Media Production Nov / Dec 2009

CONTENTS 6

Welcome

7

Editorial

8

NEWS

14

KNOW WHO

Filmmaker Nayla Al Khaja

18

KNOW WHO

Director Mohamed Al Daradji

22

KNOW WHO

Intaj at twofour54

24

Abu Dhabi Report

30

KNOW WHO

Qais M. Sadki

34

KNOW HOW

Naked Human Photoshop Tutorial

38

KNOW HOW

Create a Movie Poster in Photoshop

46

Heterogeneous Pockets

Independent Filmmaking in Kuwait

49

KNOW HOW

Directing Actors

CONTENTS 50

KNOW WHO

Interview with turkish filmmaker Aysengul Epengin

52

KNOW HOW

RED Camera

54

KNOW HOW

Apple ProRes Codec

59

KNOW HOW

Vimeo - Online Video Hosting

60

REVIEW DroboPro

64

KNOW HOW

Compiling tracks in Pro Tools 8

67

Review

Shure SRH - 440

68

Review

TC Level Pilot

:‫اﻟﺠﻴﻮب اﻟﻤﺘﻐﺎﻳﺮة‬ .‫ﻗﺪم ﻓﻲ اﻟﻜﻮﻳﺖ‬

74

‫ﺗﻌﺮف ﻋﻠﻰ ﻧﺎﺋﻠﺔ اﻟﺨﺎﺟﻪ‬

78

‫ﻣﻘﺎﺑﻠﺔ ﻣﻊ اﻟﻤﺨﺮج‬ ‫ﻣﺤﻤﺪ اﻟﺪراﺟﻲ‬

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WELCOME To our creative readers, 2009 is ending and we are entering the film festival time.

Filmmaking is a very established creative form of expression in the Middle East and we are very excited to introduce you in this issue’s “Know Who” to well known film makers, like Nayla Al Khaja, who has built herself a name as the first female UAE filmmaker.

We have visited the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi as well, to have a first impression of what the regional and international film industry is working on and which direction it is moving.

Mohamed Al-Daradji spoke to MP about his movie Son Of Babylon and about his experience when shooting in Iraq and turkish filmmaker Aysegul Epengin gives us an insight on how she merges Islamic Art with contemporary computer arts and digital video.

In our “Know How” section, Omar Al-Masab, a Kuwaiti film artist, gives you a step by step tutorial on how he created the animations for his award winning movie, Naked Human, which will be screened at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) as well.

Since this is our last issue for 2009, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you, who have supported us through out this year, and who contributed to Media Production, as writers, supporters, creatives. I would like to thank Emirates Printing Press for their constant creative input on our covers, I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Till the next issue...

And happy New Year from me and the ThinkTank Team.

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Team Managers Hamad Al Saab Ali Sultan Operations Director Arch. Amera Al-Awadhi Project Manager Sylvia Voss

ork r W r u Yo ur Cove ork at onuO our w bmit y e.com

Sales and Marketing Manager Mais Rahal

-m S ktank @thin e c fi f o

The opinions and views contained in are not necessarily those of the publisher’s.

No part of this publication or content, thereof maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form without the permission of the publishers in writing.

COVER ART WORK

Content Ali Sultan Copy Editor (English) Lysa Warren Copy Editor (Arabic) Hamad Al Saab Areeba Hanif Film Lecturer, SAE Institute Dubai Apple Certified Trainer www.darkspindleproductions.blogspot.com

Creative Director Ali Sultan

Nada AlShammari aka NADAA is a multi- media artist and lecturer in visual communication, space design & use.

She is currently working to create and sustain spaces for creativity while researching multimedia narratives of Silence, Identity & Being.

Talal Al Muhanna Talal Al-Muhanna is a Kuwait-based filmmaker and media/arts producer. He holds both a BA and MA in Film & Moving Image Production from Leeds Metropolitan University in the U.K.

Jason de Wilde Jason de Wilde is a freelance music producer and engineer based in Australia.

He has also lectured extensively on audio engineering and Pro Tools. www.jasondewilde.com

By Media Production Cover Material and execution

by Emirates Printing Press

PR and Client Relations Hamad Al Saab

Publishing and Advertising ThinkTank Publishing & Creative House FZ-LLC UAE OFFICE

Dubai Media City Building No. 5 - Office G14 Dubai, UAE Voice: +971 4 4347683 Fax: +971 4 4343926 Email: office@thinktank-me.com

Kuwait Office Yousef Al-Shallal Email: yousef@mp-mag.com

PR Consultant Kuwait Ibtesam Sultan Ibtesam@mp-mag.com Printed at Emirates Printing Press, Dubai Distributed by EPPD, Dubai

NEWS

Abu Dhabi Classic FM Brings Symphonic Masterworks to UAE Airwaves Nation’s first dedicated classical music radio station to support Abu Dhabi’s cultural events Music lovers will be treated to the works of Beethoven, Mahler, Vivaldi and other legendary composers with the launch of Abu Dhabi Classic FM, which will begin broadcasting on 23rd October 2009 to celebrate the launch of the Abu Dhabi Classics 2010 season. Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC) today announced that the new radio station will be available to listeners in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain on 91.6 and 105.2FM. Abu Dhabi Classic FM will deliver world class programming that will also include jazz and world music in addition to an inspiring classical repertoire. The station will also provide news and information on all events associated with the Abu Dhabi Classics 2010 season, beginning with the opening concert, which will feature The New York Philharmonic orchestra performing at the Emirates Palace auditorium in Abu Dhabi on 23rd October. This will be the start of a phased launch, which will see more programming and services being introduced over the next six months.

Nervecell signs with International Record Label

Nervecell, the Dubai-based metal band who are currently on their European summer tour, have been signed by the international record label LifeForce Records based in Germany. Their album “Preaching Venom” is confirmed to be released throughout Europe on October 26th.

Record Label & Distribution Deal Nervecell have signed a five-year record deal with Lifeforce Records, which guarantees the release of their album “Preaching Venom” throughout all European stores on October 26th, 2009. Already out in the stores in the Middle East through Spellbind Records, the album has been a success and has been praised by the international media since its release late 2008.

DESERT HEAT’ FIRST EVER MIDDLE EAST HIP HOP TOUR. The countdown has begun and come November 4th 2009, at The Warehouse, Dubai. UAE Nationals Salim & Abdallah Dahman will perform at what has been described as the most anticipated Hip Hop Concert of the year, “One Night Stand”.

The next day they’ll be packing their bags to head on tour of the GCC / MENA region, starting in Muscat at The Majan Continental Ballroom.

Hard Graft Dapper Laptop Bag

Supported by some of the region’s biggest talents, including Double A, the best freestyle MC in the UAE, S.G, Oman’s biggest Hip Hop Artist & official Slip-n-Slide Records DJ Outlaw!

The exact dates, venues and timings of the tour will be posted on the website (www.desertheatarabia.com) very soon.

UAE’s Rami Farook is the International Young Design Entrepreneur 2009 In a first for the United Arab Emirates in the British Council’s International Young Creative Entrepreneur program, Rami Farook has become the International Young Design Entrepreneur (IYDE) 2009 in an awards ceremony hosted in London, UK, in September.

Rami Farook is founder and director of Traffic, a 7,000 sq ft. design store, gallery, and studio in Dubai’s Al Barsha, which is used as a venue to exhibit design in a nonconventional way, as well as hosting lectures, workshops, and screenings. The multidisciplined studio specialises in

interior architecture, product design, visual communication, and interactive media.

“In accepting the award I would like to thank God, my parents, my wife and children, and my team at Traffic in Dubai. It is an honour to represent the UAE on a global scale, and I have enjoyed networking and collaborating with the UK’s design entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and educators during my recent visit to London,” said Farook.

The Sporting MacBook Sleeve is a classic everyday lifestyle accessory.

