Our New Feature Documentary

Coming out soon!  A peak inside one of the fast growing industries in WA. State
                                                       www.cannabisfarmfilm.com

What equipment to use for making a Documentary Film?

At Binary we have been making documentary films for 25 years. We have seen the equipment change every year.  POV on PBS talked to some of the top doc. film makers and they came up with this list of equipment they are using now.  check it out: 
http://www.pbs.org/pov/filmmakers/2013-documentary-equipment-survey.php

Creating an Affordable Web Presence For Your Film

We all need help in marketing our indie films. "Assemble" has been building web based marketing tools for the film maker that helps in distribution.  Create, Gather and Profit!

Seven Rules of Film Making by Kevin Smith

Director, screenwriter, actor Kevin Smith, first feature "Clerks" that he made for $25,000 shares some tips that may help you in your next film project.

1. Edit while you’re still shooting. On every flick since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I’ve been editing while still in the midst of production. I’m not talking about some hired editor piecing together an assembly while I’m on set, either. I mean that whenever I’m not shooting, I’m in the editing room with my footage. While the crew is taking 15 minutes to an hour to set up the next shot, I’m behind the Avid, putting the flick together.

2. Chop while rolling. It’s all upside when you’re editing while you’re shooting, as you’ll know right away if there are any shots missing. More than twice over the course of Clerks II, I was able to grab cutaways or re-shoot coverage a mere 48 hours after wrapping on a particular scene, thanks to chopping while rolling. Two days after wrap, I had a fine cut of the flick because I’d spent the entire shoot editing whenever I wasn’t on set (during production I average three hours of sleep a night).

3. Show your edited footage as often as possible. Another benefit to cutting while you’re still in production is that it affords you the opportunity to share the scenes with the cast. Until they see cut scenes, the film is solely theoretical to them. Give the actors actual scenes to watch and suddenly they can see the film taking shape, too. If you’re lucky, the cast will get pumped seeing how well all their stuff is turning out and you’ll enjoy the trickle-down benefits: A freshly-inspired troop of performers who’ll come in every day and give you even better performances.

4. Include the cast (and crew) in on the editing process, too. I’m not saying they should all ride shotgun at the Avid, but once you’ve got scenes cut, roll ‘em for the cast and crew. In some cases, they might provide insight you hadn’t thought of yourself. At the very least, it will convey how collaborative you can be and foster good will amongst the people who are already eager to help you realize your vision.

5. If you’re shooting a talky picture, spare no expense on the sound recorder. Without special effects or stars, your dialogue is the selling point of your flick. Therefore, it behooves you to hire the best sound recordist/mixer you can afford. Same goes for your boom guy/girl: Don’t cheap out.

6. Never fish off the director’s pier. Don’t shag the help. Better to tug one out in your trailer than create an environment of weirdness by dipping your pen, or having your pen dipped, in company ink. After the flick has wrapped, hold a circle jerk/daisy-chain/gang-bang with the entire crew if you like. But while you’re in production, keep it all business.

7. Don’t make Jersey Girl. Trust me on this one.

How to read the scopes for color correction, Premiere Pro Tutorial with Larry Jordan

At Binary we do alot of color grading for our projects and clients. Want to be a better colorist? Using the scopes within the color program are very important.  Here is a great tutorial with Larry Jordan.

Sound Design Breakdown for a Scene from Pixar's 'Monsters University'

We do alot of sound design and audio post for film at Binary and wanted to share this short video on how they created the sounds for "Monsters University"

Sound Design for Superman "Man of Steel"

We do sound design at Binary and I am always interested in what goes into the design for the films we watch. Michael Coleman from SoundWorks Collection puts out mini-docs, behind-the -scenes of sound designers at work. "Man of Steel" pushes the envelop!

SoundWorks Collection - The Sound of Man of Steel from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

6 Channel portable audio Recorder, Zoom H6

Zoom H6  is an amazing little package that has alot to offer :

• The world’s first handy recorder with interchangeable mic system
• XY mics capture remarkable stereo depth and clarity
• Mid-side mics provide continuously variable stereo width
• Four XLR/TRS inputs for external mic/line connections
• Up to six channels of simultaneous recording
• High-definition audio of up to 24-bit/96kHz
• 6-in/2-out USB audio interface
• Over 20 hours of operation with 4 AA batteries
• Supports SDXC memory cards up to 128GB
• Optional Shotgun mic and external XLR/TRS inputs available

Vimeo Video School

Vimeo has put together a great group of lessons, tutorials and advice for film makers for all levels.  They are calling it the "Vimeo Video School",  below are some of the category's.  Its a new service they are building with a great community of people adding content.  Check out the link and see if there is something that can add to your film making skills!

• 4Behind The Scenes
• 4Do It Yourself
• 4DSLR
• 4Editing
• 4Gear
• 4Lighting
• 4Shooting
• 4Software
• 4Sound
  
  
  

DuctTake Video Compositing from different Takes!

