Risky Business: Financing Your Feature Film Part 2

Part Two on how to score film financing, with a detailed examination of equity investments, financing from producers and soft money

By Mark Litwak, Esq.

In the last issue, we covered some of the most important ways to finance a feature film. To wrap up, let’s take a look at the remaining options, namely equity investments, financing from producers and soft money. EQUITY INVESTMENTS With equity investments, an investor shares in potential rewards, as well as the risks of failure. If a movie is a hit,... Read more

Is HDR What You Think It Is?

What high-definition-range capture brings to video

Text & Photography By Charles “C.R.” Caillouet

When done professionally, HDR results in a massive increase to brightness. The Dolby Vision™ HDR projection system, for example, provides up to 31 foot-lamberts of luminance, while a typical theater experience will offer half that level of brightness at only 14 foot-lamberts. Here, Final Cut Pro X is used to create an HDR simulation with footage from... Read more

Off The Charts

Shooting charts to communicate with your colorist, plus set-it-and-forget-it won’t cut it for exports

By Michael Guncheon

CHARTS A couple of columns ago, I answered a question for someone who wanted to be properly prepped for an upcoming color-grading project. I mentioned that it was important to make sure the colorist had the right information about the footage. This led to a discussion of formats, camera types, profiles, etc. What I didn’t mention was that you can... Read more

Camera Matters

Effects to quality along the imaging chain

By C.R. Caillouet

Do you need a pro camera to make good pictures, or do you just pay for more features? In my career, I’ve had to work with some of the largest and smallest cameras, and to figure out how to get usable pictures from as many as possible. The results haven’t always been satisfying to me. I haven’t always had the time to figure out the best solutions,... Read more

Risky Business: Financing Your Feature Film Part One

The most important part of any production begins with securing funds to make it all happen

By Mark Litwak, Esq.

Editor’s Note: Veteran entertainment attorney and producer’s rep Mark Litwak, Esq., joins HDVideoPro with a column devoted to all aspects of film financing and distribution. Independent films can be financed in a variety of ways. In addition to self-financing a movie, the most common methods are: 1) loans; 2) borrowing against pre-sales; 3) donations,... Read more

Decoding Deliverables

An alphabet soup of output formats for television and streaming systems

By C.R. Caillouet

Last month, I talked about shooting in 4K or UHD, but does “4 times full HD” make any sense elsewhere in the deliverables chain? I suggested that the UHD shooting decision should be driven by what most viewers actually see, and I noted that it might make sense to put more bits into dynamic range or improved color, instead of more resolution. We... Read more

Rescue Me

juicedLink Little DARling Distributed Audio Recorder, and iZotope RX 5 Audio Editor

By Dan Brockett

JUICEDLINK LITTLE DARLING Q We’re looking at wireless microphone alternatives to shoot weddings and live events. Much of the time we don’t have enough budget available to hire a sound mixer and we end up having to handle audio ourselves. In our experience, quality wireless systems are pretty expensive, about $2,000 to $3,500 for something like... Read more

Converting Watts to Lumens: Watt Is Your Lumen Count?

How to choose the right lights for your next project

By Andy Shipsides

Over the last few years, we’ve seen some major improvements in LED lighting technology in both color quality and output. With more and more companies producing lights, it can be challenging to decide which might fit your needs. At AbelCine, we sell and rent several different lighting technologies and do our best to help clients select the right lights... Read more

Recording With(out) A Sound Mixer

The new Tascam DR-701D timecode-capable recorder, plus budgeting for a sound mixer

By Dan Brockett

TASCAM DR-701D MIXER/RECORDER Q I want to upgrade my multitrack recording capability from my current Zoom H4n to something with more tracks and more sophisticated features. I’ve been considering the new Zoom F8 mixer/recorder. Is there anything else in the $1,000 or lower range that I should consider? We mostly shoot with the Panasonic GH4. Drew... Read more

Shutter At The Thought

A little more on time-lapse, plus pushing in with 4K capture

By Michael Guncheon

TIME-LAPSE AND SHUTTER COUNTS Q I’ve really gotten into shooting time-lapse for some of my projects. While I’ve done so with regular video cameras, I’ve also been shooting more and more of it on SLRs. I like how small they are, and I don’t have to work as hard on rigging them and supplying them with power. I’ll admit it, I can be a bit... Read more

The New Production

Post should no longer be the last thing on your list

By Ian Blair

For more than 100 years, filmmakers have followed the same three signs on the road to a completed project: You start at preproduction, move on to production and finally end up at postproduction. It’s a simple set of instructions and a timeline that made perfect sense, whether you were making a big-budget studio movie or a small documentary. But... Read more

4K? Maybe So, Maybe Not.

A variety of considerations factor into whether to shoot your next project in UltraHD or 4K

By C.R. Caillouet

These frames illustrate different ways of using UHD/4K originals in production: the “scaled” one retains the framing of the original for converting an entire show to alternate products (above); the “cropped ” one retains the resolution of the original static UHD shot for use in a lower-resolution product (top). Unless you’ve been in a... Read more