Here’s a few quick references for new and returning Television & Video Production students:

Orientation

• Orientation Day for new First-Year students is Tuesday, September 7th.  Check out the orientation page for more information.
• Second-year students have been contacted by their instructors with information for the first week back.

Timetables

• Preliminary first-year timetables for Sets 1C and 1D in PDF form.
• Preliminary second-year timetables for Sets 3C and 3D in PDF form.

These timetables may change slightly as they are not finalized yet.

my.bcit

• All television instructors will be sending email to your my.bcit.ca email address – please login and set it to forward your email (under options/settings) if you want to use Gmail, Hotmail, or any other email provider.
• Make sure you enable forwarding, and select “Do not leave copy on server” so your mailbox doesn’t fill up (we send a lot of email)!

That’s about it for now, if you have any other questions, drop us an email (or just post a reply here).

Many people are probably familiar with open-source software, but when was the first time you’ve seen an open-source HD Cinema camera?

The “Apertus” is being developed by a team of international enthusiasts to give total control over inexpensive HD imaging hardware, allowing filmmakers to potentially develop their own alternatives to commercial offerings from Sony, Panasonic, Red, etc.

While it’s definitely still a work-in-progress, this sort of project would’ve been cost-prohibitive a few years ago.  Now, the cost of the camera hardware (minus lens and audio) is only around $3,000 – and the software is free!

While it might not be as user-friendly or have a workflow as efficient as a camera from one of the major manufacturers, it does prove how quickly technology is changing, and how quickly people are exploring new options as they become available.

Check out a sample movie (click through to Vimeo for the HD version)

Discovery HD Canada (now Discovery World HD) is sponsoring an environmental short film competition.

From the press release:

Feel there’s an environmental story yet to be told? This is your chance to tell it!

The Film Snacks Competition is a platform for the best of tomorrow’s film-making talent, featuring compelling short-films that build on environmental themes. You could have your film screened on the BIG screen, TV, and online!

To enter, you must simply upload your short film (2 minutes or less) to the designated page. Your submission must be based on an environmental theme.

Judges will be basing their decision on production quality (video and audio), creativity and entertainment value and choice of topic. The contest opens August 18, 2010, 12:01 a.m. ET and runs through to September 17, 2010, 4 p.m. ET.

The grand prize includes $2,000 cash, a trip for two to Toronto, two tickets to the Planet in Focus Gala Event in Toronto on October 15, 2010, and the rare opportunity to showcase YOUR winning film at the Event.

The winning film will also air on Discovery World HD, and will be featured on DiscoveryWorldHD.ca.

Check out the webpage for full details!

The Max Headroom TV series premiered back in 1987 and was one of the first “Cyberpunk” television shows.  The story lines having to do with huge international television / broadcast networks controlling culture and politics were at least 10 or 15 years ahead of their time.

Nobody would argue that mainstream media has a vast influence on these things today!

One of the fascinating things about the fictional “Network 23″, was the idea that all of the camera operators would have continual real time feeds from their portable cameras back to the network. Directors could see the output of any camera at any time, and see their exact location on a map – all in real time.

This type of portable technology was unheard of back in the late 80s, when large satellite uplinks and microwave vans were required to get video back to the station from remote locations.

Fast-forward to 2010, and an update to Sony’s “Location Porter” system looks to be enabling exactly that kind of connectivity, now on a large-scale basis.

Broadcasters have had the capability to use small mobile transmitters and VOIP systems to deliver video for a few years now, but this system takes it up a notch with a turnkey system that enables real time video/audio streaming for up to 12 sources (cameras, remotes, etc) at the same time at the push of a button.

Because it uses high-speed mobile data networks for connectivity, it’s relatively cheap compared with conventional systems.  It’s no longer a matter of shooting a story and delivering media back at a later time, but realtime capture right onto a live show, or into an editorial system.

Maybe the future of broadcast news isn’t getting a single camera to an event and trying to cover everything at one, but to get a “swarm” of networked realtime cameras that feed everything and anything back simultaneously.

Back in January 2009, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails released 450GB of HD concert footage from the “Lights in the Sky” tour for fans to edit.

After 18 months, the Nine Inch Nails fan community have created “Another Version of the Truth” – a 3 disc release bringing together numerous editors, designers, and web programmers to create a professional digital film, followed by a physical release created by fans for fans.

Now, “thisoneisonus” has released their final project from this footage – a professionally mastered, color-corrected and authored Blu-Ray, which is available free, as a bittorrent download.

If you want to practise cutting concert footage, the original source footage is also still available here.  Once our new server is officially commissioned in September, I’ll load the Victoria concert footage on for anyone that wants to practise.

It’s a different style of production from the Apple of My Eye piece that I posted about a couple of days ago, and a very impressive project to be produced using the camera on a smartphone.

A new site, iPhone4Filming has also appeared, to discuss tips and techniques for producing high quality video with the iPhone 4.

I hope we might see a few student productions with the iPhone 4 at BCIT this year!

An industry coalition including Sony, Samsung, and LG have proposed a new cabling standard based on existing high-bandwidth technology.  And the type of cable should look pretty familiar to most people…

HDBaseT

HDBaseT uses standard CAT5E/CAT6 Ethernet cables to transmit video, audio, data, and even power to audio/visual devices.  If you have a home or office pre-wired for data, you can even use your existing cables.

About time.  I was sort of wondering why it didn’t happen sooner – we all know that modern audio/video devices basically all communicate by digital signalling, so it makes sense to just use standard data cables…

Post-production editing was also done on the iPhone 4 with the iMovie app – with the entire project being completed in 48 hours.

Click the link below the video to see the full HD version!

“Apple of My Eye” – an iPhone 4 film – UPDATE: Behind the scenes footage included from Michael Koerbel on Vimeo.

Tim is a member of our broadcast advisory committee and offered us a chance to drop by and see what was new in the way of their mobile production vehicles, as well as some purpose-built equipment for doing mobile and event productions (something we’re keen to do more of!)

One of the most impressive things about seeing the Proshow operation is the attention to detail – a good model for students!

We’re going to try and get some students more involved with Proshow, and we are already working to train students in the types of skills that are required for live event production.

It’s a pretty rare event to be able to talk directly to the programmers and designers of a piece of software that plays such a pivotal role in the post-production industry.

We were thrilled that the team wanted to meet BCIT faculty and students to discuss Adobe’s products, and to find out how to even better work with the educational market to make the software even stronger for the needs of instructors and students alike.  Today, we had that opportunity.

We spent a good 90 minutes talking with the team about After Effects and throwing out wishes and ideas.  It’s really refreshing to put faces to such a great product.  Even though Adobe is a vast company, it really speaks well for the pride their staff takes in their product that they’re willing to take time to reach out to customers directly.

The other side of this coin is that BCIT Broadcast will be upgrading all of our PCs and Macs to offer Adobe CS5 products for instructional and student use in the fall term.  Once you play with Content Aware fill in Photoshop and the Roto Brush in After Effects, you’ll be hooked.