Styling resembles slick shoulder holsters worn with a super-smart ashen suit. Features include ivory herringbone elastic straps which offer a refined method for keeping your technology safe inside whilst the extra large leather pocket is perfectly matched for your phone or iPod. Available from Shelter and www.brownbag.ae

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Broadcast industry set to light up the Media and Marketing Show 2009 3 – 5 November at Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre

This year’s Media and Marketing Show 2009 (MMS), features an impressive list of media companies and UAE governmental bodies including The Road & Transportation Authority (RTA).

Now in its fifth year, MMS will focus on broadcast media and will feature CNN and Al Arabiya News Channel, two giants of the international broadcast news segment. The event will also present first time participant Samanyolu TV, one of the highest rated TV channels in Turkey.

O3 Productions, a subsidiary of the MBC group, will bring to the event its expertise in video production and content creation for broadcast media and make.

Other prominent exhibitors from the broadcast industry include Al Aan TV, Orient

Read Media Production Online at: www.mp-mag.com

TV, Al Aquaria TV, Decision Makers, Fujairah Media, and Busy Bee Studios “The Media and Marketing Show has been growing in strength each year and has evolved into the flagship event of its type for our exhibitors,” said Maysoon Abulhoul, Managing Director, Domus Group. “Despite the economic downturn, media companies have recognised the importance of participation in the show to showcase their products and services to potential customers. We foresee a 10% growth on exhibitors numbers from last year.”

This bears testament to the show’s reputation as the one and only specialised event for the media and marketing industry and the resilience of the industry itself.

Apple Unveils New iMac With 21.5 and 27-inch Displays Apple today unveiled an all new iMac line featuring brilliant LEDbacklit 21.5 and 27-inch widescreen displays in a new edge-to-edge glass design and seamless all aluminum enclosure. The new iMac line, starting at $1,199, is the fastest ever with Intel Core 2 Duo processors starting at 3.06 GHz, and Core i5 and i7 quad-core processors for up to twice the performance. Every new iMac ships with a wireless keyboard and the all new wireless Magic Mouse, the world’s first mouse with Multi-Touch technology.

Apple Introduces Magic Mouse The World’s First Multi-Touch Mouse Apple® introduced on October 20, 2009 the new wireless Magic Mouse, the first mouse to use Apple’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ technology. Pioneered on iPhone®, iPod touch® and Mac® notebook trackpads, Multi-Touch allows customers to navigate using intuitive finger gestures.

Instead of mechanical buttons, scroll wheels or scroll balls, the entire top of the Magic Mouse is a seamless Multi-Touch surface. Magic Mouse comes standard with the new iMac® and will be available as a Mac accessory at just $69.

Epson launches its latest large format photo printer in Middle East The Stylus Pro 3880 is a high-specification professional A2+ photo printer that is ideally suited to the fine art, proofing

The next generation of the Nocturn Nocturn with keys!

Epson has announced the Middle East launch of the new Stylus Pro 3880, a high-specification professional A2+ photo printer designed to offer quality and convenience in large format photo printing. Making use of Epson’s advanced fourth generation UltraChrome K3 with Vivid Magenta pigment inks, the Stylus Pro 3880 can deliver long lasting, quality large format prints in either black & white or in vivid color, making it an ideally suited photo printer for today’s generation of professional and amateur photographers.

The wildly popular Nocturn control surface now has keys! The Nocturn 25 gives you 25 synth-action keys, so you can record your favorite virtual instruments. And now, you’ve also got better visual feedback than ever. On top of having LED-ringed encoders and backlit buttons that give you instant information, the Nocturn 25 comes with Automap software that displays the entire control surface on your computer screen for easy big-screen viewing. It features 25 high-quality Fatar “Fast Touch” keys, complete with velocity sensitivity, aftertouch, and separate pitch/modulation wheels, for more expressive playing with the Nocturn 25.

With a uniquely small footprint the Stylus Pro 3880 is ideal for those with limited studio space and is fully equipped with all of the additional features that Epson users have become accustomed to, such as high speed connectivity with USB 2.0 and Ethernet.

Canon Middle East introduces the EOS 7 D Innovative technologies and intuitive build define a new photographic experience Canon Middle East today unveils the EOS 7 D digital SLR camera – a completely new design to meet the specific demands of photographers. Incorporating a new 18MP APS-C CMOS Sensor, developed by Canon, the EOS 7 D also features: Dual “DIGIC 4” processors to offer fast, high-quality performance in all light conditions, an ISO range expandable to 12,800 and continuous shooting at 8 frames per second – without the need for additional accessories.

Impressive technologies are matched by excellent build-quality designed with the photographer in mind – to create a whole new photographic experience.

During extensive development Canon went back to the drawing board, listening to photographers worldwide in order to design the EOS 7 D to meet their specific needs.

Commenting on the creation of the EOS 7 D, Mr Uchidoi, Group Executive of Photo

Products Group, Canon Inc. Japan said “We consulted over 5,000 photographers worldwide and asked them what they most wanted to see from a camera. Matching this insight with cutting-edge technology, we were able to develop a camera that truly gives photographers the versatile tool they require to experiment with their images.”

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New talented photographers awarded at UAE IMAGE 2009

1

Ahlam Mohammed Al Ahmed

2

Justine Armil

Three talented photographers were awarded at the annual Photography competition UAE IMAGES 2009 organized under the patronage of Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH).

UAE national Ahlam Mohammed Al Ahmed received the ďŹ rst prize (10,000 AED) while the Philippine national Justine Armil So came in the second place and received a SIGMA SD 14 KIT sponsored by M K Trading. The third prize winner from Oman Ahmed Al-Shukaili received an entry to photography workshop run by Gulf Photo Plus.

Winners were given their prizes by Abdulla Al Amiri, Director of Arts and Culture Department at ADACH hand over the prizes on Tuesday at a ceremony held at the Abu

3

Special Mention Ahmed Al-Shukaili

Abdulmalik Mohammad Bin Bosayes

Special Mention Mona Hameed Own Ali

Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) also he integrated the photo exhibition which displays participant’s works.

On the other hand three other photographers received special mention from the jury panel for their creative works. The photographers are Eman Abdulaziz Abdullah and Abdulmalik Mohammad Bin Bosayes from Saudi Arabia and Mona Hameed Own Ali from Bahrain.

Special Mention

Eman Abdulaziz Abdullah The event coincides with the International Marketing Communications Trade Show, SIM – Signage, Imaging and Media which took place from 18-20 October 2009 at (ADNEC).

UAE IMAGES act as a catalyst in connecting photographers with the regional marketing communications fraternity creating additional opportunities. The Competition seeks to highlight the importance of quality images in today’s advertising media.

UAE Images 2009 jury panel included: Sultan Obaid Bin Adi, Photo Editor at Abu Dhabi Media, Saeed Nasouri, Pro Photographer Abu Dhabi and Bader Al Nomani, Art Director of Emirates Photography Competition.

12 13

Meet Nayla Al Khaja With her debut Unveiling Dubai, Nayla had her first appearance as UAE’s first female filmmaker at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF).

S

ince then she has been establishing her name as filmmaker and convinced many critics with award winning productions like the short movie Arabana.

Media Production Magazine spoke to Nayla about Regional film festival, production and her future vision for the UAE and MENA movie industry.

MP: From a Higher Diploma in mass communication, later then to teaching illustration and computer skills at Dubai’s Woman College, all the way to earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and establishing the motion picture production company D7, we can say Nayla Al Khaja is a creative think tank. What moved you to take this path and cover almost all branches of creative industry and settle for filmmaking?

Nayla: I am naturally a very visual person and I enjoy painting people in motion, but film gives me the platform to express my hyper energetic nature because it is so intense and demanding. Where painting is a one mans job but film is 100 and I am attracted to the 100.

