The collaborative short film project “The Owner”, which I directed an episode for in my hometown Innsbruck, is finished and will premiere around the world on May 25th, 2012. DoP on my episode was Mario Feil, we shot on Red One and a 5D Mark II (back in August 2010 – check the original blog post right here.)
In case you missed the trailer:
Please be aware that this is one-time occurrence in most of the cities around the world, as the film will go through its regular festival route after the initial screenings.
So secure your tickets in the city closest too you as soon as possible!
My good friend and colleague Arne Nostitz-Rieneck will host the Vienna premiere together with me at the Urania cinema in Vienna on May 25th, 2012. He directed the Vienna episode which I shot (on the 550D).
It’s only a about two weeks until the first Filmmaking Masterclass in 2012 is going to take place in Las Vegas, and only a few days later in beautiful Key West, Florida. In June, we will host the 3rd Masterclass of 2012 in Majorca, Spain.
We have put up the dedicated website for the Masterclasses as the requests for information have been truly overwhelming. (If you have any questions also feel free to email info@filmmaking-masterclass.com)
Shooting, learning, having fun: Filmmaking Masterclass 2011 in Majorca
To say that the Canon EOS 5D Mark III is a long anticipated release is a crass understatement. The 5D Mark II was the camera that started the DSLR craziness that spurred the explosion in quantity and sometimes cinematic quality we now take for granted from productions with even the smallest budgets. It changed the market entirely.
Just a quick post to make you aware of an ambitious documentary project that I am happy to be one protagonist of – “Virtually Famous” by New Zealand filmmaker/photographer Ollie Dale. He started a Kickstarter funding campaign to get things rolling for his film and I urge all of you to support his vision, because it is a great one and a story that truly hasn’t been told before.
Today a very practical blog post for everyone who still has to rely on Final Cut Pro 7 for a lot of their work (like me), despite trying to phase it out slowly (which isn’t too easy when you don’t have time to really learn another software – oh well!).
This post is about a problem I encountered when I bought SSDs both for my Mac Pro as well as my spanking new MacBook Pro 17″, and did a clean install of all the software I own on them.
I just stumbled upon this incredibly useful chart, which lists all – notably high-end – cinema cameras currently on the market, ranging from the Sony F3, the Canon C300 and the various RED models all the way to the Alexa.
This is something I meant to blog about literally forever, so here it is, finally. People who follow me on Twitter regularly might already be aware of this. This is about an amazing experience we made with a viral self-marketing campaign. First of all, check our video out, and then read and most importantly WATCH our “revelation” at TEDxVienna.
Rodney Charters says the Canon C300 is the "camera of the decade"
I witnessed the live stream yesterday and thought this was worth sharing:
If you ever wanted to hear what a well-established Hollywood DP thinks about the upcoming C300, look no further: Rodney Charters, director of photography best known for his incredible work on the TV series “24″ (here’s his IMDB profile), had a go with the C300 together with Lan Bui and Drew Gardner, both highly talented filmmakers in their own rights.
Disclaimer: This is not a scientific test. We have had the chance to test the two cameras at the same location but different dates and with different lenses and decided to compare them to get a rough feel for each cameras low light sensitivity.
I have learned that fellow DP Yves Simard, known on Twitter as @CrewsTV, has lost his family’s home in New Zealand in a fire that burned the place to the ground.
Luckily, nobody was hurt and his wife was able to save herself and the children, but virtually all of their possessions are gone.
Over the past months, I have been given the chance to so something quite ordinary with extraordinary people: shooting interviews for TV and other media outlets – interviews with famous film stars and film directors. As you can imagine, there is hardly any room for screwing up something like this, so the preparation needs to be meticulous.
Still frame from my interview shoot with David Cronenberg for the Austrian premiere of "A Dangerous Method" at the Viennale International Film Festival - parts of the film were shot in Vienna, where Sigmund Freud used to live
Red Giant software was busy developing a version of their very popular Magic Bullet Looks suite for Apple’s controversial and not-yet-quite production-ready Final Cut Pro X.
In case you missed it, I wanted to let you know that the incredible Automatic Duck plug-ins are now available for free.
Automatic Duck supplies plug-ins to allow round-trips between Final Cut Pro 7, Avid, After Effects or Pro Tools. It’s an incredibly useful array of tools if you have ever had the problem of moving your Final Cut Pro timeline into After Effects to do color grading or any post production work.
