Apple Final Cut

Sam Leung. Apple’s production marketing manager for professional applications for Asia-Pacific, gave an insightful look into the future of film production on a Mac with the all-new Final Cut Studio. Leung demonstrated new features and improvements in Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color and Compressor.

The new Final Cut Studio features tighter integration between applications and has more than 100 new features which advance the art and technology of filmmaking with innovations that include significant updates to Apple ProRes codec family to support virtually any workflow so editors can produce the highest quality films and videos, even in locations with low bandwidths. The session was held at Apple’s premises in Singapore.

BMD Red Night

Visitors to the BMD Red Night on 14 August 2009 at Blackmagic Design (BMD) Singapore discovered the key to a smooth and successful RED project was correct use of files created when shooting with the RED camera.

Too many people spend hours or days transcoding and rendering R3D files (the RED format) to other formats.

In the Blackmagic Design RED workflow, a special RED decode box called a DPl in da Vinci Resolve reads the raw RED files and debayers (uncompresses) it in real time as you grade. This procedure cuts down waiting time for RED data to be processed or rendered before grading. Once the RED footage has been graded in real time, it can be outputted to the required formats for online, VFX and finishing including HD, SD or data.

The Art of Rock Philippines based Post Production house Road Runner Network staged an alternative rock concert titled “Art of Rock” last July 10 at the Visual Light Studios in Makati City. There were six visual showcases that were revealed during selected songs. These visual interpretations were conceptualized by known agency art directors with the collaboration of RoadRunner’s VFX artists. Lowe Lintas art director Aidon Panlaqui was behind the showcase of Up Dharma Down’s Every First Second. Redg Chavez & Van Emnacen of Blue Bottle took inspiration from Kelevra’s song, Utopia. Love Is Your Bullet was given a visual interpretation by Tony Sarmiento & Windel Aboy of Ace Saatchi & Saatchi. Other visual showcases were Turn My Safety Off by DDB’s Teeny Gonzales, Russ Molina and Ian Sta. Maria and Dahilan by Ogilvy & Mather’s James Bernardo & Marvin Perez created the visual showcase. One of the highlights of the event was a full 3D dance animation of Steve Vesagas. This was done through RoadRunner’s 3D scanning and motion capture technology.