Wish List! – The Blackmagic Cinema Camera

Sly staff are going ga-ga over the recently released Blackmagic Cinema Camer. It has a 2.5K Sensor,with a wide 13 stops of dynamic range . It also includes a built-in SSD recorder, popular open standard uncompressed RAW and compressed file formats, compatibility with quality EF and ZE mount lenses, LCD touchscreen monitoring plus metadata entry. For those of you who do not understand the terminology, it simply means it’s a dream come true for professional camera users.

Blackmagic Cinema Camera is compatible with EF and ZE mount lenses, which gives you the freedom to choose any lens (e.g Canon, Zeiss etc).This is the first camera to feature built-in metadata entry which are compatible with popular editing softwares such as Final Cut Pro X and DaVinci Resolve. This will help you speed up the post production process by tapping the capacitive LCD touchscreen to display the slate where you can enter information such as shot number, search tags, scene number and timecode.

There is a built-in SSD recorder which allows 2.5K uncompressed CinemaDNG RAW 12-bit capture as well as Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD compressed video formats. All file formats are standard and used by NLE software. After shooting,connect the SSD to your computer and edit or color your shots from the disk.

Custom cables are a thing of the past since this digital magnet uses standard connections. You will get jack mic/line audio inputs to record the high quality uncompressed audio, as well as 3 Gb/s SDI out for on set monitoring or to send to live production switchers. Also included is 12V to 30V DC input for power and battery charging, 3.5mm headphone socket, LANC remote control and high speed Thunderbolt port for computer capture.
Connect Blackmagic Cinema Camera to any computer using Thunderbolt technology to display 6 live scope views on a single monitor. Use UltraScope on set or in any location for Parade, Waveform, Vectorscope and Histogram signal measurement. UltraScope includes picture view, audio level and phase monitoring.

Usually one is limited to a single GPU or a single computer if you are using a computer based solutions,but with DaVinci Resolve you can add extra GPU cards or even clusters of multiple computers.You have the freedom to add dozens of primaries, secondaries, power windows, multi point tracking and blurs.

If you need a translation of all of this, basically it’s really really slick, and not too expensive either.

Blackmagic Cinema Camera is clearly a camera to drool over. We might just sell our souls for this one!

-Tsegofatso Legote

Check!

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/blackmagiccinemacamera/

Soul Candi Sound System Episode 1

We like to hang out at a place in town called Soul Candi, you may know them from such achievements as OWNING the South African dance music scene. So we hung around so long that eventually they said “Why don’t you do something useful around here and make us a radio show??” and we were like, “ok”.

The rest is history, here is episode 1, let us know what you think:

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The Warm Up – New Date Announced

Our boys at The Warm Up, have announced a special new party due to a public holiday here in South Africa. So if you’re in South Africa on Human Rights Day (21st March), then come and join the crew for a throw down.

Expect: Phat Jack, 2Lani, Chris Keys and Kid Fonque playing bass lines your mother would disapprove of. Various of Johannesburg’s finest residents getting down in the sun. Ridiculous combinations BOS Ice Tea, Corona, Monster, Jack Daniels, Smirnoff etc. etc. – although we don’t recommend drinking these all at once, someone who we may or may not know tried, and it’s not pretty. Views of downtown Jozi you have never seen before. Whites, blacks, puerto ricans, gays, you name it. Hands in the air.

We’re currently working on the new video, have a little taste below, also see some of our previous colabs.

Fun Gadgets

This little gadget has the Sly Creative Labs office buzzing with all the possibilities it offers.

It’s the Polly, a portable dolly system that is no bigger than a modern family printer. It’s 20cm high, 20cm wide and has a base length of 28cm.

This nifty device is for the videographers who enjoy the ease of shooting with lighter and smaller DSLR cameras. The design and concept of the Polly is German, so one expects nothing less than reliability and precision. We really can’t wait to get our hands on this.

So we can do this…

Viral Video 101

Everyone knows the ultimate goal for a renegade creative agency such as Sly would be for one of our videos to go viral. What is a viral video you may ask?

Wikipedia says:

“A viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email. Viral videos often contain humorous content and include televised comedy sketches and web-only productions. Some eyewitness events have also been caught on video and have “gone viral”. With the proliferation of camera phones, many videos are being shot by amateurs on these devices. The availability of inexpensive video editing and publishing tools allows video shot on mobile phones to be edited and distributed virally, by email or website, and between phones by Bluetooth or MMS. These consumer-shot videos are typically non-commercial, intended for viewing by friends or family. A video becoming viral is often unexpected, and an accident, and therefore a video cannot be called viral purely in the creator’s intention at the time of recording.”

One online writer/comedian, Brett Erlich has his own take on the phenomenon and has neatly packaged tons of Viral Videos in his Webby nominated show, Viral Video Film School. Here is the latest episode:

You can catch the rest of the series here.

We can’t promise we’ll make your video go viral, but we’ll definitely slam ourselves into a sliding door trying.

Forget the Film, Watch the Titles

A great title sequence sets an expectation, if you’re in the theatre and you see this sequence, you forget about everything else… and you don’t want to be anywhere else.  But right here at this moment, and it gets you excited – Kyle Cooper.

It’s Oscar time, and the opening sequence still hasn’t been able to nab a place on the podium. The right title sequence will almost  guarantee that bums stay on seats and invariably sets the tone for the whole film. But why the academy has not chosen to honour the ground-breaking designer’s who are forging ahead in motion graphic’s story telling is beyond me. The closest they could have come to contention is with the documentary ‘Forget the Film, Watch the Title’, but alas this too has yet to pass.

Friday Ways To Get Your Groove On #2 Tony H

Download or give a listen to this mix by Tony H, a punk ass white boy from the Ghetto…

Also East London’s number one DJ, possibly Eastern Cape, possibly the world.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Social-Disco-Club/202633909820141?success=1

Happy weekend!

-SCL TEAM