Oren Peli Israeli filmmaker made Paranormal Activity for $15,000 and shot this tale of a young couple who videotaped the strange noises they hear inside a room in a house. Dubbed the Blair Witch Project on steroids, what makes this story different is the fact it has over 1 million people will have seen it before national release in the US due to social media marketing grossed $7 million from 144 theatres over a weekend.

The film originally picked up by Speilberg’s DreamWorks, but marketing was by Paramount. Paramount tried carefully to develop and manage the phenomenon with free midnight screenings in college campus towns. Then encouraged fans to demand the movie in their town via an online petition campaign.

The “demand it” campaign was touted on the Eventful site as “The First Ever Major Film Release Decided By You”.
Founded in 2004, Eventful is the leading events website which enables its community of users to discover, promote, share and create events. see http://about.eventful.com/ for more info.

This reminds me of a film created a by team called Four Eyed Monsters that debuted on Youtube and it being the first ever feature length film to be posted, in addition to creating an online video blog, they produced accompanying webisodes and used social media to market, promote and sell the film.
They encouraged fans to buy tickets at cinemas they were touring, so they could advance book a cinema and showing the film had an audience wanting to see it. In addition they also made it available as a paid for download from iTunes and also as a mail order dvd.

Useful links worth checking up on.

Paranormal Main site
http://www.paranormalactivity-movie.com/trailer.html

Eventful
http://eventful.com

Can we do YES WE CAN 1 million tickets sold
http://eventful.com/performers/paranormal-activity-/P0-001-000212499-6/competitions

Oren Peli interview at Dread Central with mp3 download
http://www.dreadcentral.com/interviews/peli-oren-paranormal-activity

CNN Showbiz article

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/12/paranormal.activity.movie/index.html

Mashable article

Paranormal Activity Rides the Social Web to Millions
http://mashable.com/2009/10/13/paranormal-activity-success/

Four Eyed Monsters

Main site
http://foureyedmonsters.com

Youtube site
http://www.youtube.com/user/foureyedmonsters

This video was commissioned by Building United Communities as part of an event and DVD titled “Black Boys In Business”, during Global Enterprise Week.

This segment features Poet and Barrister David Neita who encourage us all to make each other rich. David also appeared alongside Levi Roots of Reggae Reggae Sauce of Dragon’s Den fame and Ansell Henry who featured on BBC 2’s The Apprentice at this event

Produced and edited by HD Productions
Shot and recorded on location at the Bernie Grants Arts Centre. 

http://www.hd-productions.biz

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Futuristic discs with a storage capacity 2,000 times that of current DVDs could be just around the corner, thanks to new research from Swinburne University of Technology.

For the first time researchers from the university’s Centre for Micro-Photonics have demonstrated how nanotechnology can enable the creation of ‘five dimensional’ discs with huge storage capacities.

The research, carried out by Mr Peter Zijlstra, Dr James Chon and Professor Min Gu was published today in the scientific journal Nature.

The Nature article describes how the researchers were able to use nanoscopic particles to exponentially increase the amount of information contained on a single disc.

“We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc,” Gu said.

Discs currently have three spatial dimensions, but using nanoparticles the Swinburne researchers were able to introduce a spectral – or colour – dimension as well as a polarisation dimension.

“These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs,” Gu said.

To create the ‘colour dimension’ the researchers inserted gold nanorods onto a disc’s surface. Because nanoparticles react to light according to their shape, this allowed the researchers to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location.

This is a major improvement on current DVDs that are recorded in a single colour wavelength using a laser.

The researchers were also able to introduce an extra dimension onto the disc using polarisation. When they projected light waves onto the disc, the direction of the electric field contained within them aligned with the gold nanorods. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.

“The polarisation can be rotated 360 degrees,” Chon said. “So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarisation. Then on top of that, we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarisation, without them interfering with each other.”

Some issues, such as the speed at which the discs can be written on, are yet to be resolved. However the researchers are confident the discs will be commercially available within 5 – 10 years.

The discs are likely to have immediate applications in a range of fields. They would be valuable for storing extremely large medical files such as MRIs and could also provide a boon in the financial, military and security arenas.

The researchers’ ground breaking achievements would not have been possible without the long time support of the Australian Research Council.