MP: We have visited you in your office in Dubai Media City, which was very inspiring

already, but I assume this is not the only place for you to find inspiration. Where do you get the input for your work?

Nayla: I get my inspirations from reality. The world we live in now, my past experiences other people I know their experiences and even strangers I see passing by just by looking at them you can create a story from them. That is the great part of filmmaking showing truth through creativity and reflecting reality.

MP: Your future plan for D7 is to become a full-fledged motion picture production company for documentary and feature films. How do you see the film industry in the Middle East and how do you see the future for undertakings such as Middle Eastern feature movies?

Nayla: Recently the middle East have been producing very promising films which a few

have had achieved returns on investments and I believe through particular film funds a film economy could immerge from this region based on many factors a world wide interest on middle eastern topics, fantastic climate for shooting all year round, many untold stories that have international appeal and sudden burst of interest of film business, from government and private bodies ( especially in the Gulf countries) and surprisingly a leniency towards censorship encouraging an openness towards screen writing.

MP: What do you think needs to be done to expose and promote young creatives in the Middle East?

Nayla: What would be great is if the government could have more grants for the young creative talent. I feel, if the government support it more, then you will see a number of young people get involved with more specialized arts programs. It’s like a domino effect when the government gives it more recognition, then there will be more film based events apart from the film festivals, these events will give a chance for networking opportunities to take place so creative people can meet on a regular basis, which sparks off a number of creative ideas, which can always give great exposure to young creative people and then lead to film funding.

MP: Unveiling Dubai was your debut at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), which marked you as the first U.A.E. independent film-maker. What happened after the event and how did it affect your career?

Nayla: I got much exposure from Unveiling Dubai and I will never forget it as my first main production in the UAE. It helped me get more well established in Dubai as a film producer. My career definitely went up from then onwards working on some great productions including my short film Arabana and also doing a high budget feature documentary High Goal for Rashid Al Habtoor, which was filmed in a variety of countries.

MP: Arabana is a very candid short movie that induced many discussions on several social networking websites. Beside the story and extraordinary production and

I got much exposure from Unveiling Dubai and ... It helped me get more well established in Dubai as a film producer.

14 15

REVIEW Online Training

To keep track on which tutorials you have already watched, Lynda has the function show recently viewed courses.

now working in partnership with some of the Arabana besides being a simple yet world’s major content creation companies, throat provoking story it required 35mm for essence to capture Technical Quality twofour54 that is open business. the fact that you will have to create this communication for yourself, whether in your company or within your circle of creative friends.

This gives you enough time to try out the material taught by the time the next video is buffered.

The sequence of the tutorials are organized very similar to a course program, with a logical running order to it. For beginners I would recommend to follow the given structure, so as not to miss out on small details that are relevant later in the course.

To keep track on which tutorials you have already watched, Lynda has the function Show recently viewed courses. This will help you check if you skipped a session in between that might be important for your learning progress.

the depth of the image the format, with a very they and are all in QuickTime high sound and video quality, which makes heaviness of the topic. watching them easy.

A nice feature about these videos is that

find us. join us. create with us. destination Abu Dhabi. +971 2 401 2454. twofour54.com The Course Material Images Left side: Shor Movie: Arabana

With its professional lecturers, Lynda.com offers a very high-end type of online training.

The language is easy to understand for beginners and non-native English speakers alike, which is, in my opinion, a big plus.

cinematography, we want to know more about the production technique. For example, why did you choose 35mm film as medium and not as many contemporary I noticed withmight otherchoose, online training libraries film-makers digital video? that theI have language used is either too difficult Nayla: always loved shooting on film, to understand because of the do heavy use to of even though many filmmakers choose technical that why not they everybody go digital terminologies and I understand do, I might be familiar thewill usecapture of dialects will always believewith, thator film the that might be difficult to understand from a great essence of the visual imagery and the phonetic perspective. clear crisp colors. Arabana besides being a

ignored in the region.

simple yet throat provoking story, it required The techniques demonstrated Lynda.com that 35mm essence to captureat the depth of are shown prepared so the image instantly and the on heaviness of projects the topic. learner35mm has the to that understand Ithe believe, canchance capture and I the sure lesson in digital a practical context and am with evolving so fast it this will increases35mm the learning experience. replace one day but till then I will

She won the Best Emirati

carry on enjoying it.

‘Arabana,’ is a mature work in black and white, focused on the disturbing aspect of child molestation, a topic often

filmmaker, Muhr Award in DIFF 2007.

Top Right Nayla as co-host on the reality show Paris Hilton BFF, 2009.

Inspiration

Lynda.com includes ayousection MP: In your productions use film, called HD or Inspiration.

Herechoose you the find Red. How do you rightcreatives medium explaining workflow and thus providing and wheretheir do you see the advantages and inspiration to in others. is a nice feature disadvantages theseItmediums? that shows that creative is not Nayla: It always dependsdesign on the lookonly of linked to computers, hardware and trying software the production and what we are to but also to to the people.

Yet itand does replace portray audience of not course the

As nice as the video and the sound quality is, there There is a downer.

The videos cannot be budget. is no point using film if you downloaded your computer for want to have onto a reality documentary lookyour and reference or would put onuse yourHD, ipod for example. instead you which will also You the havebudget to be by online the time to have cut half.all I used RED for High accessbecause to Lynda’s tutorials or alternatively Goal the client wanted to show the you can purchase Lynda. great colors and training catch allDVDs the from action and com directly. great mobility (which is harder to do on film) and bring it to a wide screen and RED does I chose useadvantages the onlineand version for the that well.toThe disadvantages simple fact that whendepend I want to about of the medium always on learn a variety of a specific tool weather, or application, I would have things budget, location, treatment, the computer on anyway.

Additionally aesthetics and output etc. the annual subscription of $250 is very reasonable as ityou grants full involved access to aingreat MP: Recently were the onlineHilton training library.

Paris reality show BFF, as a co-host.

Are you moving away from being behind Check www.Lynda.com the camera to the front ofand the choose camera? the option you to just keep Nayla: No, prefer I am definitely not learning! moving away from being behind the camera. My goal has always to be a film producer and then move into film directing, however, I feel it is always an advantage to be in front of the camera I get to learn and experience how others feel when they are in front of a camera, plus it was so much fun being on camera with Paris.

calling all content creators.

16 17

Interview with ďŹ lmmaker

Mohamed Al-Daradji

Synopsis: Set in northern Iraq in April 2003 – after Saddam Hussein’s regime has fallen - Son of Babylon depicts a harrowing but heartfelt journey through a troubled land by a young boy and his grandmother – each in search, respectively, of a missing father and son.

As the unlikely pair hitch rides with strangers and cross paths with fellow pilgrims on an all too similar quest, the story traces their journey from the mountains of the North to the sands of Babylon. And as the grandmother struggles to accept an awful truth, Ahmed finds himself retracing the footsteps of a father he never knew.

This is a journey that will not only connect them to the past, but will determine their lives forever…

M

edia Production caught up with filmmaker Mohamed Al-Daradji (Director, Son of Babylon) and the film’s British producer Isabelle Stead following the film’s recent successful premiere at the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi on October 9, 2009. Son of Babylon is Al-Daradji’s second fiction feature film shot in Iraq and has been a co-production between the U.K., France, Netherlands, the UAE, Qatar, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq.

MP: As with your first fiction feature Ahlaam, you mostly worked with nonprofessional actors in Son of Babylon too.

What guides your decision to do this?

MAD: Authenticity is very important to me within the context of dramatic, fictional films. Since Son of Babylon is based on true stories and real events and the lives of real people, it is important for me that this story is allowed to be transmitted in some way by ‘real people’ too. To have professional actors taking on these roles and ‘acting’ them out, would, for me, create a disconnect between me as the director and the protagonists as people. This can also create a gap between

the story and the audience. For me, there is more authenticity to the drama if ‘real people’ can access their personal histories to relate stories to others. I find also that having well-recognized, big-name actors playing roles can be a distraction for audiences sometimes.

