Splice

Slashfilm recently had the chance to sit down with Steven Spielberg on the sets of Indiana Jones 4 at Universal Studios.

Spielberg talked about his decision to shoot on film despite George Lucas’ attempts to convince him to go digital. He also joked that he’s the last guy in Hollywood still cutting film the old fashioned way. The action in Indy 4 will be cut old school. Steven is not a modern guy it seems. After all, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will wrap production in a few days and is scheduled to be released in May 2008.

On a weekly basis I find myself using a bunch of different cables like XLRs, 1/4″, HDMI, HD-SDI, etc. Now, I was paying attention in university during my audio techniques classes when my teacher taught us how to properly wrap cables. Mind you, this was quite a few years back and it seems cable wrapping techniques have come a long way since then.

Today I learned about a much better method of wrapping cables and frankly I’m never going back to my old ways! This method is good for coaxial, twisted pair, electrical, multicore, triax and fiber cables. This means it’s not only good for audio and video cables, but also for Ethernet and Telephone cables.
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Motion 3 is one of the most talked-about new apps in Final Cut Studio 2. It is packed full of new features like 3D environments, point tracking and image stabilization.

I’ve compiled a list of the top five Motion 3 tutorials available on the internet right now. As you can see point tracking is a very popular topic and is the subject of three of these tutorials.

Enjoy!
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Evan Almighty
Polished, preening newscaster Evan Baxter (Steve Carell) is the next one anointed by God to accomplish a holy mission in this sequel to Bruce Almighty.

Newly elected to Congress, Evan leaves Buffalo behind and shepherds his family to suburban northern Virginia. Once there, his life gets turned upside-down when God (Morgan Freeman) appears and mysteriously commands him to build an ark. But his befuddled family just can’t decide whether Evan is having an extraordinary mid-life crisis or is truly onto something of Biblical proportions…

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Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
The Fantastic Four meet their greatest challenge yet as the enigmatic, intergalactic herald, The Silver Surfer, comes to Earth to prepare it for destruction. As the Silver Surfer races around the globe wreaking havoc, Reed (Ioan Gruffudd), Sue (Jessica Alba), Johnny (Chris Evans) and Ben (Michael Chiklis) must unravel the mystery of The Silver Surfer and confront the surprising return of their mortal enemy, Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon), before all hope is lost.

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Here’s a great collection of the final frames from 100+ classic television shows and films. It takes you back to the good old days, doesn’t it?

One of the most influential and popular science-fiction films of all time is arguably Blade Runner by Ridley Scott. It was released in 1982 and has been a cult classic ever since.

Scott released a Director’s Cut in the early 90s but has continued to polish his masterpiece ever since. His latest version Blade Runner: The Final Cut is scheduled to be released in select US theatres later this month and will be out on DVD in December.

Wired has a great Q&A session with Ridley Scott on their website. You can also listen to or read the full transcript of their interview here.

Tom’s Guide has written an article on the differences between the HDMI and Component formats. It’s true that everyone now assumes that HDMI has better quality but would you be right in thinking that? Read on to find out!

Here’s a funny picture that I came across on Digg.com. It’s amazing that IBM had a 1GB drive 20 years ago! It looks like a big motor or something!

Recently I had the pleasure of working with some P2 footage in Final Cut Pro. It was a great experience and I learned a few tips along the way that I’d like to share with you. These tips are brought to you by HDvision Studio.

P2 Overview
First of all, in case you’re not that familiar with P2 technology, here’s a quick summary. P2 is Panasonic’s next-generation digital video recording system. It was developed to make production workflows more flexible and uses solid-state P2 memory cards that record video and audio data in the MXF file format.

Why is P2 a big deal? For one, it allows professional video cameras to free themselves of complicated and heavy tape drives with expensive recording heads and mechanisms. This means the cameras become smaller, lighter and more affordable. Secondly, it revolutionized the post-production industry by changing the way we captured material. Since P2 records data in digital file form, you can simply transfer and ingest the footage. As an Editor this is a time-saving feature that I love!
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