NZ on Screen: An Archive of Aotearoa New Zealand Screen Culture
"In 2007 NZ On Air initiated the NZ On Screen project as an integral part of its digital strategy. Since 1989 NZ On Air has funded over 15,000 hours of local television production. Much of this content, as well as thousands more hours supported by broadcasters, film investors and other funding sources, is not easily accessible to the public.
NZ On Screen is unlocking the treasure chest, providing access to the wealth of television, film, music video and new media produced in NZ, along with knowledgeable background information."
(New Zealand on Screen)
Fig.1 Murphy, G. (1981). Goodbye Pork Pie. Aotearoa New Zealand, NZ Film.
Fig.2 Tamahori, L. (1994). Once Were Warriors. Aotearoa New Zealand, New Zealand Film Commission
Fig.3 Ballantyne, A. (2009). The Strength of Water. Aotearoa New Zealand, NZ Film.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Screen Hub NZ
"Screen Hub is the daily email News and Jobs service for people working in the New Zealand film and television industries."
(Screen Hub, New Zealand)
[Note that this is a paid subscription service.]
Fig.1 Katie Wolfe, Aotearoa New Zealand 'This is Her', short film (starring Mia Blake).
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Avatar: selective rather than deep focus stereoscopic cinematography
James Cameron: "I think it's a myth that you want deep focus in 3-D shots. I find the opposite is true. Selective focus, created by working at low f-stops with longer lenses, evolved as a cinematic technique to direct the audience's attention to the character of greatest narrative importance at a given moment. With 3-D, the director needs to lead the audience's eye, not let it roam around the screen to areas which are not converged. So all the usual cinematic techniques of selective focus, separation lighting, composition, etc., that one would use in a 2-D film to direct the eye to the subject of interest, still apply, and are perhaps even more important. We all see the world in 3-D. The difference between really being witness to an event vs. seeing it as a stereo image is that when you're really there, your eye can adjust its convergence as it roves over subjects at different distances. Convergence is the natural toe-in that the eye does to align the left and right eye images of objects at specific planes of depth. In a filmed image, the convergence was baked in at the moment of photography, so you can't adjust it. In order to cut naturally and rapidly from one subject to another, it's necessary for the filmmaker (actually his/her camera team) to put the convergence at the place in the shot where the audience is most likely to look. This sounds complicated but in fact we do it all the time, in every shot, and have since the beginning of cinema. It's called focus. We focus where we think people are most likely to look. So I've found that just slaving the convergence function to the focus works exceedingly well, and makes good stereo a no-brainer on the set."
(David S. Cohen, 10 April 2008, Variety Magazine)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Choose A Different Ending: interactive advertising
"Nottingham based filmmaker Simon Ellis has been making quality short films for ages now. His latest short 'Soft' won a TON of awards including being nominated for a BAFTA.
He's recently finished directing a commercial for a big anti knife campaign that will be running both online and on TV. The online commercial is different in that it's interactive, allowing the viewer to decide the destiny of the main character.
The key to this is it puts you slap bang in the centre of a world and you decide what choices the main character makes. Through great acting and camera-work, the result is something very effective. The point is to show you the consequences of the multitude of different choices when it comes to knife crime."
(BritFilms TV, 2009)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
professional quality video capture using pro portable digital disk recorder
"Ki Pro provides a new way of connecting production and post with its extensive analogue and digital connectivity; virtually any video and audio source can be fed into Ki Pro to record pristine 10-bit ProRes media that is then immediately available to edit within Apple's Final Cut Studio. Ki Pro will allow users to record hours of pristine ProRes media to a removable storage module with built-in FireWire 800, or to 34mm ExpressCard Flash, for immediate editing and file access. The unit can connect to any digital camera via SDI or HDMI, or any analogue camera with multiple input options."
(AJA Video, 20 April 2009)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