MP: But there was one actor who looked familiar…

MAD: Yeah, that would be Bashir Al-Majed who played the character of Musa. He was also in my film Ahlaam. In certain cases, I find it can be constructive to work with actors whom I have gotten to know on previous projects too.

MP: After the MEIFF screening, you mentioned that the woman playing the role of Um Ibrahim was in some way relating her own, personal story. Can you tell us more about this?

MAD: Yes, this story is very much close to the heart of Shazada Hussein - the woman who portrays Um Ibrahim - because, in real life, she did actually lose her husband during a time of war and spent a lot of time trying to find him and discover what happened to him – similar to the situation of her character in the story. In fact, there is a scene in the film where we recreated the site of some mass graves and where the character of Um Ibrahim is mourning the loss of her son. Even though she was speaking in her native Kurdish tongue – and we could not

18 19

understand her exact words - the feeling was so intense that the whole crew was crying with her at that point.

MP: With your way of casting, are there any challenges in working with actors who have not had formal training?

MAD: Yes, there are. For starters, you have to pace the dialogue in the script closer to how a person will speak in real life. During our own shoot, for example, they sometimes could not remember all their lines so we had

Director’s Profile: Mohamed Al-Daradji Filmmaker Mohamed Al-Daradji studied Fine Art in Baghdad and Film & TV Production at the Media Academy Hilversem (Holland), before completing consecutive Masters Degrees in Cinematography and Directing at the Northern Film School in Leeds, England.

His first fiction feature shot in Iraq (Ahlaam) screened at over 125 international film festivals, received over 22 awards and represented Iraq for Oscar and Golden Globe consideration in 2007.

Together with Isabelle Stead and Danny Evans he is a co-founder of the U.K./Netherlands film production company Human Film.

to film some scenes over and over until they got it right. Or else they would be unable to speak the line how it was written in the script and, instead, do it in a way that was more comfortable for them. Basically, we had to sacrifice consistency so that the actors could relate to themselves within the story better.

MP: So you had some continuity problems I presume?...

MAD: That’s right.

Also, since nonprofessional actors are not accustomed to working in front of a camera, it was often the case that I would say “let’s rehearse this scene” while secretly giving a signal to roll camera and do the clapperboard at the end.

This was mainly because they were more relaxed when rehearsing than when the camera was rolling.

MP: How would you describe your style in aesthetic terms?

MAD: A mix of reality and the poetic… with the symbolic in the background.

MP: You recently screened excerpts of a film that is narratively related to Son of Babylon as part of “Cinema-in-Motion 5” at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain…

MAD: Indeed. We are currently in postproduction with In the Sands of Babylon, which goes deeper into the story of the missing man that Um Ibrahim and her grandson are searching for in Son of Babylon. In a way, it’s a sort of prequel to Son of Babylon and was mostly shot during the same time period in fact.

MP: Any other projects on the radar which we should know about?

MAD: I am very excited about a workshop project which our production company Human Film is running in cooperation with Iraq Al-Rafidain productions. It’s called Mobile Cinema and is aimed at building an infrastructure for the Iraqi film sector by offering training to talented young filmmakers. We also provide a platform in the form of a mobile cinema.

Typically, I love to be on set but we reached a decision quite early on in the process that my presence traveling with the indigenous cast and crew could complicate Interview with Son of Babylon producer matters for the production

Isabelle Stead MP: Son of Babylon was shot in Iraq. How was that experience for you as a British producer?

IS: Typically, I love to be on set but we reached a decision quite early on in the process that my presence traveling with the indigenous cast and crew could complicate matters for the production – just from the fact of me being a Western woman. However, my Human Film co-producer Danny Evans did travel with the production for some of the time and even recounts how at one stage of the journey the team reached a check-point 30 minutes away from an alleged Al-Qaeda stronghold.

MP: What kind of security was required for the cast and crew?

IS: The situation in the northern part of the country - in the mountainous areas and in the Kurdish areas - is relatively safe but security concerns escalate as you move south. So depending on where they were at any given time, the cast and crew of Son of Babylon were accompanied by either the Iraqi army or local police of the district they were filming in.

MP: Al-Daradji has filmed in Iraq before, so acknowledging the risks involved and

having to have a security detail must be part of what one expects when working there on such projects?

IS: In fact, the cast and crew of Mohamed’s first fiction feature filmed in Iraq (Ahlaam) weren’t so fortunate to have a security detail.

During that production, they actually got shot at and Mohamed was even kidnapped at one point. But even with the added security on Son Of Babylon, some of the hired crew eventually refused to come for the filming.

We went through 3 DOPs alone.

MP: You’ve been working with Al-Daradji steadily for over 4 years now. As a producer, what changes have you seen in him as a director on a day-to-day basis?

IS: I think how he approaches the entire process of filmmaking from script to finish

has developed and also the way he works with all creative partners across the spectrum. He’s very intuitive. Also, when we first started out he used to try and do everything himself. But now, he is fine to release a lot of production responsibilities to others and to focus more on ‘just’ being a director so to speak. So his trust in the process has grown overall I would say.

For a close-up look at the making of Ahlaam, check-out the soon-to-be-released documentary IRAQ: Love, War, God, Madness.

Producer’s Profile: Isabelle Stead Along with filmmakers Mohamed Al-Daradji and Danny Evans, Isabelle Stead is one of the co-founders of Human Film – a U.K./Netherlands film production company with a number of award-wining titles to its credit.

After 5 years of production experience in Los Angeles, Stead returned to her hometown of Leeds in England, where she joined a Masters program in film production at the Northern Film School. It was during her time at the NFS that she met her current business partners and fellow filmmakers Mohamed Al-Daradji and Danny Evans.

As producer of Al-Daradji’s films, Isabelle plays a key role in helping to restore the independent Iraqi cinema of today. www.humanfilm.co.uk

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FEATURE MOVIES FROM THE UAE Media Production talks to twofour54 intaj about the future of feature movies, documentaries and settling down as a foreign filmmaker in the UAE.

There is a clear trend for an increasing film industry in the Middle East. How does twofour54 see the future of feature film and documentaries in the UAE, and intaj’s role in growing the industry?

At twofour54, in line with Abu Dhabi’s cultural vision to grow and diversify its economy, our goal is to facilitate a sustainable media and entertainment industry in the Middle East and North African region. We are doing this by creating a community for Arabic content creation that will be a regional centre of excellence that is internationally renowned.

In terms of the platforms we cover we are looking to create content across television, radio, film, publishing, online, mobile,

music, gaming and animation and to do that a key part of twofour54’s vision for the future is harnessing the significant market potential of the region. Within the Arab world there are substantial opportunities for us to make this a reality; the region is home to some 300 million Arabs, 60% of which are under 25, many of whom have seen that the media and entertainment industry offers a viable career choice. twofour54 is creating the ecosystem that will allow the industry to flourish and develop, through its integrated pillar offering. These pillars include twofour54 tadreeb, the region’s premier vocational training academy aimed at upskilling and reskilling media industry participants. It does this through a range of courses tailored to the needs of the industry here in the region, training professionals either here in

indexing, cataloguing, and archiving of broadcast content, in addition to being able to broadcast from twofour54 itself.

It is not just facilities however which makes up the twofour54 intaj offering. We also have a dedicated team made up of qualified experts across each production discipline, from cameramen to lighting designers and technicians, and through the training and development opportunities offered by twofour54 we believe that twofour54 intaj will play a key role in bringing more local and regional talent into the industry.

Please tell us more about the freelance visas of twoFour54 and the advantages it offers...

