Category: News

One night a year, two neighboring churches in the Greek village of Vrontados go to war.

In a Holy Saturday tradition that has been observed for well over one hundred years, the parishioners of two Orthodox churches in Vrontados wait until the sun goes down, and then fire upwards of 100,000 homemade rockets at one another. It is a mock battle, of course, and somewhat ironically, it is a symbolic event that is used to signify peace in the region. Historians can’t agree on the exact origins of the tradition, although many believe that it dates back to the 19th century when villagers would fake a civil war to ward off any foreign armies inclined to invade over Easter weekend. What is indisputable, however, is that it is a tradition unlike any other, and that a night sky brimming with rockets is truly a sight to behold.

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It’s summer, and if you’ve got the time, we’ve got another massive list of funding and career opportunities to get your next film off the ground!

The following grants, markets, and pitch opportunities are organized by deadline from July to early September. An asterisk next to the grant title (*) means that grant is open to both doc and narrative films. To find out more specifics on a grant, click on the title and get started.

Documentary

MountainFilm Commitment Grant

If you’re working on a documentary that touches on mountain culture or the environment, the MountainFilm Commitment Grant will support up to five filmmakers a year with $5,000. From MountainFilm:

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If there’s one simple thing that you can do today to make your cinematography look more professional and polished, it’s incorporating practical lights into your scenes.

Practical lights are, of course, traditionally defined as any light where the source is in frame. More often than not, this means lights that are built into your locations (usually ceiling fixtures), desk and floor lamps, televisions, computers, and strings of Christmas lights. It can also refer to headlights from a car and street lamps. All sorts of things can be used as practical light.

Before we get into the specifics of why and how to light with practicals, here’s a quick quote from Roger Deakins, taken from his fantastic online forum, about the importance of practical lighting, especially in the digital age where camera sensitivity and dynamic range are through the roof:

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“What the hell does that filter even do? When do I use it? How do I use it?”

If you’re new to lens filtration, these questions undoubtedly have been on your mind. Luckily, this infographic acts as a perfect cheat sheet to show you the effects of different filters, as well the conditions in which you should utilize them. Check it out below:

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If you’re in the market for an external recorder, or you already own an Odyssey 7, 7Q, or 7Q+, today is a good day.

Not only is Convergent Design cutting prices by almost 50% in some places for their SSDs, but they’ve opened up 3rd party media for use with all of their recorders (you’ll still need two at once depending on the recording setting and camera you’re using). They will also be adding to what you get with a 7Q+ package. Overall, it’s now going to be significantly cheaper to record with the Odyssey, which will certainly help ease the price on a complete package once you factor in the additional software recording licenses you may need (or want).

In addition, here is what will now be included in the 7Q+ package:

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At NAB this year, Zacuto showed off a new EVF, a stripped down and more affordable version their popular Gratical HD. That EVF is here, and it’s called the Gratical X.

In essence, the Gratical X packs the same optical punch as its bigger brother, as it sports the same high quality micro OLED display with 5.4 million pixels. Plus the Gratical X still has the same connections (HDMI and SDI), as well as the same absurd build quality (watch the Gratical get run over by a car).

Where the two Gratical models differ significantly, however, is in their firmware and software features. Whereas the HD model features every software feature that Zacuto can throw at it, and there are tons of them, the Gratical X comes completely stripped of internal software features, and it allows users to purchase them a la carte from the Zacuto website.

Here’s an excellent breakdown of how it all works.

And here are the basic specs of the Gratical X:

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Is Hollywood really as sexist and discriminatory against female directors as people say, or are we all just being a bunch of drama queens?

Bloomberg asked that question to several female filmmakers, including Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke, former DGA president Martha Coolidge, and Oscar nominee Lexi Alexander, and their answers are pretty eye-opening and — well — straight up depressing.

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While the Atomos Shogun has been getting steady firmware updates, the new AtomOS 6.4 release has added a ton of great features.

We still can’t record straight to a RAW CinemaDNG format yet, but the Sony FS700 and FS7 can now go from the RAW 4K signal to a 4K ProRes or DNxHR format up to 30fps with the Shogun (you’ll still need the XDCA-FS7 module to output RAW). Though this isn’t quite as powerful as RAW, it’s still a huge step up from recording internally, and you get a file that can be played and edited on many systems immediately. There are two options for recording the RAW signal, allowing you to get either a log file or a Rec709 file, depending on your needs in post.

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In this intriguing video essay for Fandor, Chloé Galibert-Lainé investigates the possible meanings behind on-screen relationships between humans and robots, stating that they could potentially represent the struggle between the duality of reality and dreams.

Man vs. Machine is a very common trope in cinema, and has been for virtually all of its history. (One of the earliest, and most famous, examples of this is Fritz Lang’s 1927 dystopian sci-fi film Metropolis.) But Galibert-Lainé’s study focuses specifically on how director Spike Jonze sets the stage for his characters to battle between their stark realities and the idealism of their dreams. Their weapon of choice? Artificial intelligence.

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On July 4th 2008 Filmmaker IQ went live. This year on our 7th anniversary everything on Filmmaker IQ will change. We have been hard at work behind the scenes on a brand new site and a brand new approach toward learning filmmaking. As we clear off the dust and eradicate the final bugs we won’t be posting here on FilmmakerIQ.com while we get everything set up. HOWEVER, we will be still posting all the fresh daily content you normally find here on our social networks: Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus so make sure you follow us there.

Here’s a sneak peak at what’s in store.

NEW COURSES & LABS
We are completely replacing our old courses with brand new interactive ones, powered by a massive new learning management system. These courses will continue to be FREE to everyone. They will contain our video lectures, multimedia lesson units and exams to test your comprehension of the materials covered. In addition to Courses we will also have Labs: These are projects ranging from testing out filmmaking techniques to actual short film assingments designed to put filmmaking rubber to the road so to speak.

QUESTIONS SECTION
Got a burning question? We are adding a new Question and Answer section you can ask questions on every subject of film and filmmaking (similar to Yahoo! Answers). You can vote on the best answers and even select your favorite answer.

POINTS, RANKS & BADGES
Every course you pass, lab you submit, questions you ask or answer (as well as tons of other site activity) will earn you points on the site.  As you earn points you will move up in rank (Coming Attraction, New Release, Double Feature, Breakout Hit, Rising Star, Prolific, Tour de force, A List, Super Star, Mogal, Icon, Auteur, Legend). You will also earn badges and certificates for completing courses and labs. We will have persistent leaderboards so you can see how you compare to your fellow filmmakers around the world.

FILMMAKER IQ LIVE!
One more thing… We are creating a live show in partnership with YouTube where you get to interact with us in real time. Along with answering your questions, we will have industry guests, video segments and much more.

We have to get back to work now but we’ll see you on July 4th!