Source:
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/marketing/mediacentre/core/releases_article.php?releaseid=1330

High Definition Tapeless Video Workflow - Moving from Tape to Tapeless Part 1

Entry/Audience requirements

Aimed at and suitable for Directors, Producers, Camera assistants, editors, edit assistants and independent freelancers and production companies. Incorporating tape and tapeless formats example will be based on Sony Ex1 and Z1, but can apply Panasonic and JVC owners or users. 

Course description
Aimed at those wanting to use or integrate non tape recording formats in video production. This course will be based around Sony EX1 but will cover Panasonic P2, Red camera and other tapeless options. Final cut pro based by will include information for Avid and Premiere users as well.

For more information drop leave a message or give us a call.

Swinburne University in Australia, has research that leads to DVD’s storing 2000 movies, this great dealing with issues of archiving, storage of video related material as the industry is increasing using tapleless formats and backup, media asset management and retrieval our key to success in handling large volumes of data relevant to the media, government and entertainment sector.

This seems good news for those who either manage or administrate data migration policies to future proof material and were wondering if Blu-ray was the only large format optical storage option available.

The research, carried out by Mr Peter Zijlstra, Dr James Chon and Professor Min Gu was published in the scientific journal Nature. In the article it describes how the researchers were able to use nanoscopic particles to exponentially increase the amount of information contained on a single disc.

The researchers were also able to introduce an extra dimension onto the disc using polarisation. When they projected light waves onto the disc, the direction of the electric field contained within them aligned with the gold nanorods. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.

“The polarisation can be rotated 360 degrees,” Chon said. “So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarisation. Then on top of that, we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarisation, without them interfering with each other.”

Some issues, such as the speed at which the discs can be written on, are yet to be resolved. However the researchers are confident the discs will be commercially available within 5 – 10 years.

The discs are likely to have immediate applications in a range of fields. They would be valuable for storing extremely large medical files such as MRIs and could also provide a boon in the financial, military and security arenas.

Taken from Swinburne Media centre press release.
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/marketing/mediacentre/core/releases_article.php?releaseid=1330

Nature article
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7245/full/nature08053.html

For the techies and geeks you can send correspondence to: James W. M. Chon1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to J.W.M.C. (Email: JCh...@groupwise.swin.edu.au), to find out about the “Five-dimensional optical recording mediated by surface plasmons in gold nanorods” that make all this possible.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7245/full/nature08053.html

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/marketing/mediacentre/core/releases_article.php?releaseid=1330

Great to hear your views and thoughts on this.

LIvetype final cut pro titling application

Livetype, the first Apple owned dedicated video titling package that featured with the release of Final Cut Pro 4. This application allow users to create motion graphic, titling and dvd menus as well as video backdrops for conferences,events and presentations. Work with layered Photoshop files, video and still images to create montage sequences and video effects.

Final cut server

Final Cut Server Apple’s server-based media asset management and workflow automation tool designed for film, video, network and group media projects. The software is?scalable from small/mini production companies, broadcast and film post production set up’s.

Learn to set up and install depending on your project or business production environment, share, manage and centralise assets amongst the creative team of editors, loggers, motion graphics, visual effects, compositors, production management and client.

Use is to speed up, automate, work more collaboratively, batch process for multiformat and multipurpose delivery of audio and video.

HD Productions provides director’s of photography, lighting cameramen, photographers with years of broadcast industry experience working for CBS, Sky and BBC covering news, documentary, reportage together with aerial and underwater photography experience.

Sample of the services we provide from video, digital photography and multimedia production.
In addition we also have an in house photographer who can provide underwater and aerial
photography. So the sky’s no limit in terms of what we offer.

Apple Motion Video titling animation and motion graphics package

Get to grips with Motion, Apple Mac’s dedication motion graphic, titling and visual effects tools for editors, compositors and motion graphic artists alike.

This software also intergrates with Final Cut Pro (FCP) and Adobe After Effects giving the end user the flexibility to operate between and exchange project graphics, video, filters and effects.

Allowing you to have more creative combinations of visual expression and benefiting your projects with more inspiring ways to showcase your talent and skills in this area.

Let us show you have take advantage and use of some of its amazing power, ease of use and bundle features, images, present and royalty free content.

Learn the basics and become familar with 

Real-Time Design
3D Motion Graphics
Filters and Effects
Time-Saving Tools