The media production industry is not only reliant on talent, but flexible talent in particular which is crucial as so much of the work done in this industry is on a project basis. We are in the process of setting up the framework to our freelance visa solution, however the first phase will apply to technical crew including sound and video editors, camera operators, production engineers, special effects technicians and hair and make-up artists. These skilled operators will be able to apply for licenses as twofour54 freelancers.

Abu Dhabi or travelling to other locations to deliver courses – we recently developed and executed a course in Oman for the Muscat Press Agency. twofour54 ibtikar plays a key role in facilitating and incubating early stage Arab companies and Arabic creative talent through the provision of funding and support. This is done in two ways, ibtikar ventures providing investment support, and ibtikar creative lab which incubates creative talent through the provision of grant funding to take an idea from

origination through development into a sustainable proposition. twofour54 intaj, which recently launched, further integrates tadreeb and ibtikar by providing the equipment and expertise to make ideas come to life. twofour54 intaj’s world class facilities include 5 high definition studios ranging in size from 60 to 650 m2 that are equipped with the latest in premium quality production technologies, video editing, audio and graphics suites. twofour54 intaj also offers the region’s first media asset management systems for digital

We will be offering residence visas and freelancers will be able to work for twofour54 intaj or any of our partners which currently include CNN, Abu Dhabi TV and Baynounah TV.

What is your Future vision?

Our vision is simple. We want to establish Abu Dhabi as a regional centre of excellence for the media and entertainment content creation industry. twofour54 will become the creative hub in the Middle East by creating a thriving ecosystem for creative industries, and becoming a supportive home for the creative community.

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Abu Dhabi Report:

The Circle Conference (October 9-11, 2009)

Over the course of 3 days this autumn, the Abu Dhabi Film Commission (ADFC) hosted the Circle Conference 2009 – the third annual conference in this series of film industry events that has been held in Abu Dhabi since its inception in 2007.

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ssentially, the 2009 conference consisted of a series of daily panel discussions, networking events and keynote speeches from industry leaders that effectively brought together local and regional filmmaking talent, Hollywood producers and a score of other film industry professionals from across the Middle East (not to mention representatives from other international markets and territories including India, New Zealand, Australia and the U.K.) All of these gatherings were scheduled within the opening days of the Middle East International Film Festival, Abu Dhabi’s flagship film fest, and undoubtedly maximized the participants’ exposure to the ongoing screenings and other festival events.

Amongst the 40 or so invited panelists from all over the globe, there was comparatively

less representation from film industry professionals of Middle Eastern extraction.

But of those who were in attendance, there was a fairly broad cross-section of speakers on hand to offer advice and encouragement to the more local filmmakers and emerging regional producers in the crowd. Such speakers included Fadi Ismail (MBC Group Director of Services), independent filmmaker Amin Matalqa (director of the Jordanian feature Captain Abu Raed) and independent Kuwaiti producer Al-Zain AlSabah (Chairperson and CEO at Eagle Vision Media Group). Al-Sabah contributed to a discussion on ‘Women in Film’ chaired by the popular TV talkshow host Nashwa AlRuwaini; Matalqa encouraged filmmakers to search out stories that were lighter in feel than the typically melodramatic and emotionally heavy scripts offered by many

KNOW WHO Circle Conference

first-time Arab screenwriters and Fadi Ismail reminded everyone that MBC had already initiated a process that permitted its first low-budget Arabic feature to get made (namely Nawaf Al-Janahi’s low-budget drama The Circle).

SHASHA GRANT Opportunities for filmmakers to pitch scripts during the Circle Conference were also provided within the context of the muchcoveted Shasha Grant – a competitive prize that supplies the winner with $100,000 towards the development of a feature film that fulfills one or more of the following criteria: using the U.A.E. as a shooting location; focusing on subject matter that is set in the MENA (Middle East/North Africa) region; or having a member of the creative team as a resident of the Middle East or of Middle Eastern or North African descent.

Last year’s Shasha Grant winner, Moroccan helmer Hicham Ayouch, was present at the award ceremony and expressed his gratitude for the resulting production deal he eventually obtained with Fox International Productions for his film project Samba (which is scheduled to begin principal photography in Brazil next spring). This year’s Shasha Grant winner, Saudi-based

filmmaker Haifaa Al Mansour, shed tears as she accepted the award for her script Wajda - the story of a free-spirited 11 yearold Saudi girl coming of age in a restrictive society. Importantly, Al Mansour’s script was previously developed under the auspices of the Dubai International Film Festival’s Screenwriting Workshop (run by TorinoFilmLab) – thus demonstrating that synergistic funding and support mechanisms for Arab filmmakers in the region can truly make a difference to the development of new projects.

Interestingly, 5 out of the 6 Shasha Grant nominees this year were women – giving added credence to the Circle’s partial focus on Women in Film this time round. Amongst the elite group of female filmmakers who were competing for the 2009 Shasha Grant was Palestinian writer-director Annemarie Jacir. As runner-up, Jacir was awarded a trip to the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) to present her latest project When I Saw You.

THE HOLLYWOOD CONNECTION The primary attraction for most of these industry professionals to get together in Abu Dhabi seemed to be to learn more about the various ongoing and planned filmmaking initiatives in the region and also to better

Opportunities for filmmakers to pitch scripts during the Circle Conference were also provided within the context of the much-coveted Shasha Grant – a competitive prize that supplies the winner with $100,000 understand the creative elements and different forces at play in the distribution of Abu Dhabi’s wealth all round. Particular interest was directed towards the film production activities of Imagenation – the Abu Dhabi film production company that launched in September 2008 with a fund of $1 billion U.S. and which is now developing projects in collaboration with a number of entities, namely: the L.A.-based social action/film production progenitor Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Darfur Now, Syriana), London-based Hyde Park Entertainment (Dreamer, Bringing Down the House) and National Geographic. Reps from each of these companies were in attendance as was producer Walter Parkes of DreamWorks Pictures (Gladiator, Minority Report, Men in Black). As one half of a husband and wife team that has also been behind films like The Kite Runner and The Island – Parkes and his partner Laurie MacDonald have recently landed $10 million in development backing from Imagenation too.

Pictures: Article Cover page The Circle Conference 2009 panel Women in Film with (L to R) Nashwa Al-Ruwaini, Sheikha AlZain Al-Sabah, Chevonne O’Shaughnessy, Barbara Defina, Nayla Al Khaja and Deepa Mehta.

Top left Closing night ceremony of the Circle Conference 2009 with all the invited panelists. Recipient of the $100,000 Shasha Grant Haifaa Al Mansour stands center, holding her award statue.

Top right Panel

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KNOW WHO Circle Conference

We watch Hollywood films at the cinemas because that is almost all there is to go and see.

So even if we more or less enjoy the programming at the multiplexes, it’s not like we have a choice. being accepted for submission to the Arabic content division of Imagenation at present, only fiction projects.)

LOCAL vs. GLOBAL

Image Above: H.E. Mohammed Khalaf Al-Mazrouei, Director General of Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH), addresses guests at the 3rd annual Circle Conference in Abu Dhabi.

ARAB CONTENT CONCERNS During one Q &A session, a representative from Imagenation announced that the company had also opened an Arabic content division and invited filmmakers to drop by with their proposals and to pitch their projects in person. Although it was claimed that an “organic” approach was being taken with regard to connecting with Arab talent, the reality of following this somewhat freewheeling approach might well mean that non-local producers, directors and writers with good ideas and scripts get inadvertently left out. In short, it seemed that a formal application process for the Arabic content division was not yet up and running - though many regional filmmakers quietly expressed a desire to see that happen and for there to be more transparency in the matter overall.

