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.
I wrote this post originally for OMM! – the Open Media Magazine, a new iOS publication by talented young filmmaker/designer Daniel Freytag, who asked me to contribute to his first issue. It’s definitely worth checking out, it’s absolutely free for your iPhone and iPad, and the design and interface is very innovative and fitting to an iOS device. There are many other great articles included, among them one by my friend Mario Feil, who actually talks about why film schools were unnecessary for him
Future versions of the magazine will be web based and therefore available on all devices.
I love the community that has sprung up around the revolution of DSLRs in recent years. The accessibility of cameras delivering a cinematic quality for low budgets has opened up opportunities to almost anyone interested in becoming a filmmaker. People who used to feel excluded from what used to be an elitist profession now have a better chance of making it simple because the gear is cheaper and quickly becoming ubiquitous.
Please watch the review video below, produced together in conjunction with Cinema5D. This carries on what we started as “Gearama” and carries it to a whole new level, bringing in additional experts for reviews regularly. So stay tuned for new episodes!
Thanks to my colleagues Bobo, Johnnie Behiri and of course Sebastian Woeber – we are partners in these reviews and aim to bring an evenly balanced look to any gear we look at. Much more to come!
After the workshop, we will go and have dinner with the attendees, and then it’s time for the first DSLR Meetup in Vienna! I’ve been organizing a regular meeting of filmmakers in Vienna together with Gloria Gammer since early 2010 now, but this time, it will be specifically for and by DSLR filmmakers and of course, as far as I know it’s Philip Bloom’s first time in Vienna, so let’s give him a very warm welcome! (That hopefully goes for the weather, too!)
And here we go, the 2nd episode of our gear review show GEARAMA is online!
This time we talk about the Cinevate Simplis Dual (or Pro, how it’s called with the Cyclops viewfinder included) DSLR rig. In case you missed the first episode, check it out here - we talked about the Cinevate Cyclops DSLR viewfinder.
According to my WordPress statistics, this is my 100th blog post. And it is the one in which I announce that this design is obsolete. It has served this site well for over 1.5 years, but it is time for a change.
This blog was originally started when I posted world’s first short film and review of the then-new Canon T2i/550D, bringing huge numbers of people to the site on the first day. Apart from making films, I have always enjoyed writing and that’s why I kept going. And boy, it’s been a very rewarding thing to do – because of all the great people I got to know through my activities with this blog and Twitter. But this was just the start of something that can become much more. It really is time for the next step.
In June 2011 I returned from beautiful Majorca (as the English write to pronounce it correctly – or Mallorca, as it is really called in Spanish) after the 3-day intensive Filmmaking Masterclass that I did there with Philip Bloom & Sebastian Wiegärtner.
For our incredibly successful HDSLR/AF101 Masterclass in Majorca in June, we had some really generous sponsors who supported us along the way.
Three of them were so generous that they actually donated equipment to be given away to participants.
Philip, Sebastian and I did not want people to compete for these prizes with their filmmaking on the three-day course, because we figured that would distract them from actually learning things – and that’s what a Masterclass is all about in the end. We did a random prize drawing on the last day, and Philip Bloom picked all the winners.
The weeks since the release of Apple’s all-new Final Cut Pro X have been filled with controversy about the new editing software.
There is no doubt that Apple made a crucial mistake calling an all-new editing application “Final Cut Pro”, while it has nothing in common with its predecessor and isn’t even able to open any of the past projects. Also, if they hadn’t stopped selling the old Final Cut Studio altogether, the controversy would have been much less – because nobody expects much of a 1.0 version of any application. It’s very different when you claim to skip 3 version numbers and jump straight from version 7 to 10 …
Anyway, I will write about my mixed bag of feelings with Final Cut Pro X in a different post.
Get 50% off Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium or Premiere Pro using promo code SWITCH
The Adobe User Group Netherlands has very kindly invited me to make a presentation at the upcoming “Rotterdam RAW” meeting on June 29th, 2011, which is all focused on DSLR filmmaking.
I will be talking about the cameras and image acquisition, less about post production – I will leave that to the plenty of experts on that subject in the room
Best thing about it: Attendance is for FREE! Just register at their site: Rotterdam RAW.
So if anybody wants to talk cameras or hang out in Rotterdam on that day, let me know
I hope the presentation will (like many of the past ones) be recorded on video, I will then share it with you here.