Every now and then, a disruptive company comes along that just does what everybody was hoping for – simply because it could be done – and thereby disrupts an entire industry.
Canon announced their long-anticipated new EOS C300 Super 35mm video camera. Finally Canon is directly aiming at professional video production with a need for cinematic images.
Gregor Schmidinger is the director of “The Boy Next Door”, a short film that garnered a whopping 2 million views in less than 3 years. Incredible success for a short film, certainly because Gregor managed to evoke a lot of emotions with the story about a male prostitute longing for real affection.
In case you have missed it, read Gregor’s great guest blog series “How to Reach a Million Video Views” in which he deals in detail with the strategy and the blueprint for a viral success such as “The Boy Next Door”.
With great sadness we all have learned of Steve Jobs’ death at the age of 56. He was my one true idol since I was a kid. I have never used anything else than Apple computers.
I know this isn’t usually the blog for such things, but I will take my time to collect my thoughts and write something more extensive on Steve Jobs’ death.
For now, I urge anyone to watch the extremely inspiring speech that Steve Jobs delivered in 2005 at Stanford University. I have watched it again and again over the years and I have hardly ever seen another speech as inspirational as this one.
If you have already seen it – watch it again.
The world has lost somebody who has made an enormous impact. You will be missed, Steve.
In case you started building up a collection of great Canon lenses after you purchased your video capable DSLR, and later decided that it’s probably time for one of the new large sensor camcorders (F3, FS100, AF101 …), you probably found yourself in a similar position as I.
What’s the problem?
Well, fast Canon EF lenses definitely are great, but their biggest drawback is that they control the aperture electronically, not mechanically on the lens (as most Nikon lenses do). That means you need to use a camera to control the iris. Not any camera. A Canon of course. EF is a proprietary standard, and Canon has not released the specifics as to how this communication between the lenses and the camera work.
I know, I know, our Cam Busters workshop tour through Germany and Austria with Philip Bloom, Sebastian Wiegärtner & me has been over for quite a while now, so I am really sorry for the late wrap-up post. Been very busy with some great new stuff on the horizon, but more on that some other time.
It was incredibly intense fun, meeting a lot of people and different crowds across the two countries, and the overall response to the workshops was extremely positive.
The three of us not looking so fresh anymore after the last workshop! (Berlin)
Just a quick event update about an event I am attending tonight in Zürich, Switzerland:
My 2007 documentary “Every Step You Take“, which deals with the massive amount of video surveillance in the United Kingdom in a critical way, is being screened by the Pirate Party Switzerland in Zürich, followed by a panel discussion on “data protection and the surveillance state”.
As you might already have heard, Engadget was sent an invite from Canon to a November 3 event in Hollywood, dubbed with the headline “The Story Begins – Canon is making an historic global announcement”.
Pretty mighty words, but of course promising. We have all been waiting for any news on Canon’s DSLR line-up for years now (I mean it, because there was no innovation in sensor technology since the introduction of the 7D over two years ago).
I usually don’t often feature other people’s works on my blog, but when I find something particularly worth pointing out, I do – and this is the case with the “Tour de Cure” documentary:
Recently, Linda Ung and Mick Jones, two very talented filmmakers and shooters from Australia who I had the pleasure to meet in person at this year’s NAB in Las Vegas, set out to make an incredible documentary series about the “Tour de Cure“. It’s a ten-day cycling tour aimed at raising money for cancer research and ultimately finding a cure for cancer. Please donate at Tour de Cure website to help reach this aim: http://www.tourdecure.com.au/
Before you read further, I suggest you start by watching the first episode. The other episodes are at the bottom of this post.
My apologies for the lack of blog posts lately, but the weeks after our Cam Busters workshop tour have been filled to the brim with work and therefore I’ve been too busy to do anything else. A round-up blog post about the Cam Busters tour will be posted in the coming days.
IBC 2011 in Amsterdam is around the corner. Right after NAB, it’s the most highly anticipated professional broadcast event of the year. It’s Europe’s NAB, so to speak.
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My name is Nino Leitner, aac and I am a filmmaker, DP and producer based in Vienna, Austria. I focus mainly on commercial & corporate work as well as documentaries.