Does Kickstarter work for funding a Independent film?

 Check out the stats put out by Kickstarter.  Statistics (April 28, 2009 — January 1, 2013)

1. Total pledged: $102.7 million 

1. Total collected: $85.7 million
2. Total backers: 891,979 
3. Funded projects: 8,567

In the past three years, nearly 900,000 people have pledged their support to an independent filmmaker on Kickstarter, pledging more than $100 million to features, documentaries, shorts, webseries, and other film and video projects. Nearly $60 million has been pledged in the past 12 months alone. Not Bad!

Binary Recording Studio A Video / Audio Production Company in Bellingham Wa.

Tips for Submitting to Film Festivals

I have submitted, been accepted and rejected to film festivals.   Luckily I have had the honor to be accepted to many great ones with my films over the years.

One thing about film festivals, they give you a change to see how your film stands next to other independent films and the opportunity to screen it to other film makers ( they are the only ones that go to these screenings).

 I have had one of my films picked up by a distribution company out of all the films I have screened at film festivals.  So there can be a rainbow at the end of the trail.

There are a few thing you can do to get your film ready for submitting.  I read this blog the other day and would like to share it with you.  Link below.

http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/film-festival-tips/

Binary Recording Studio a Video / Audio Production Company in Bellingham Wa.

Worlds first 24-bit 96k Apple IOS Audio Recorder

The new microphone has a high-quality on-board A/D converter, and attaches to the data connection port on the bottom of the iPhone or IPad.  It works with RØDE’s own recording app to achieve the highest-fidelity recordings possible. Here is the video introduction from RØDE:  I could see some uses for this at the price they are selling it at.  It would be great for interviews etc.....


Binary Recording Studio is a Audio / Video Production Company in Bellingham Wa.

A portable camera Jib crane, Aviator Travel Jib

 A  friend who enjoys mt. biking and filming the sport bought one of these Jib's and uses it for filming out on the trails. It fits in his backpack which is pretty amazing. Packing up nicely into 5 pounds and 27″ This could be a perfect jib for those working with DSLRs, a 10 pound capacity will hold a rather wide range of cameras. 

Binary Recording Studio a Video / Audio Production Company in Bellingham WA.

When to use a Boom shotgun microphone for video production.

The need for a shotgun microphone arises when you want to remotely capture a sound that originates from a short distance away. They provide a narrower angle of acceptance that isolates the subject's sound from unwanted "off-axis" ambient sound. Example: The noise from a  computer that is running in the room where the interview is going on, the shotgun mic. will give you better isolation.

The way these microphones capture sound from a distance is similar to holding a paper towel tube up to your ear. The longer the tube, the more focused the sound will be.

A  misconception about shotgun microphones is that they can pick-up sounds across long distances. If you're recording a person who is speaking, you wouldn't want your shotgun to be more than five or six feet away from them. The closer the subject is to the microphone, the better it will sound, which is why boom poles are commonly used. 

When we are on a shoot we will get the shotgun mic as close as possible. Just check with your camera DP person to make sure the mic. is not in the frame. 

On an outdoor shoot, the wind sock or blimp is a must for the shotgun mic. when wind is a  issues. It often works better then a Lavaliere mic. with a wind screen.

Binary Recording Studio Audio / Video Production Company in Bellingham Wa.

Magic Lantern free firmware for your Canon Camera.

One of the camera’s we use at the studio for production is the Canon 5D mark ll.

Being aware of the benefits that Magic Lantern firmware offers I had not spent anytime with the firmware.  A friend who owns a Canon 7D was going to do a shot where he was going to attach a Sennheiser MKE400 Shotgun Mic for DSLR to his camera.  This was a good change to use the Magic Lantern firmware for better audio sound and control. Live audio monitoring, full manual audio controls, choose between internal and external microphones are a few of the thing they can provide in their free firmware.  check them out,  it could improve your filming experience!

Binary Recording Studio is a Video / Audio Production Company in Bellingham Wa.

Better Video encoding H.264 to HEVC H.265

The function that makes this sort of thing possible is basically smarter compression, which produces media with a smaller storage footprint at a higher quality.  This means comparatively heavier processing intensiveness to decode in real time. Basically you sacrifice bits for harder thinking in order to translate the more complex compression techniques. One of the reasons we switched to using Adobe Premier at the studio, as our main video editing software is how it natively works with files like this. 
We have included a short video that shows the improvement of the image with this HEVC H.265 format.

Binary Recording Studio a Video / Audio Production Company in Bellingham Wa.