Bentley Produces This Commercial on iPhone and iPad

An ad from Bentley has me puzzeled on the one hand, and positively exhilerated on the other. First off, this video exemplifies the importance of stabilization in professional production. But what’s perhaps more intriguing is discovering that it was shot entirely on an iPhone 5s and edited on an iPad Air. I know… Puzzling but equally fascinating.

To be clear, even though this example demonstrates wonderfully the potential of the iOS workflow, the techniques employed by the production crew were highly advanced. In either case, I hope you enjoy.

NH Film Festival Recap 2014

The NH Film FestivalNHFF — is by far my favorite time of year. It brings so many truly fascinating and talented people to the city from all over the world.

This year, after running the Social Video Competition, I took over the NHFF Vine and Instagram accounts and posted as many short micro-videos from the weekend as I could turn around. Working along with the competition winners, we created a bunch of Vines and Instavids. Check out some of the best examples below.

 

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From Vine

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How Stephen Colbert Prepares His Show

I’m a fan of Stephen Colbert, so for me this glimpse behind the curtain is absolutely fascinating. Truly. In this interview, David Plotz speaks with Colbert, who is remarkably candid in his description of the process it takes to create the show every day.

https://soundcloud.com/slateradio/working-stephen-colbert

CGI Crowd Dynamics

Here’s a cool demonstration of crowd dynamics in CGi. It’s pretty cool, actually… so check it out, especially if your into this type of thing.

iPhone Camera Stabilization for the Masses

Do you shoot video with an iPhone? Sure you do. And I’m sure you’ve been disappointed with the shake of your hands in at least half of your videos. Well just as technology is totally blowing our minds with everything from artificial intelligence to autonomous vehicles, there’s an app that fixes that shake.

Instagram recently released Hyperlapse, a free app touting incredibly smooth timelapsed video capture. What was perhaps less covered was the fact that you can slow down the video you capture from 6x (default) to 1x for some seriously impressive iphone camera stabilization effects.

Here’s how it works… The app captures video at full 1080 resolution, and then crops that down to 720 while adjusting the frame’s orientation with data collected from the device’s accelerometer. You see, most stabilization filters apply interpretive reference points after the fact, which often yields some undesirable effects. Using the orientation data, the app knows exactly where your hand is and how it’s moving, resulting in near perfect stabilization.

Seriously, test it out. If stabilization matters to you, it will become your new go-to.

**As a bonus to the above video, check out this behind-the-scenes with commentary from the video team at The Verge.

7 Useful Tips for Hiding a Lavalier Mic

You may not be a fan of the Lav mic, but if you’re a filmmaker or you work with audio, there will almost certainly come a time when you’ll need to keep a lavalier microphone hidden from the camera. This presents several problems: clothing noise, cable noise, chest-hair noise… You get the idea.

In this video, Izzy Hyman offers up some great tips for doing just that… You might even learn a new trick that will come in handy on a set.

Still have questions? Leave a comment.