Last week, I saw Children of Men. Two nights ago, I saw it again. Rarely do I pay to see a film twice in the theater, but Children of Men almost demanded that I do so. Not only am I a big fan of intelligent sci-fi films (and books, especially of the dystopian variety), Children of Men represents a startling standout act in terms of actual production. Other than the tight plot, deliciously thoughtful political overtones, pitch-perfect acting, incredible art direction and locations, and superb pacing, this film features some of the most startling long takes I've ever experienced. In fact, it is the film's use of long takes that is the most inspiring and impressionable feature of the film.

In a time where superfluous CG effects and chop-chop editing plague so many Hollywood pictures, Children of Men stands in defiance of the hyper-real. In an early long take spanning at least a couple of minutes, a group of five drives down a road and sees a burning car quickly rolling down a hillside, blocking their path. A massive horde of thugs hoping to do the passengers in come out of the woods and run towards their car which is now forced to speed in reverse. Chaos ensues during the chase, and the camera never cuts away from the perspective inside of the vehicle during all of this. It's an incredibly planned shot, and only a precursor to a much bigger and more technically impressive long take later in the film.

The complete lack of editing during some of Children of Men's most emotionally heated and technically impressive scenes is a real filmmaking marvel. Ultimately, it gives the film a much bigger punch because we are able to experience these scenes uninterrupted, with no disruption to the sense of time. Yes, these long takes give the film an almost "realistic" quality. And that is what separates Children of Men from the rest. There is not only good entertainment to be had with Children of Men, but a valuable learning experience. So yes, long story short: see this movie.

Avid users might want to check out this compilation of the Best Tips and Tricks of 2006 from Avid's InFocus newsletter. You can view all the tips and tricks from Avid and the community, plus loads of other info for Avid products from the community website. You never know when you might find a time-saving gem or two.

[via Videoguys]

The folks at Boris FX are on a Universal Binary mission. They must love their Mac users because they are cranking out support for Intel Macs plus maintaining compatibility with PowerPC systems. The latest products to get in on the Universal Binary action are Graffiti and FX. Boris Graffiti 5.1 and Boris FX 9.1 are now available as free updates for 5.0 and 9.0 users.

Blackmagic Design has announced that DeckLink HD Studio is now available to the masses. DeckLink HD Studio is a capture and playback card that supports both HDMI and analog component video. The card allows you to work in 1080i and 720p along with NTSC and PAL video, plus provides instant switching between HD and SD. Check out the specs here, plus compare it to the other DeckLink products. MSRP is $995.

Long time Apple host card maker ATTO debuted it's new Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) adapter Tuesday at Macworld Expo. Designed for the Mac Pro, the PCI Express card gets high-end users connected to RAID storage over one of the fastest connections possible. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's great for video editors.

I won't bore you with all the details of SAS technology. Suffice it to say, SAS offers speed improvements over traditional SCSI, while eliminating some of it's hassles (now, what did I do with that terminator?) At around 3Gb (Gigabits not bytes) per second data transfer, SAS is a relatively affordable option for HD video editors, and provides reliability as well.

ATTO has been supporting the Mac platform for nearly 2 decades, and generally make great products. You can bet their new cards will have been tested specifically for the Mac Pro, and will perform as advertised. Click READ for a link to the product page.

Everywhere you turn online, all you see and hear is the iPhone. Video displays it best because you see the revolutionary user interface at work. Apple has been on patenting spree the last couple of years, mostly having to do with the iPhone user-interface. Will they use this with other applications? What about Final Cut Studio?

Imagine having a touchscreen monitor that let you work with your hands in Final Cut Studio. Pinch to zoom in (or zoom out), flick to scroll, type in timecode adjustments, change keyframes. The list goes on. Why should it be used just in iPhone? Why do I have to go back and forth between the mouse and keypad when I can do it all on the screen?

For screenwriting, I will always prefer the keyboard. But for the stuff that happens 70 percent of the time in Final Cut, touchscreen and the new iPhone UI would be sensational. Now mind you, it would need a lot of tweaking. The JKL (rewind, stop, play) buttons, for example, would be missed instantly. But in Motion and Soundtrack, the move would be fantastic.

It is not just about the touchscreen because we have tools already in the market that work with FCS. But the new Apple UI is a huge leap. This transition will surely happen sometime in the future, the question remains when? Final Cut Pro 6 seems out of the question but maybe 7.