(Note to documentarians: it was confirmed also that documentary projects are not

While there was a mild sense of frustration expressed by both local and regional filmmakers about the prohibitive costs of producing films in the U.A.E. – made worse by the relatively small number of production grants available to indie filmmakers throughout the Arab world all of the Abu Dhabi-based film and media execs insisted that schemes suited to local and regional filmmakers were less in the offing than might currently appear: Along this line, Abu Dhabi Film Commission director David Shepheard encouraged filmmakers to keep an eye out for further news and updates on ADFC grant schemes by going to the ADFC website (www.film. gov.ae) and Wayne Borg of Abu Dhabi-based content creation hub twofour54° reminded listeners that the purpose of initiatives such as ibtikar:ventures and ibtikar:creative lab were designed to help support innovative Arab entrepreneurs and up-and-coming Emirati media creatives as well.

EDUCATION Overall, advances in education at all levels both within and outside of the film industry (from audiences to artists to investors to government officials) - were seen by many as being crucial to improving local conditions for emerging filmmakers and the nascent U.A.E. film industry. Additionally, a requisite shifting of attitudes toward filmmaking as a “respectable career” in the Gulf region was

also seen by many to be a key factor holding back the development of talent in the U.A.E. and elsewhere in the GCC countries.

To counter this notion, however, there was a significant turn-out by young Emirati female filmmakers from the Dubai Women’s College. Certainly, if this group of attentive and well-spoken women are anything to go by, one could easily believe that there was no shortage of enthusiastic film students on hand in the U.A.E. already. According to Shammi Samano, their accompanying tutor, the group are currently working on their first feature and their talents are being well proven.

As one of the DWC students commented, being female has its advantages: “What’s funny is that with an all-female film crew you’ll find that we will take on any role to accomplish the goal of making the movie – camera, costume design, make-up, director’s assistant, whatever. But with the guys, they just want to be directors!” Another telling remark from one of the DWC filmmakers came during one of the Q & A sessions: “We watch Hollywood films at the cinemas because that is almost all there is to go and see. So even if we more or less enjoy the programming at the multiplexes, it’s not like we have a choice.”

When later asked by a panelist if they would actually go to see feature films made by Emirati filmmakers (i.e. films with stories that reflected local concerns and issues), the response from the young group of women was made immediately clear...by their resounding applause. Hollywood take note!

Talal Al-Muhanna

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MANGA goes Local

Q&A Qais M. Sedki

Managing Director - Pageflip Publishing

What is your creative background?

I’ve always had an interest in creative content from character design, to general design and game design as well as an interest in animation and creative writing. Having said that, my background is as far from creativity as you can get! I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Suffolk University in Boston and a Master’s in Business Administration from the American University of Sharjah.

As far as work experience goes, I worked in the IT department of Dubai Police for 7 years before a short 1 year experience at Emaar Propoerties’ IT department before deciding to leave the realm of employment and try my hand at entrepreneurship and focus on producing the regions’ first original content mangas in classical Arabic.

How did you come up with the idea and what is the message you want to deliver?

The idea came to me after I realized that I was not really working in a field that I was really passionate about (Information Technology) and decided to discover what would be my ideal work environment.

During the discovery exercise, I listed many things that I really am interested in and decided to combine two things together to try to solve a perceived problem thereby making sure that what I do is both fun for myself and beneficial to others. The two things I chose to combine are a love of reading and a profound interest in Japanese

>>>

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culture. The problem I’m trying to play a role in tackling is the perceived distance between the youth in the Middle East and reading.

My presenting content that is interesting and well produced, I’m hoping to entice children and young adults who might not be regular readers to give reading a second chance and hopefully convince them that it is indeed a very engaging and enjoyable experience.

When did you start the project “Gold Ring”?

The initial idea of Gold Ring came to me over 5 years ago but it took a lot of preparation and ground work before the actual production could start. The production process took approximately 2 years.

Can you tell us a bit about the production and creative process?

I initiated the process by writing several one page synopsis of potential storylines and then thought about which of these I would like to pursue. After eventually selecting Gold Ring’s storyline, I started developing the character biographies by determining simple elements such as age, gender, and nationality of each character as well as trickier elements such as general disposition, character type, and values that the characters stand for.

>>>

The initial idea of “Gold Ring” came to me over 5 years ago...

The values in particular played an important part in trying to send positive, reinforcing messages to the targeted young readership. Now that I had the “actors”, all I had to do was work on the specifics of the storyline by writing the narrative of events. The next step was artist selection, during which I had the great opportunity to have the work accepted by my first choice, the very talented Japanese manga duo of Akira Himekawa. The artists start by sketching out several poses of the characters to see if the look matches what I had in mind.

I must say that they did an excellent job capturing the feel I was looking for. Many characters remained exactly as they were first illustrated, with very few exceptions which had some adjustments made to them. After the characters’ looks were finalized, Himekawasensei then took the narrative and created the first rough draft of the the story in full storyboard format.

During this phase, the artists’ vast experience in writing was put to great use as they suggested how to make the story much more engaging by rearranging the order of events to maintain the readers interest as well as suggesting some very creative additions to the storyline. The content went back and forth between the UAE and Japan several times before we had the content finalized and they could start producing the final artwork.

How did you establish the connection to your creative team in Japan?

My childhood friend’s mother is a Japanese citizen and was instrumental in helping me find the initial contacts in Japan. Once she helped me find the right people in Japan, I continued to interact with them directly via email when possible as well as several visits to Japan during the production of the manga.

Who writes the stories?

The stories are initially written by myself, but incorporate important suggestions by the illustrators as they have a lot of experience working with manga storylines.

Are you planning on creating a movie version of our mangas?

I would like to make the transition to animated series at some point in time, but I would like to time it properly as not to conflict with my interest to endear reading to young children in the UAE and the Middle East. I believe that people tend to take the path of least resistance, and if they are given the choice of book or movie that many might choose to watch the movie instead. That would be counterproductive to what I am trying to achieve.

Media Production Magazine

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PHOTOSHOP Video Effects with Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended

Kuwait-based filmmaker Omar Al-Masab used Adobe Photoshop Extended to create the animation for his award-winning film Naked Human – which the jury of the 2nd Gulf Film Festival in Dubai appreciated for its “superior production values and beautiful use of wide scope technology”.

In this tutorial Omar takes us through the process step by step, explaining the choices he made on his own project along the way.

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As the animation timeline will not appear by default in Photoshop Extended, go to [Window > Animation].

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Open Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended.

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Create a New Document and select Full HD 1080p settings under the Film & Video Preset. For Naked Human, I went with a 4K 2.56 Scope Finish at a resolution of 3840 x 1500.

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With the animation timeline now activated, select the Option button on the upper-right-hand corner of the animation timeline window.

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Select “Document Settings”.

Specify the desired duration of your animation. What we see here is 0;12;12;00 which is equivalent to “Hours;Minutes;Seconds;Frames”. The last field (“Frames”) is variable and

linked to the “Frame Rate” option which, in turn, depends on which delivery format is required for the project (e.g. 24fps for a film out or 25fps for a PAL out). For Naked Human I chose a frame rate of 5 fps – which gave the animation a slightly surreal look.

Now create a New Blank Video Layer by selecting [Layer > Video Layers > New Blank Video Layer]. Tip: It is preferable to have a dedicated layer for each animated object.

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Select your layer, lock all other layers (so you don’t draw on the wrong layer) and start drawing your first frame.

Go to “Window” and select “Brushes” [Window > Brushes]. For Naked Human I used a small brush with 50% hardness.

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To advance to the next frame in the animation timeline use the “Select Next Frame” button – found in the lower-left-hand corner. This can also be used to go back a frame.

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Since the new frame is blank (and you probably want to reference the last frame you drew) click on the picture of the Onion under your timeline. Doing so will reveal your last frame but with a 50% opacity.

Did You Know?...

“Onion skinning” is a 2D computer graphics term for a technique used in creating animated cartoons and editing movies to see several frames at once. This way, the animator or editor can make decisions on how to create or change an image based on the previous image in the sequence.

