If you want to contemplate the future shape of the film industry, or rather, the shape of the future industry, buy a calendar. Not just any calendar, but Camera Girls 2012. The 19 year old writer/director creator of the calendar is Lauren Billingham who you could say modelled her 13 minute...

The big difference between good LED lights and poor quality LED lights is their ability to render colour – the colorimetry. The robustness, the built-in features, focusing, the life expectancy, the heat management all play a part too, but who cares if a luminaire puts out crappy light to...

Seven o’clock Sunday evenings, TV One, is the dream slot for any New Zealand TV producer, says the director of The Food Truck, a show that recently held that space over eight episodes. James Anderson, a partner in production company Two Heads, directed the show about a chef who tries to...

The Television New Zealand (TVNZ) charter has been finally extracted like a bad tooth that has been afflicting the company for years. This cure will have little, if any impact on what is actually shown on screen. At least that is what the Minister of Broadcasting, Jonathan Coleman would have...

The new Final Cut Pro X is now available to the public for less than a third of the price of the discontinued FCP 7 suite it replaces. But if you had to edit a television show with FCP X today, you would probably be struggling because, aside from the name, the new application doesn’t...

It would be a trifle unfair to criticise Sony’s new FS100 for not having some of the costly features of a high-end camera. The new camera is from Sony’s NXCAM budget range, with a list price expected to be NZ$8.5K  (Under US$7K) for the bundle including an E-mount 18-200mm...

TV3 insists that new prime time show Underbelly New Zealand (The Land of the Long Green Cloud) will be delivered in HD but says they are fairly relaxed with their HD technical requirements. In this case, relaxed means employing an acquisition workflow that would not qualify for broadcast HD...

By itself, a Sony EX3 might be a great camera but it’s not HD broadcast quality.  Not in the U.K, not for Discovery Channel, not for Television New Zealand. The HD technical delivery standards documents that explain this are drawn up by the broadcasters themselves, perhaps so they will...

The smell you never forget: Covering the War in Ivory Coast, April 2011 By Christian Parkinson   The smell of decaying bodies is a tough one to forget. I’d seen dead bodies before, but not in the number that they littered the battle zones of Ivory Coast. My colleague Andrew advised...

It’s been a long time coming, and there was some serious controversy about how it came about in the end but it has finally happened – Apple have announced and demonstrated their newest version of Final Cut Pro. There are some big changes, but is Apple right about the future of...