Last week I returned from our 2nd 3-day HDSLR / AF101 Masterclass in Majorca. Sebastian Wiegärtner & me did the first one last September, which was a great success, and so we got our friend Philip Bloom on board for the first time this year in June. We had around 30 attendees and it was sold out over 8 weeks ago. The great thing about a three-day workshop is that people can actually get to know each other and shoot a short film under our supervision. You are essentially able to shoot a short with Philip Bloom (and us) prying over your shoulder, giving you tips and ideas on how we would approach a shot or scene like that.
Before I get too much into detail already: I will be doing a separate blog post on the Masterclass shortly, we are just waiting for all of the 6 shooting teams to put their finished short films (which they planned, shot and edited in less than 24 hours during the Masterclass) on Vimeo. Once they are up, I am going to present you an extensive round-up of everything that happened during the Masterclass.
I am very happy to announce that Sebastian Wiegärtner & I are going to bring the one and only Philip Bloom for the first time to Austria and Germany for a workshop tour with the three of us.
As most of you might already have heard, Zacuto has released a new electronic viewfinder (EVF) for use with your DSLR cameras or any other cameras with an HDMI connector.
I recently did an interview with filmmaker Ron Dawson for his show “Crossing the 180″. We talked about all sorts of stuff related to our profession in general and I was thoroughly enjoying it. Also feeling honored that he has me on his show as the first foreign filmmaker (that is, outside the United States).
Check out the entire 70-minute interview on his blog by clicking here.
Just a quick blog post to let you know that I am going to be on a live web show shortly. It’s called “The Filmmaker’s Journey” by Danny Lacey, who is very prolific filmmaker from the UK who I have been following on his own filmmaking journey for quite a while now. I was happy to agree getting on Danny’s show when he asked me.
It deals with the introduction of the new operation management strategy of the public railway system in Austria. The target audience are outsiders who are interested in the inner workings of the infrastructure branch of the ÖBB, for example applicants for positions.
Around 70% of the film were shot by me, the rest was archive material shot by Filmquadrat GmbH (they also did all the aerial shots). To match all the archive material in XDCAM EX, we shot on a Sony EX3.
Directed, shot & edited by Nino Leitner.
Big thanks to all the assistants involved in this production.
An unknown dancer, my sound guy Andreas Pils, me, & the line Producer Anna Kwak
I have been looking forward to this for quite a while, and Sunday May 29th is the day: The French/German broadcaster ARTE will screen the 90-minute documentary “À chacun son bal” (French title, something like “To each their ball” in English) or “Alles Walzer” (German title, something like “Let’s waltz” in English), in which I was lucky enough to be one of the three cinematographers alongside Xavier Liberman and Alexander Boboschweski. The documentary, directed by Barbara Necek, deals with the Viennese tradition of dancing balls. For more details on the documentary please read the English description below.
This is the last part of a series of guest blog posts by the screenwriter and director Gregor Schmidinger who tries to reveal the mystery about how to reach a million views with a (narrative) short film on the Internet.
It’s finally June and Final Cut Pro X is available for download from the App Store. It’s time to start learning all the new stuff!
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I know NAB 2011 has been over for more than a week now already, but I’m busy traveling across the US and therefore had little chance to keep you guys posted. Apart from meeting all these amazing people – and that’s what it really was about – let’s dive right in and have a look at the major product that was introduced while this year’s show was taking place – Apple’s unveiling of their all-new Final Cut Pro X editing software.
The sneak peek at Final Cut Pro X was one of the relatively few real innovations I found at this year’s NAB. They took over the Final Cut Pro User Group meeting aka “Supermeet” in the Bally’s Hotel and ousted many other sponsors (among them Avid) and keynote speakers (among them Philip Bloom) on very short notice. Of course they didn’t announce officially that Apple had taken over beforehand, but it was rather obvious that something was brewing … especially because Apple invited a select group of editors to an exclusive early preview of it a few months back to get their feedback. Most of them were amazed but they couldn’t talk about it.
Before I go into detail about sliders and the KesslerCrane CineSlider that I have reviewed in particular, check out his little test short that I shot a while back in Vienna’s famous “Wurschtlprater”, a luna park, months before it’s opening to the public again. The people in charge of the rides (there is no general admission fee, you have to pay individually for access to the operators’ rides) were testing their rides on this unusually sunny winter day.
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.