Tag Archives: Phantom

A Bit of Fun with Truffles

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Every now and then I get to really have fun on a shoot.

Take a look at the finished video on Vimeo

Take a look at the finished video on Vimeo

In late March, with NAB looming and the James Beard Awards coming to Chicago for the first time, my crew and I descended into a cramped warehouse space on the near north side that is home to  Rodrick Markus‘ bastion of unquestionably rare and yet edible ingredients known as RareTeaCellar.

Sourcing those teas, herbs and exotic ingredients from around the world RareTeaCellar has become the go to source for Chef’s in the midwest and around the world when looking for exotic items to go on their plates.

Tough work, but someone has to set up the shot and that requires every truffle be inspected prior to going on set.

Tough work, but someone has to set up the shot and that requires every truffle be inspected prior to going on set       Photo: Adam Seger

Yet Rodrick does not stop there, he regularly collaborates with Chef’s and Mixologists and for our shoot, we would working with Adam Seger to capture some of the essence of their  Truffe Amere, the worlds first botanical truffle bitters.  We went to work, first selecting the best looking of the fungi, picking through a couple of kilo’s of Black Winter Perigord Truffles just to find the 800-900 grams of truffles (about a pound) we used for the for pouring down a luge into the waiting lens of a Phantom Flex4K so we could capture the truffles in slo-motion at the highest resolution possible.

Paul DeMarte and I discussing how our test looks onscreen

Paul DeMarte and I discussing how our test looks onscreen  Photo: Adam Seger.

An Intel camera crew captured the behind the scenes action that day then interviewed me after the shoot on how my use of Intel’s Thunderbolt technology defines my process and my workflow.

My thanks for the support on this project go out to
Bob Monaghan at GlueTools, Toni Lucatorto at Vision Research, Rob Vose at Zacuto, Paul DeMarte on Camera and Thomas and Joshua from Intel for their assistance and support.

Yet I am left wondering when the next time I will be able to muster up craft service that was comprised of hand sliced Iberico “pata negra”  ham and truffled wonton soup to feed my crew on a shoot.

New for NAB 2014 LaCie’s Little Big Disc 2

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So it has been awhile since I posted here, been busy working on 3 projects, one of which included one of the new “social media clauses” so it has kept me rather limited.I will post my thoughts on some of the new gear that is already shipping prior to NAB so that people can check them out at the show.

First up, LaCie’s Little Big Disc 2

I use storage from a number of manufacturers and never have I ever opened a hard drive box and recieved this level of performance with the ease and simplicity of the LBD2. LaCie has delivered the fastest single device I have ever used with my laptop.  Equipped with Intel’s Thunderbolt 2 Technology, this 1TB  sleek black box, elegantly styled and compact for it’s 1.4 pound weight, offers users the single most powerful drive I have ever used.

The Thunderbolt 2 interface in conjunction with the raided dual SSD drives inside offer users up to an astonishing 1.3 Gigabytes of data throughput per second, easily making LaCie’s LBD2 the fastest single drive publicly available. While listed price at around $1300 USD for a 1 TB volume might be cringeworthy to some, when you have the need for speed this is the drive to have.

This shows the raw speed of LaCie's Little Big Disk 2, here showing performance  over 1 GB per second when paired  with a 2nd Gen Retina MacBook Pro with Intel's Thunderbolt 2 technology.

This shows the raw speed of LaCie’s Little Big Disk 2, here showing performance  over 1 GB per second when paired  with a 2nd Gen Retina MacBook Pro with Intel’s Thunderbolt 2 technology.

The cost vs. performance is nothing short of astronomical, because we are talking about moving Gigabytes per second with this beast. That performance, equal if not better at times than the internal flash memory found in Apple’s New Mac Pro, and is unheard of outside of a incredibly small number of Post facilities or in the massive server farms that allow ITunes, Amazon and Google to spit out information to you in realtime on the web.

However for desktop users, this is a first, when built my first 1GBps array for a client in 2007, at that time it required 2 computers just to control the 72 spinning disks and cost nearly $500,000 in time and materials when finished.

I can now walk into a store and buy nearly the same throughput off the shelf and have ready to work on in mere minutes after I am out the door.

LaCie’s Little Big Disk 2 has become my main carry around work volume, I recently used it during an extended trip, where it allowed me to cut 4K ProRes 4444 content on my laptop, well away from my office, without having to work with the associated hassles of the offline / online workflow that location editing of that much content would normally require.

There is plenty more to come. Stay Tuned.

 

Free Webinar – Thunderbolt, Changing the future of Production and Post, April 16th at Moviola.com

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Tuesday April 16th from 11:30am – 1pm PST http://bit.ly/14tmn4x<a

Please join world renown Data Manager and Workflow Specialist, Gary Adcock, Host Michael Horton, in association with Moviola :

Thunderbolt, Changing the future of Production and Post
A 90 minute discussion on how Intel’s Thunderbolt Technology is changing the future of moving and handling data both onset and in post.

In a medium where moving massive amounts of data is an everyday occurrence, Intel’s Thunderbolt technology stands to change how data is handled. Utilizing Thunderbolt in your workflow means meeting or exceeding data transfer speeds on portable computers that rival the fastest desktop systems.

Gary will be highlighting many of the tools and techniques for proper data handling and how the fast evolving Thunderbolt landscape is smashing most of preconceived ideas people have about this groundbreaking technology and what it means for your current and future usage, whether you are on location or alone in your studio.

Register here for the Free Webinar:
http://moviola.com/webinars/thunderbolt-changing-the-future-of-production-and-post/#.UWrlVb9tAn0

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NAB Monday, PhantomFlex4K, BMCC4k, SonyDLSR4k, RED Element, Avid MC7

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I am thinking the Show has not even started yet and I am exhausted from the previews.

AbelCine and Vision Research announce PhantomFlex4K, http://blog.abelcine.com/2013/04/07/nab-2013-first-look-at-the-phantom-flex4k/ but the best part is Vision Research is showing footage here https://vimeo.com/63490371

BlackmagicDesign Announces 4K for $4k version of BMCC camera, 1080 Version for less than $1000, Details to come on their website http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccinemacamera/

Sony snuck a couple of camera updated one a 4K Sensor update to their DSLR Line, and a new lower profile 2K prosumer camera. Details to come.

Element Technica has been acquired by RED Digital Cinema http://elementtechnica.mybigcommerce.com, I am thinking this is one of the best announcements of the NABShow so far.

Lastly Avid announces Media Composer 7, it seems that some native codecs are supported, specifically the just released Sony XVAC codec for the F5 and F55 cameras.