includes XDCAM MP4 files from the Sony EX-3 and F3 and MXF files from Sony F5/F55 and Canon C300. About the only thing it won’t play is RE …

Shoot to Edit with ARRI Alexa and Avid Media Composer

Posted on by Oriana Chacon
Travel

The ARRI Alexa has proven to be a wonderful camera system from top to bottom — DPs and ACs love it for it’s beautiful imagery and ease of use. And at the end of the day you get compatible ProRes MOV files that both your editors and creative staff can easily view on Mac’s and PC’s simply by using Quicktime Player. Even so, there are still post-production facilities out there that insist on working with Avid DNxHD. As a Producer, it’s your job to make that happen.
Record directly to Avid DNxHD from the camera

Changing the Alexa to record DNxHD …

To Convert or not to Convert – A Guide to Video Mini-Converters. (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on by Oriana Chacon

There are many tools available to assist with viewing, processing, or converting digital video, but few have the versatility or reliability of the AJA line of mini-converters.  This usage guide isn’t a comprehensive list of features and capabilities of all the AJA converters.  However, I will be presenting some commonly confronted video conundrums and how to solve them with the proper AJA converter.

1. My camera has only an HD-SDI output, but my monitors only have a standard definition (SD) “VIDEO” input.

 

 

 

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ARRI Alexa Showcased at CSC Florida

Posted on by Oriana Chacon
Caviar

ARRI CSC Florida opened their doors to unveil the new ARRI Alexa this past weekend.  This great event showcased the stunning engineering and versatility of ARRI’s latest addition to the film and video market.  Garnering the attention of South Florida’s seasoned film industry professionals, many experienced camera assistants and directors of photography came out to catch a glimpse of the Alexa at work.  Veteran first assistants Andy Fischer and Steve Ciffone, along with luminaries like Bart Tau (DP), were among the crowd.

[caption id=”atta …