Ever wondered why you feel tired in the afternoon? Or why, despite the billions of dollars being poured into Cancer research for decades, there is still no cure? Does our lifestyle impact global warming, even right down to what we eat? These are some of the many questions that are posed as part of the foundations for Directors James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch’s documentary exposé: Food Matters.

James and Laurentine have interviewed the world’s foremost experts on Nutrition and some of the revelations regarding the Food and Pharmaceutical industries are nothing short of alarming.

In what will prove to be the most contentious issue raised, the film offers vivid and graphic proof of non-drug Cancer treatments that not only prevent, but arrest and reverse the chronic disease.

The film features music by John Butler Trio. 

Food Matters will be released worldwide online via cutting-edge streaming video technology on the 30th May at www.foodmatters.tv. Visit the site for more information on the film’s important message, and to make your friends aware that Food Matters.

Producer / Directors: James Colquhoun and Lauretine ten Bosch
Producer / Editor: Enzo Tedeschi 

All three half-hour episodes of the Documentary and Deleted Scenes are now viewable at www.gabrielmovie.com, which is happy news for those of us in Australia who missed out on the “Behind The Madness” second disc in the retail DVD. Episode 1: Genesis, looks at pre-production and casting: 

Look for Part 2: Battlefront and Part 3: Evolution at www.gabrielmovie.com or on YouTube. 

After the usual onslaught of Tropfest entries, Christmas festivities and back to work grumbles, it’s nice to have another little short holiday so soon after coming back. So very Australian.

And with the way 2008 is shaping up around this neck of the woods, every little break helps!

 So from Outpost / Blog, I hope you have a great and truly Aussie Australia Day. Throw some prawns, lamb, snags, or other meat of choice onto a nice hot barbie and chase it down with some quality Aussie brew in the sunshine.

 It doesn’t get any better! 
]]> http://www.outpostpps.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=51 http://www.outpostpps.com/blog/?p=50 http://www.outpostpps.com/blog/?p=50#comments Sat, 26 Jan 2008 04:33:02 +0000 Enzo http://www.outpostpps.com/blog/?p=50 It’s been a while coming - too busy to really concentrate on a proper update, I guess - but here it is. Live from today with heaps of videos: Teasers and Trailers of some of our best and most interesting work, and in some cases the whole shebang.

http://www.outpostpps.com/
]]> http://www.outpostpps.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=50 http://www.outpostpps.com/blog/?p=49 http://www.outpostpps.com/blog/?p=49#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:48:50 +0000 Enzo http://www.outpostpps.com/blog/?p=49  

Outpost has just completed Post-Prodction on the feature-length documentary “Gabriel: Behind The Madness”, a behind-the-scenes look at the exhausting and gruelling 3-year journey of making the Australian Independent Feature Film “Gabriel”.

This video is a selection of goofs and outtakes from the interviews with key cast and crew at the end of a tough 9 week shoot. On a miniscule budget and with time and fate against them every step of the way, this passionate team of  filmmakers overcame the odds to create a very different film by Australian standards - so different that Sony acquired the film for distribution upon seeing an unfinished version.

Containing never-before seen On-Set footage, auditions and interviews with Director Shane Abbess and Co-Writer Matt Hylton Todd along with key cast and crew, plus an insight into the Special Visual Effects, “Gabriel: Behind The Madness” is due for release with the “Gabriel” DVD in 2008.

Valentino del Toro’s ‘Love Always xx’ has made the official selections for the inaugural Kinofest in Bucharest, Romania, and a little closer to home at The Home Brewed Film Festival in Sydney, Melbourne and Wollongong.The festivals will feature the film during October.Visit the websites (see links above) for screening info, and with past Home Brewed Alumni like Pete Templeman (Splintered), the selection of shorts and features is sure to produce some absolute gold.For more info on Love Always xx (as always) go to www.lovealwaysxx.com.

OK people - here it is. The official teaser trailer for Carlo Ledesma’s ‘The Last One’.

Featuring Shing Fun Cheung’s gorgeous photography and Sasha Zastavnikovic’s awesome sound design, the teaser trailer can also be seen at www.allorangefilms.com in versions for YouTube (read: for wimps), Standard Def and in all it’s 720p Hi-Def Glory, along with info on the film, cast and crew, and plenty of production stills and storyboards.

The film is scheduled to be completed by December 2007.

The edit for “The Last One” is cranking along at breakneck speed at the moment, and both Carlo and I are really excited with what we are seeing when we look at the screen. After many ridiculously late nights, pizzas and beers at Outpost, the cut has blown out somewhat in duration in comparison to what we were expecting from Carlo’s 22 page screenplay, but there is little time to get bored during the 35-minute epic that this short film has become.

The official teaser trailer is in the works, and is in the Grading and Sound Design stages as I write this, so if all goes according to plan, the trailer will be posted here by late next week - in all it’s 720p Hi-Def glory!

