modifoo

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or get my latest posts directly in your mailbox. Thanks for coming to the Foo!

I just saw a very touching film, Waitress. Nicely balanced, well acted and executed. A real treat. Reading a bit more about the film, I was saddened to learn that its highly talented director/actress/writer was murdered. Her husband has set up a foundation in her name, aiming to help female filmmakers achieve their goals.

Adrienne’s passion in life was to make movies. She lived for her art; she never compromised her integrity or commitment to her vision. She always strived to help women obtain every opportunity possible to create their mark in film.

It is in the spirit of her passion and vision that The Adrienne Shelly Foundation has been established.

So, if you have a few PayPal dollars to spare, please do give them to the Adrienne Shelly Foundation.

One thing I do and will miss when editing video/digital film are those flash frames. The few frames that are exposed when the camera gets up to speed, and when it stops again, the gate is checked, the mag is changed, the film is laced.

As a side line, we do conversions of 8mm films and videos. The other day I transferred a roll that consisted almost entirely of flash frames. Add some Mussorgsky to it (via Q-Music) and we have my very first YouTube upload:

And if you need that video in full quality, drop me a line…

Another thing of the past are burned frames - sometimes the film would get stuck in the projector, and the projector´s lamp being quite strong, would burn the film. Here are two examples from the past:

Found a great paper by Canon on lens theory, which also explains the common terminology used in lens construction. The paper also includes an extensive collection of graphs showing the optical resolution of all Canon lenses, both wide open and at F8.

Great resource if you have a Canon stills camera, or a Red One with the very soon forthcoming Birger mount (video link).

Disappointment, defeat and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.

From Paulo Coelho’s great book, Brida. If you want to hang it on your wall, here’s a PDF version.

Busy and exciting times here, thus only irregular updates.

At times you find yourself in a situation where you need to know where the sun will be at a given time. It might be that you need to film a sunrise, simply to know when the light starts in an unknown location, or to calculate shadows.

On a Mac or Windows machine, there is a $87 program called SunPath, which holds information for about 40.000 locations world wide. If you have an internet connection, you can also go to Sunposition.info, which will draw a nice map of the sun’s position,  or use the Sun tools on timeanddate.com, which offers a variety of tools:

• Astronomical Twilight Starts/Ends
• Nautical Twilight Starts/Ends
• Civil Twilight Starts/Ends
• Sunrise and Sunset
• Sunrise and Sunset Azimuth
• Length of day
• Solar noon at time/altitude/distance

Gems from the Web: