Filmmakers Garage

For those of you who are interested in what we have been up to this summer on the ‘tech’ side of ATVF, here is a rundown:

1. Avids have been updated to version 5.5.1 of Media Composer.  I’m not expecting any major changes from the version 5 that we finished last year with.  It would be nice if AMA was a little more stable.  That one really came back to bite us on the #$$ last year.
2. Generally, the capacity of the Avid RAIDs has been quadrupled.  I’m expecting that we will shoot the 3×3 projects on the Red this year, so there was a need to accommodate more material than last year.
3. We’ve updated to Adobe CS 5.5 in the lab.
4. We were planning on installing several new MacPro’s in the lab, but Apple has been taking longer than anticipated to introduce new models.  As a result, we are temporarily recycling some older machines (as a bonus we have thrown in dual-monitor setups for now).
5. To Lion or not-to-Lion, that is the question.  I’ve prepped a lab image that uses Lion, but now I’ve found out that no-one else is rolling out a Lion-based image in their labs this year.  There is a licensing issue that is creating a roadblock.  So, I may be rebuilding an image next week that rolls back to Snow Leopard.
6. There are no big changes in the camera kit this year, but we have worked hard to fill in a lot of the smaller gaps.  We have a bunch of new cases for all the gear, including the post-audio gear.  We have a sweet new magic arm setup from Ultralight (to replace the magic arms from Red that we keep breaking).  Our Alan Gordon director’s viewfinder is fixed!  Our Red EVF is in the process of being fixed.  We finally have the Bomb EVF that we ordered last October!  And today I ordered a Cinevate Atlas 10 slider that I think could be very handy for doc shooting and other things.  I’m still looking at making some big changes to our DMT workstation – I’m hoping that Thunderbolt drives start shipping soon!
7. We have reclaimed that back room behind the war-room.   This room will be available as part of the production office, and also will be used as a colour correction suite.
8. Both the Avid suite and the Digital Filmmaking Centre will be updated with new Canon Realis WUX10 projectors.  This should be a huge improvement over the previous projection system!  The install is probably not going to happen until later in September though.