In traditional cartoon animation, the individual frames of a movie were initially drawn on thin onionskin paper over a light source. The animators (mostly “inbetweeners”) would put the previous and next drawings exactly beneath the working drawing, so that they could draw the ‘in between’ to give a smooth motion. In computer software, this effect is achieved by making frames translucent and projecting them on top of each other.

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In order to have greater control in compositing programs like Adobe’s After Effects and Apple’s Shake, export each layer separately. Deselect every layer including the white background layer. For Naked Human I used Nuke (from The Foundry) for the compositing.

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Export as an Image Sequence (using TIFF) and select Save Transparency if you want to retain only the drawn lines and utilize the results in a compositing program.

Be sure to choose the ZIP compression too, so you don’t end up with massively heavy files.

If you don’t compress, each frame can weigh up to 40MB instead of the much lighter 0.8MB if you use the ZIP function.

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You are now ready to export your finished masterpiece!

Go to [File > Export > Render Video]. I exported image sequences with the transparency intact.

For those of you who want a video out instead of an Image Sequence workflow, just select QuickTime Export.

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One of the best compression options for a video workflow is the Animation Codec. If you need the Transparency intact select “Millions of Colors +” (the + sign is for Transparency).

Omar Al-Masab German-born Kuwaiti national Omar Al-Masab holds a BS in Civil Engineering and is the man behind visual effects house OFilms. A self-taught filmmaker, Al-Masab has worked on several short films in Kuwait (including as DOP) and has done visual effects for MBC’s first feature film The Circle. In addition to being selected for the Short Film Corner at Cannes, his 12 minute black & white animation Naked Human will screen at the upcoming 6th Dubai International Film Festival in December 2009.

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PHOTOSHOP Movie Posters in Photoshop

IN THIS TUTORIAL WE SHOW YOU HOW TO CREATE AN INTENSE MOVIE POSTER USING PHOTOSHOP ONLY!

Image composition is one of the main strengths of Photoshop. Where destructive editing used to be the only way to create lighting and color effects, adjustment layers give you the same effects without changing the orignial picture.

For this tutorial I want to create an intense movie poster, using 2 stock images, a couple of adjustment layers and some brush work using a Wacom Cintiq 21 inch graphics tablet to create an appropriate poster for an imaginary movie.

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Start with using the largest image of a foggy forest you can get. Normally, we would be working on an A4 or A3 canvas with the resolution of 300 dpi, but as usual the canvas size is determined by how large you want to print a design. I chose 24 cm by 28 cm, since the poster design will be for Media Production Magazine.

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Now we will add a series of Adjustment Layers to change the appearance of the photo. You can ďŹ nd them under Layer > New Adjustment Layer. The ďŹ rst adjustment layer would be Hue and Saturation, so de-saturate the image a bit till it looks somewhat like the forest image above.

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Next, create a Curves Adjustment Layer to add more shadow to the picture.

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Now, add Selective Color Adjustment Layer, to enhance the amount of cyan for the shadows. To do so, click on the drop down menu of the selective color panel and choose blacks.

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From now, I will use the graphics tablet to draw a light source to the image. Start with a large brush with 0% hardness to get a blurry light effect and use a very light cyan color.

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After doing that, erase the parts of the light source that overlap the trunks of the trees. This will move the light behind the trees.

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Render Difference Clouds as shown in step 7.

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From the layer menu, click on the Add Layer Mask icon. Press D on your keyboard, then go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Then go to Filter > Render Difference Clouds. This will hide portions of the glow in an irregular, cloud-like manner.

Create a new Layer and draw some fog in a very light cyan. Use a lower brush opacity this time for a subtle effect.

Add a stronger cyan glow on a separate layer, as shown above.

Render Difference Clouds as shown in step 7.

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Anamorphic lens flares appear from artifical light sources (such as fog lights) add contrast and a focal point to the design, thus becoming a key element in telling the story of this poster.

Use a small, soft brush on low Opacity, hold Shift and draw a light streak from side to side that converges with the light source.

Add more thin lines on the same Layer, by using the pen tool in vector mode to create a more dramatic lens flare effect.

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Now, draw some white into the selection to give the light source more brightness.

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Use apple or command +t to transform the lens flare. I stretched it across the image to enhance the effect.

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Apple or command click on the layer with the lens flare

lines to select layer content. If you need to re-adjust your selection, redefine the edges using the Magic Wand or Smart Select tool.

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Add some more darker strokes around the brightest areas of your main light source, to create a more dramatic effect.

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Select your lens flare with the darker strokes as shown in step 14 and again add some white color.

After doing that, create some very thin white lines with a harder brush to add some contrast to the lens flare. To create a homogenic feel to this composition, add a selective color adjustment layer, as shown in step 4. This time, you don’t choose black form the drop down menu, but cyan and boost the cyan and magenta value, but don’t press OK yet.

Now select green, boost cyan, magenta and black, and lower the value for yellow.

After that, select Black and White with green in the same Selective Color Adjustment Layer and boost the green value.

Now you can press OK. But there is one more thing. Select this Adjustment Layer in your Layer Panel and change its blend mode to Color Dodge, and you’re done.

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Now, you have to create 4 more Adjustment Layers with the adjustments shown above and you’re done with your background image.

The major work is done now.

We adjusted the colors of the forest, created a light source and adjusted the lighting of the whole image using the brush tool.

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Open now the other motive of the poster, in this case the samurai ďŹ ghter.

Select him using any selection tools you like to work best with (I used a combination of Smart Select tool and Pen tool) to delete the background.

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Go to Image-> Adjustment -> Brightness and Contrast, to give the fighter a more dramatic lighting that matches the lighting we created for the background.

Darken the parts that are highly exposed to simulate a light source form the back.

Do that using the Burn Tool.

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Place the fighter onto your background. I faced a problem here, because the background has the light source from the left, and the fighter has the light source form the right so I just flipped him horizontally to fit the image’s lighting.

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Create a new layer and add some blue color with a soft brush.

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Select the layer with where you just drew the blue spots and change the blend mode to Overlay.

Create a Motion Blur with an angle of 0 degrees.

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Create a Motion Blur with an angle of 180 degrees, to achieve the lens- flarey effect.

Et voila you are done.

Create the movie title, using the Type Tool and make two copies of the Layer.

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Heterogeneous Pockets: One foot in Kuwait Filmmakers in Kuwait are few. Experimental ďŹ lmmakers in Kuwait are invisible or anonymous.

The spirit of the avant-garde is embodied in the latter’s authorless documentary narratives available to the population of Kuwait (and the rest of the world) via new media.

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t is problematic for the majority of the western educated Kuwaitis to continue in the cinematic traditions born before them.

For example, experiencing the Middle East with one foot in London and one in Kuwait, one can come to appreciate how conflicted the modes of communication are between those two ways of life. This conflict exists not because of the lack of an attempt to communicate, but because it is challenging for either ‘ways of thinking’ to translate discourse relevant to one another.

Communication relies on the ability of both parties to find points of experience through which they can understand each other. This is not a question of translation, but a question of Translation. The way one approaches a narrative in London does not translate in Kuwait.

They are at once close to and far away from the regions historical challenges, ongoing political struggles and cultural movements.

This torturous relationship with their own culture gives them a unique perspective.

This presents itself as a state of ‘disconnectedness’. This painful disconnectedness is what allows them to be at the forefront of any crucial and relevant contemporary discourse because it allows them to see the character of their society and culture. This state of being is one in which the contemporary storytellers are forced to give themselves up to their own acts of Translation.

The Political Economy of Heterogeneous Interventions

Many of the Western educated Kuwaiti filmmakers are passionate creatives with a painful advantage. Giorgio Agambin would define this as ‘contemporariness’. This puts them in a unique position of Translator.

