Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
Aaton, the innovative French camera and audio manufacturer, has recently released two new and remarkable products—the Cantar digital audio recorder, and the A-Minima Super16 film camera. The A-Minima is a film camera built to operate like a DV camera, while the Cantar is a digital audio recorder that operates much like a standard reel-to-reel recorder,… Read more »
Author: Greg Gilpatrick
Greg Gilpatrick is a producer and electronic media consultant in NYC.
Articles Written by Greg Gilpatrick:
Final Cut Pro 4
Digital non-linear video editing has crept into the life of nearly every filmmaker. From independents on shoestring budgets to high school students making video reports, editing with computers is the norm. Much of the credit for the popularity of non-linear editing goes to Apple’s Final Cut Pro (FCP). Apple’s savvy marketing and pricing of FCP… Read more »
High-Tech Homebrew
The past few years have seen significant advances in the tools for creating visual effects with desktop computers. Yet these tools cost at least a few hundred dollars and can quickly move into the thousands with the addition of plug-ins and ancillary tools. For the independent filmmaker interested in creating the illusions of visual effects… Read more »
What is a DDR, and is it right for you?
A new breed of tool has recently appeared on the DV filmmaking landscape. Unfortunately, these new devices do not share a common name and are known by various manufacturers as DV Direct to Edit Disk Recorder, Video Disk Unit, or Direct to Disk Recorder (DDR) which is how I will refer to them in this… Read more »
Up to Spec for PBS
Heather Courtney began shooting video of migrant day laborers in Texas as a graduate school thesis project, with few ideas about distribution. Los Trabajadores/The Workers eventually screened at over fifty different venues over the past year. As the film journeyed through the festival circuit and aired on PBS affiliates in Texas, Courtney never heard there… Read more »
Sending Video into the Wide Wired World
After years of saving money, finding the best crew, and refining your filmmaking skills, you finally produce the short film that will prove your talent as a filmmaker. Unable to wait for festivals or other distribution, you want to share your work with the world immediately by putting the movie on the web. But what… Read more »
Opening With Style
As anyone who has been to many festivals or film school screenings can attest, for most independent and student filmmakers, title design is a rushed process at the end of a busy editorial cycle. While it may be easy to type titles and credits into the standard titling tool in a nonlinear editing application, the… Read more »
3D Animation
The world of 3D animation is slowly opening up to new artists. New training options, online communities of users, and lower prices now make the prospect of 3D animation more enticing for independent filmmakers. But for those who know little about the field, starting out in 3D animation is still laden with many tough decisions,… Read more »
Cleaner 5.1
Delivering video over the Internet poses an interesting challenge to those who want to preserve the image quality of their video while giving the audience the best experience possible. Video delivered over the Internet must both look and sound as good as possible yet download quickly so that the audience does not become annoyed at… Read more »
Internet Video
Exhibiting video on the Internet can be a quick way to show your work to producers, festivals, and potential audience members. Although the quality cannot even begin to rival the picture and sound of home video or theatrical distribution, Internet video can provide a representation of your work 24/7. As soon as you understand a… Read more »