EditMentor.com - Footage

Edit Mentor is selling raw footage from various short films and commercials for student editors to practice with. 

They offer a few freebies of interest to editors. 

Google Creative Lab's Creative Internet

Google Creative Lab's look at 106 creative things on the Internet.  Video is used in many of these ideas. 

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer

A brilliant satire on the formula used in movie trailers (and Hollywood story structure).

Robert Rodriguez shoots music video with DLSR

Zacuto has photos of Robert Rodriguez shooting a music video with a Canon 7D digital still camera in HD mode.

Green Screen Practice Footage - Free

Hollywood Camera Work has generously made available some free green screen footage and tracking plates that students can use to practice matchmoving, tracking, keying and compositing. The footage supports their DVD course Visual FX for Directors.

They allow you to download clips to practice:

• Green Screen Plates
• Tracking Plates
• Matchmoving Supplies
• Scripts / Blocking Diagrams
• Blocking Template
• Virtual Dolly / Crane For Maya

YOU MAY: Use the clips to make instructional videos or teach a class, as long as you mention us. You may even include a few original clips with our permission.

Plug-ins will save you - Shooting with a still camera

Stu Maschwitz on his blog Prolost has been examining the newest generation of digital 35 mm still cameras and their application for motion picture photography. Several models now offer high definition video recording. At NAB he showed a short film he shot to test what the camera is capable of. His little experiment is inspired by the subway genre of test films. As such it is titled, Chapter 13 After the subway. It is hard to tell what the original footage looked like as he used a number of color correction techniques to improve the image.


Chapter 12: After the Subway from Stu Maschwitz on Vimeo.

BuZZdex - Index of Tutorials & Articles

Check out the Digital Production BuZZdex. You can search for articles and tutorials available on the web. You can search by category, application or company.

There are three ways to browse.
by application to get a full list of all articles or tutorials for an application. This listing is most useful when you want to see the full scope of what's available for an application.

by category to list all the categories that have Articles or Tutorials for an application.

by Company to find articles and tutorials for, say, all of Apple's products.

You can search forums and other resources. Resources are those things that we use while getting work done. Many of the resources are free, but links to commercial resources are also included.

Minority Report - Sixth Sense Device

The video presentation below is a look into the future. It shows a prototype of a Minority Report inspired device developed at MIT. The presentation comes from a recent TED conference.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. It now has an even broader scope.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

The Ted.com website makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from the archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.

IMDB Policy Change

IMDB.com, The Internet Movie Database, is an important resume link for people breaking into the film industry. IMDB used to have a policy that only films shown in select film festivals or distributed through a studio or network could be listed. They have just changed their policy in a way that will benefit new filmmakers.

GOT IMDb? YOUR NEXT SUBMISSION COULD PRE-QUALIFY YOU.
Does your film have a Title Page on IMDb yet? If not, maybe it should. IMDb wants to help you publicize and promote your movie as soon as its ready for the world, not just after you've won recognition for it. Next time you submit to a Withoutabox Partner Festival, you will be invited by email to create a Title Page on IMDb, the most recognized and trafficked movie site in the world. Submit to a festival by year's end to get in line for your Title Page. Certain submissions are not eligible, but the great majority are. Invitations are sent once the festival receives your submission. In fact, thousands have been sent just in the last couple weeks!

Learn more about this opportunity here.

Digital Still Cameras for Video

Digital still cameras have had a video feature for a number of years. Nikon's D90 Digital SLR offers 720p HD resolution. Check out this remarkable example shot on a subway. The camera allows for great shallow depth of field and the use of 35mm lenses. It costs $1300. You can read this review with some test footage. It will be interesting to see how this this converegnce of camera features develops. Perhaps DSLRs in the future will be used for for both video and still work.

Apple's Student Gallery

"You create it. You post it. You promote it."
Apple has a "digital media gallery" on their website "where students control the content."

Reflectmedia Chroma Key

Reflectmedia, a company that offers chroma key solutions has a web page on the use of their product in high schools.