CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: Flashpoint, The Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, has purchased two TRUE Systems P-SOLO single-channel microphone/instrument preamplifiers and installed them in two sound-for-film suites in its new 32,000 square-feet production/post complex.

Click to read press below:

Trans Audio Elite

AudioCourses.com

MixOnline

ProSoundNews

Members of The Old Town School Of Folk Music record at Flashpoint as part of the Recording Arts Program.

AT 4050 on Vocals and Royer 121 on Banjo:

M200 on Acoustic Bass:

Drums:

421 and 451 on Sax:

Gefell M930’s on Acoustic:

Nick Bognar’s MySpace page

Amanda Sena records at FPA as part of the Recording II course. 

Amanda on acoustic guitar & vocals:

Brian on percussion:

Amanda Sena’s Website

When I was in college, Security was the name of the most popular band at school, and thinking of them was the only time I ever thought about security on campus. But now I am on the other side of the classroom and it seems every couple of months there is a shooting on a college campus. Last week at Northern Illinois University, just 65 miles west of Chicago, there was a shooting, killing five and injuring more.

Security on campus means something very different to me now.

Yesterday was parents’ day at Flashpoint and I spent time telling the parents of film students that one of the things we do is create a safe environment for their children to work in. I was speaking about emotional safety, the safety to be vulnerable and explore, but I could have just as easily been talking about their physical safety.

I don’t have anything new to add to the violence on campus discussion. Yes, it’s sad. Yes, it must stop. Yes, the emotional well-being of students must be looked after and help given when and where needed. All of the same things I wrote about last spring after the events at Virginia Tech.

Today, I just wanted to take a moment and reflect on the events at a college just down the road from mine.

PeterH

This is a picture of the Red Camera all stripped down. Not all that impressive looking, but it is a piece of technology which is going to change the film production process.

For eight days beginning Jan. 30 and ending Feb. 8 Flashpoint Academy produced The Intruder, a short Twilight Zone-esque film, using the Red Camera. It was the first time the camera had gone out as a rental in Chicago and it was yet another way Flashpoint is at the “bleeding edge” of both education and technology.

Since I am not the most technical person I’ll give you the lay version. The Red Camera, captures a digital image at 4K resolution. That’s more than double the image quality than the Super Bowl broadcast, while film itself is about 12K resolution. To my eyes you couldn’t tell the difference between the Red images and 35mm film.

The camera will accept any 16mm or 35mm lenses with a PL mount. You can record to a 320 gb hard drive, but we chose to record to 8gb compact flash cards. Those flash cards would hold four minutes of “film.” When filled they would be transferred to a computer and reformatted and reused. In short it was not much different from using your digital still camera except we were capturing 24 frames per second. As a point off comparison- the Panasonic HVX200 P2 camera shoots 16gb cards which can hold 42 minutes of film.

The Red Camera comes at a base price of $17,5oo and with all the accessories you will probably spend $60,000 to have a decked out camera. That’s not a lot of money if you shoot a lot of film. And because of of the huge, file storage issues, you will probably need another $30,000 of computer technology and storage space. Cheap if you are making lots of film or working on a feature.

Click here to check out the camera for yourself.   

Here is a picture of it all tricked out.

PeterH

Eli’s Cheesecake supports Flashpoint Academy with tour on Valentine’s Day…

Click to read Eli’s President Marc Schulman’s blog entry.

The Intruder wraps today with some pickups and the remainder of the visual effects shots needed for the end of the film. The crew, whose job is strictly production, are already thinking ahead to the next location. But for those of us who are firmly grounded in post, our job is just beginning.

FP Rec Arts students were fortunate enough to have several conversations earlier in the week with Director Mikael Kreuzriegler about ideas for sound design. We began first with the words “ethereal” and “eerie,” and perhaps as a layer or texture beneath the delicacy “the feeling that something is off.” We talked about styles of music and how much of it will work its way into the film. And because there is so little dialogue, the use of up-close “studio, not soundstage,” ADR may actually help to create a slightly unusual sensation. Lastly, Mikael explained that he usually hears the entire soundtrack in his head while shooting, but this film is different.

For sound designers, that’s code for “freedom.” So, we left the set Wednesday and had a great brainstorming session in the morning followed by an afternoon of effects gathering and research. Yesterday, we started dropping some cut effects on the timeline of a short assembly and recorded Foley to try to get a feel for the entry and living room spaces. Our goals were not too ambitious, just sketching a few ideas to play for Mikael. Today, we’ll fine-tune footsteps, clothing moves, and some of the phone and record player gags in the script.

In the end, it’s entirely possible that some or all of this work will not remain, but Rec Arts students are engaging in the part of the postproduction process that cannot be learned in books, that cannot be absorbed through lecture, rather, is only discovered experientially with a lot of exploration. The Intruder’s soundtrack will be better because of it, and along the way, young Flashpoint sound designers will to.

There is an interesting interview in today’s Wall Street Journal with Reed Hastings the CEO of Netflix. Netflix is partnering with a Korean company to create a (TV) set top box which will allow users to stream films from the internet directly to their TV. (It’s about time, if I have to go to my mail box one more time to get a movie, my head will explode!)

When asked if he was worried that people would be willing to pile yet another box under their televisions (I have three, plus a small stereo nestled under and around my TV) he replied, “No, that’s not my concern, and the reason is if you’ve got compelling content, people will hook up another box.” Ah- the compelling content argument always one of my favorites, but he’s right good content (almost) always wins.

So the question is begged, why not a Netflix set top box? “We looked at that and realized that customers also want this functionality that is embedded in other devices, like a game console, and that we should work purely on just being an incredible service.” How refreshing someone wants to focus on delivering a much wanted product with incredible service. They aren’t interested in doing everything.

Hastings is convinced Internet television is the future and he knows it will take a while getting there. “I think there’s a huge category of people who will watch movies on laptops, and remember it’s not the laptop of today. Think of the laptop in five years. People will continue to watch movies on TV no doubt about it. But laptop screens are improving and young people are living on laptops.”

Perhaps a more interesting thing to me about Reed Hastings is his passion for school reform. After amassing his first fortune he began trying to “figure out why our education is lagging when our technology is increasing at great rates and there’s great innovation in so many other areas-health care, biotech, information technology, movie-making. Why not education?”

This positive note is a good place to end. I think what we are doing at Flashpoint Academy is changing traditional education and looking to the future and new technology and finding a way to integrate them. And speaking of the future of education and movie-making technology, the next post will be about the Red One Camera- which we just used over the eight days of production of the Flashpoint Academy film, The Intruder.

PeterH