Watch this space…

I’m all googled out from having to try and find a solution for this one, and in the absence of anything resembling a definitive answer, I am posting my findings here for the good of all mankind (well, for those of us that don’t work in NTSC at least…)

And a very big shout-out has to go to Luke Caldwell of Digital Production Factory, who put me on the right track for this in the first place, and is always happy to talk some shop

And also to Carlo Ledesma and the crew of “The Last One”, whose project has been the catalyst for this expedition into Varicam land.

The Varicam is a very sexy camera, but unfortunately if you want to use it with FCP in the 720p25 format off tape, it doesn’t play so nice. Here’s why:

Varicam records 60 frames per second (59.94 in dropframe). Always. It achieves variable frame-rates between 4 and 60fps by ‘flagging’ frames for playback. For example, in the case of 720p25, 25 flagged frames in every 60. If you step through the 60 frames, you’ll see that 25 out of the 60 frames are actually moving frames. Everything that isn’t flagged is a redundant frame (actually a duplicate of the most recent flagged frame). In the case of 24p (23.97fps) or 30p (29.97fps) these redundant frames can be removed during capture (also known as a pulldown).

The image shows the duplicate frames in the source footage before pulldown:

And after:

In the case of 25p, this is only achievable in FCP6 via P2 cards, or a very specific combination of camera (HDX900) and deck (1400A). If you shoot to tape from the HDC27 Varicam, you’re ‘officially’ out of luck.

The Final Cut Studio bundle includes a DVCProHD frame rate converter designed to remove these redundant frames after capture, providing you capture at the full 60 frames per second, and have the deck set to output the frame flags. The downside is that 60fps chews up a lot more space than any other frame rate (double that of it’s closest counterpart, 30fps). If you have the space, though, the FRC allows you to create 23.97, 29.97 or 59.94fps files from your 59.94/60fps source files. Again, sadly, 25fps is not a supported feature here.

Conventional wisdom says that the use of a Kona or BMD card is required for 25p, as they have settings that enable the pulldown during the capture process. A good solution, but going through HD-SDI involves a re-encoding of the video, even if you capture at DVCProHD 720p60. It would be nice to be able to utilise the simplicity of a firewire setup, and keep all the Varicam footage in it’s native codec.

Fortunately, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

By capturing 720p60 via firewire – you have ALL the information. By using the DVCProHD frame rate converter tool in FCP (it’s not installed by default in v5.1, but can be found on the install disk under ‘Extras’, and available from the ‘Tools’ Menu), we can create a pulldown to 24fps.

This takes the 25 flagged frames (when set to “remove duplicate frames”), discards the redundant flagged frames, and plays back what’s left at 24fps. We’re very close, but still a frame off the pace. At this stage I compared my 24fps clip with the original, and the 24fps clip lagged behind, predictably slipping a frame each second.

At this point, we open the new 24fps quicktime movie (with NO redundant frames left in it) in Cinema Tools and conform it to 25fps. This speeds it back up by 1 frame a second, creating a new reference file (or new media if you prefer) that plays very smoothly and also keeps up with the original file! Voila, we have just created a 720p25 clip. Adjust your sequence settings accordingly and you’re cooking.

For off-speed material, again, conventional wisdom indicates that a frame rate converter box is necessary. It’s not a bad idea, but you will lose all timecode references, and it’s an extra piece of kit – we’re trying to keep this simple with a minimum of expense and fuss.

Once again, if we digitise, say, a 15fps clip, brought in via firewire at 59.94/60 (Varicam allows anywhere between 4 and 60 fps) then we run that through the frame-rate converter in FCP once again. Here’s the trick: there are three options in the FRC: 23.97, 29.97, and 59.94. By selecting 59.94 and ticking the ‘remove duplicate frames’ box, the FRC discards the redundant frames, leaving us with only the 15 flagged frames playing back at 60fps – a sped up clip.

You could export this out as a new piece of media @ 25fps which would bring it into line with the rest of your cut. Most workflows suggest working with off-speed material as a separate entity to your 25p footage, so I don’t see this as a big deal.

Also, just like any other film-style workflow, you will have to resync your audio to the clips. This is simply a matter of relaying the audio from your clips against the conformed clips.

The one element here that is sadly lacking is any kind of batch process for the DVCProHD Frame Rate Converter. You need to manually process every clip within FCP. The 24 to 25 conform can be performed in Cinema Tools through a batch, though, so that’s something!

If anyone out there has a solution to the batch processing thing, I’d love to hear it.

The new short film written and Directed by Cannes Short Film Corner Awardee Carlo Ledesma of allOrange Films,The Last One begins post-production today at Outpost.

Produced in conjunction with Eden Film Productions, the film has been beautifully shot by Director of Photography Shing Fung Cheung in the Varicam HD format, and we’ll be taking a full HD post-production path right through.

“The Last One” is an action-drama about a man desperately trying to get home to prevent the unthinkable from happening to the one he loves. It’s a film about the consequences of violence, and it is meant to remind us that we can never escape the choices we make in life. Ever.

Read Carlo’s blog for some cool Behind The Scenes info, and some great on set photos.