DuctTake is a system designed to enable practical compositing of multiple takes of a scene into a single video. Current industry solutions are based around object segmentation, a hard problem that requires extensive manual input and cleanup, making compositing an expensive part of the film making process. Our method composites shots together by finding optimal spatiotemporal seams using motion compensated 3D graph cuts through the video volume. We describe in detail the required components, decisions, and new techniques that together make a usable, interactive tool for compositing HD video, paying special attention to running time and performance of each section. We validate our approach by presenting a wide variety of examples and by comparing result quality and creation time to composites made by professional artists using current state-of-the-art tools

Star Trek "Into the Darkness" behind the scenes MUSIC

Here is a short video on behind the scenes of putting together the soundtrack for the new film.

The Golden Rules of Film making by Danny Boyle

Danny Boyle has directed hit films over the years and has shared his basic rules of film making in a article in Movemaker.com   I read this and thought that it is worth a read for up coming film makers.

LINK:  http://www.moviemaker.com/articles-directing/danny-boyle-15-golden-rules-filmmaking/

Installing Magic Lantern 5d Raw software

Here is a site that has the download and install information for using Magic Lantern software to shoot Raw video footage on your 5d Mark lll

Link: http://www.eoshd.com/content/10352/easier-5d-mark-iii-raw-guide-in-4-steps

ReverbNation for networking musicians

With musicians looking for ways to distribute their music, ReverbNation provides alot of options. Aside from providing a networking format, they keep charts on local and national musicians that use the site. To view the top charted indie musicians just type in the city and state you are interested in. They also provide a basic website service to get your band up and running with stats to see how your doing.  We have had many musicians in the studio giving good feedback on their service

check them out: http://www.reverbnation.com/

What should you make Films about.

J.J. Abrams made a name for himself in television, but he’s become been one of the biggest film directors in Hollywood, movies like Mission: Impossible III and the Star Trek reboot. Recently he sat down with BAFTA Guru to talk about his career and his advice for aspiring filmmakers. 

Digital Distribution & Marketing BitTorrent Bundle the FUTURE?

BitTorrent, a tech company whose name is commonly and incorrectly associated with pirating, has been running a legitimate business since 2004 with over 2 million pieces of licensed content in the BitTorrent download manager, which serves more than 170 million people monthly. The company is now beginning to launch a new endeavor to empower those in the content creation business. BitTorrent Bundle provide a way for creators large and small to have all the advantages of the peer-to-peer protocol while also maintaining control over their content by creating ‘gates’ that must be unlocked by the consumer. We had a chance to chat with Matt Mason, VP of Marketing at BitTorrent, who is very impassioned about what this new publishing platform could potentially mean for creators.

NFS: What are the advantages of peer-to-peer file sharing for entertainment distribution?

Matt: Because the BitTorrent ecosystem is completely distributed, peer-to-peer essentially means you can move really large files without any servers because everybody who is sharing the file is part of the processing power of storing and sending that file. The BitTorrent Bundle is the internet’s media format, it’s a format that works the way the internet works, it’s distributed by nature, it’s designed to be shared infinitely and still add value to content creators, and you can put anything inside a Bundle. It could be high-def or 4K, and you could ship that Bundle to an audience of hundreds of millions for a cost of zero dollars. It’s the most efficient way to move large files around on the internet, that’s what the BitTorrent protocol was designed for. That’s what it does. Every day the BitTorrent protocol already moves more data that everything on HTTP combined. It’s a proven technology and we wanted to build something that allows publishers and content creators to take advantage of that.

The reason Bram our founder invented BitTorrent was: he saw the future and the future was that HTTP which was designed for moving hypertext was just not gonna work for moving videos, music, large code updates — the files are getting bigger and BitTorrent was designed for that as a protocol, and now we’re at the stage that so many content creators want to publish with BitTorrent that we felt it was time to build this format that allows them to do it.

For film makers, from an entertainment attorney

Entertainment attorney Mark Litwak shares some advice for indie film makers that I think is worth listening too.

Finalcut X plugin's Pixel Film Studios

User's of FinalCut X should take a look at the plugin's that Pixel Film Studios offer.  I have found that these plugin's are very easy to use with fast results.

Link: http://store.pixelfilmstudios.com/site/index

Get Permission to Use Copyrighted Music

 I often get ask on how to obtain the rights to use other peoples music. I have used copyrighted music for my films.  It is not as hard as one would think.  I was able to use Duran Duran's song "Hunger Like a Wolf" which was their biggest hit for one of my films and Sugar Sugar by the Archies. Going about obtaining the use of someones song, there is a method.  I found this site that lay's it out written by Emerson Maningo.

LINK http://www.audiorecording.me/how-to-get-permission-to-use-copyrighted-music.html

Canon 5D Raw Video with Magic Lantern

Magic Lantern unlocks 14 bit raw images from the Canon 5D.  Pretty impressive and looking forward to getting up to 24fps footage from these folks.  Luke Neuman put together this video showing the difference between H.264 and the DNG Raw image.