Adobe has a bunch of upcoming eSeminars aimed at Production Studio users that are relevant to video editors and post peoples. Sessions include Productivity 101 with Production Studio, Design 101 for After Effects and Flash, After Effects 101 for the Adobe Premiere Pro User, Discover New Features 101 in Adobe Premiere Pro and DV Rack HD, After Effects 102 for the Adobe Premiere Pro User, and others. The eSeminars are free, but you must must register for individual sessions, and they are scheduled January 16th through February 27th. Might be worth looking into.

(via flippant)

StudioDaily has a nice video tutorial explaining optimal DVD compression using Apple's Compressor. Larry Jordan gives a simple, no nonsense explanation of the most appropriate video and audio compression settings when aiming for the highest quality DVD delivery. Compressor is fairly straightfoward, but it's good to know the small ins and outs of the application for achieving the best results, so check out this tutorial if you are looking for tips.

Taste Digital Media has offered royalty free sound, image, and video libraries for years. Their recent addition of an HD video background library seems to cover all the bases, and serves as an indicator of just how prolific HD video production has become. The best part is, they are cheap too.

Taste offers 13 volumes of it's HD library, containing 10 to 15 clips each. Total cost per volume is a mere $49.95, and all clips are completely royalty free. The library covers water, clouds, metalics, and abstract effects, and the whole thing is presented in 1080 wide-screen lossless PNG Quicktime format.

Via StudioDaily

How about a break from all the new announcements today. Here's another tutorial on how to "blur" objects or people so they can't be recognized in your video. The previous tutorial I posted used Premiere and After Effects and this one shows you how to do it in Final Cut Pro. It all comes down to motion tracking. When you learn how to use it in your editor you can do all sorts of fun stuff.

Boris FX has another app ready for Intel Mac systems. The updated Boris Red version 4.1 includes a Universal binary plug-in for Final Cut Pro and a UB stand alone render engine. The update lets Mac Pro and MacBook Pro users take advantage of the OpenGL graphics hardware for increased performance, which we all love. Version 4.1 is available for download as a free update to 4.0 users.

Kids, especially you HVX200 sporting P2-lovers out there, our day is on the horizon: Solid state hard drives are on their way! SanDisk is going to show off their first 32GB flash-based hard drive at CES, and says the drive could be released as early as the first half of this year! The transfer between a P2 card and a flash-based drive would be so minimal, it'd feel virtually instantaneous.

For those of you not up on your geek knowledge, typically the slowest part of a computer has been the spinning discs of magnetic hard drives. Video folks have gotten around the annoyance of those pokey hard drives by chaining them together in RAID arrays. Now, though, the problem could be eliminated almost entirely, with these flash-based drives.

Keep in mind, the drive is supposed to be a laptop drive, so we're not sure exactly how that'll play in a video world, but regardless, we're one step closer to greatness.

[Note: The image is of the Super Talent 8gb laptop flash drive]

With so many different media formats, it is no wonder management all of your assets can easily spin out of control. The Fideocam Blog offers some key points when putting together a management plan. First, keep as much meta-data tied to the clip as possible. This is obvious for the same reasons "tagging" has exploded all over the Internet. Second, content management is lacking in the current crop of NLE. Fideocam suggests improved interfaces to bring the NLE up to speed with broadcast management tools, which require a higher attention to detail. Third, when preparing a strategy make sure you choose open import/export protocols. There is nothing worse than realizing what you thought would work ends up blowing up in your face and there is no way to get your media back out of the system.

The more people involved the greater the complexity of the project. Keeping things organized is a key part of production, an important aspect that can save you lots of time and ultimately lots of money. For more insights give this entry a read over.

Guy Cochran from DVcreators.net shows around a Mac Pro tower. Everything is laid out in a clean and organized fashion which makes it easy to add more power to your machine in a snap. See how to add a new hard drive, add some RAM, and swap out a PCI card; all of which any novice computer user should be comfortable with. Crack open that case and have a look around. Don't worry, your Mac won't byte.

Mac Pro Hardware Upgrade Made Easy (5:27) 48MB

Thinksecret reports that Adobe's next version of Illustrator will feature several major changes including a much anticipated integration with Flash. It will also supposedly feature a Live color feature that will "greatly ease color selection and management, helping designers find appropriate matching colors for their work, improving experimentation with new colors, and managing colors collectively, instead of individually."

Also, Thinksecret has some photographs from a new developer version of the upcoming Mac operating system, Leopard. Of interest is the quick look index sheet which loads several photos and movies at one time. No idea why such a feature took so long to materialize. I use a finder plug-in that performs similar actions.