Recent interventions and movements have highlighted film production in Kuwait, but this recognition or ‘legitimisation’ by socalled ‘first’ cinema has created barriers to the potentiality of experimentation in Kuwait. This trade off seems inevitable.

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KNOW WHO Heterogeneous Pockets

What is relevant here for filmmakers in Kuwait is to cast aside the pseudocontemporariness of Hollywood style cinema; It may serve to drive subversive art into silence, or can be a tool to foster new ways of telling the disparate narratives of Kuwait and the surrounding regions.

The new Kuwaiti filmmaker is able to traverse the glittering screens of sensationalization and make discursive moves that incorporate political and cultural critiques, thereby amplifying alternative narratives of the region. By not succumbing to the superficiality of the predominant Hollywood mentality, the new Kuwaiti filmmaker can reinvigorate the spirit of film as subversive art in the spirit of Khalid Al Siddiq’s Bas Ya Bahar (1971), an unflinching socio-cultural critique that to many Kuwaitis has not lost its contemporariness.

What is relevant here for filmmakers in Kuwait is to cast aside the pseudocontemporariness of Hollywood style cinema; designate the predictability of it all to the mainstream temple of the moving image, the environment wherein it can take comfort surrounded with likeminded anaesthetized bodies, and advance with the spirit of the avant-garde so as to allow continuing growth, questioning and experimentation. Heterogeneous Pockets are evident in Kuwait, silent but audible, creating their own spaces and outlets, or subverting existing channels to better serve their new ways of telling.

For more information on experimental film in Kuwait or to contribute go to http://www. mapp-kuwait.org

KNOW HOW Directing Actors

DIRECTING ACTORS T

he actor on set or location is not particularly interested in the director’s shot list or where the camera is going to be placed or moved.

Instead he or she needs to know: 1.

2.

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4.

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What does my character want to do at this moment in time and why?

What is my environment? Not only where we are shooting but how do I (the character) feel about being there?

What do I do NOW to get what I want?

Is someone or something trying to stop me?

Why is getting what I want important to me?

If you, the director, address these questions right off the bat with your actors, he or she can begin the creative process. The actor needs to know what you want the audience to discover about the character in this moment in time so that he or she can choose to show you specific behavior to communicate it.

The storyboard you draw in pre-production shows what the shots will look like when edited together in continuity. If in your preparation, you draw a tight close-up of someone saying “I love you,” and shoot only that line of dialogue without the dialogue preceding or following it, you risk not giving the actor any emotional run-up to the line, and no opportunity to react to the other actor’s response. Acting is reacting.

In chopped-up and pasted-together film making where the director follows the storyboard religiously, the pieces may all fit together but there is rarely any naturalness and spontaneity to the performance.

35mm film negative is enormously expensive and no director wishes to waste it by shooting camera angles that he or she thinks he may not use. And yet, as every director who has ever sat in a cutting room assembling a film soon learns—what you think you wanted to show is rarely what you end up showing.

shooting this way is two-fold: it gives you and the editor the possibility of shaping a performance and changing the timing through the manipulation of action and reaction—something which cannot be done if there is only one angle or one take covering the dialogue.

The great advantage of the digital era is the low cost of the “negative.” You can now breakdown your shot list into a long series of actions with a logical dramatic and emotional beginnings and ends, and cover all the dialogue these beads of action suggest from the beginning to end in master (long), close shot and close-ups.

Most important of all, classic coverage, as the great directors of Hollywood’s golden age used it, gives the actors the possibility of creating a performance organically, exactly as they do in the theater.

...‘ownership’ of one’s personal Although a great majority of this coverage will never be used, the great advantage of image in China than in Europe or theyour States…

You can now breakdown shot Basically, someone list into a long series ofifactions with doesn’t stop you filming a logical dramatic and emotional can to be beginnings and ends,him andyou cover allexpect the dialogue ablesuggest to use itfrom in your these beads of action the project without(long), the worry beginning to end in master close of getting sued shot and close-ups. in future!

It is not only the shot list or the storyboard that make a film; it is what the actors do in the moment, often spontaneously and unexpectedly, that brings your film to life. by: Norman B. Schwartz

NORMAN B. SCHWARTZ is currently on the faculty of The New York Film Academy in Abu Dhabi. He teaches acting, directing and writing for NYFA schools world-wide in Manhattan, Spain, Italy and Hungary. He began teaching after a forty-year career as a sound editor and director in Hollywood and Rome. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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MEDIA ARTS, PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE: HATAI An Interview with Turkish Artist and filmmaker Aysegul Epengin

S

ynaesthesia in the arts is an organic phenomenon that is presenting practicing artists with experiential outlets for their new narratives.

Experimenting with new media and moving image creates the space for expressions and crossovers that allow for a marriage of traditional and new media arts.

This can be described as Media Arts, Philosophy and Practice. It is lines and movements away from representation and towards multiple significations. In the work of filmmaker Aysegul Epengin, this presents itself as a new documentary narrative. Her latest work can be described as a cultural resistance project, one that subverts new media outlets to promote traditional art forms.

Aysegul Epengin is Turkish artist, teacher and filmmaker currently researching and practicing in the UK. Aysegul has been writing and directing short films for over twelve years. She has worked in Turkish

cinema producing cultural commentaries like the documentary on electronic music in Turkey “Club Scene Istanbul”. Aysegul has now moved towards a new documentary narrative in her latest project “Hatai”.

MP: What is your creative background?

Aysegul: I’ve been a filmmaker for more then 12 years. My background is in fine Art, Cinema and TV. MP: Is your ethnicity expressed in your moving image narratives?

Aysegul: “Hatai” focuses on specific flower patterns in the Turkish decorative art. This

Islamic art does not use western three dimensional perspective traditions, so I could use a computer and also get away from using normal western traditions of three-dimensional perspective. patterns are used everywhere in Turkish art but they are not recognized as an art format in the Western art history.

Some personal issues made me interest in Hatai as a subject. Being in a foreign country, feeling of being foreign, missing my own culture, and feeling hemmed in.

All of these feelings came together to make me want to exert my independence by expressing my cultural identity. I brought this traditional art to Britain and used it for a new purpose. This purpose was to investigate my personal issues of living abroad. It became a cross-cultural experience as well.

MP: Who or what are you influenced by?

Aysegul: Ben Laposky, pioneered the field of electronic computer generated images in the 1950s. He worked with Oscilloscopes and Sine Wave generators to let his machines create beautiful patterns. In my own work, I too often let the computer combine and blend various images to create the work. In my use of found materials I am also influence by previous artists. Man Ray, for example “Obstruction”, the original material was a dress hanger. But he combined many of them, hanging them together and they became something else. Man Ray’s work was in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades. Duchamp created three-dimensional ‘collages’ from ordinary ‘found’ objects, including a famous Renaissance painting that he changed the face.

MP: Where do you find inspiration?

Aysegul: Colours, the underwater world, many different things…art films, friends, my culture and its artistic traditions.

Islamic art represents the spirit of objects and beings, not their material qualities. Today artists choose 2-dimensional stylization to represent these forms and totally reject the exact imitation of nature. Much Islamic art emphasizes geometrical patterns inspired by nature, but it does not imitate it. I believe western art investigates behind the art and purposes, but Islamic art did not need to, and it gives us a kind of freedom.

MP: What are you trying to do with your art?

Aysegul: The aim of this project is to remind us of our traditional art existence, making them accessible in electronic data and introducing them to young generations who are involved with the digital age’s way of life.

Digital media contemporary art productions are generally futuristic formats with new inventions. Also they have cubist format and are often far away from soft deigns. Hatai project does other way around and calls back traditional (old) formats today and looks for a space in the 21st century.

MP: How did you approach developing and producing your documentary film short?

Aysegul: Across two years I kept an archive of video and images gathered as part of the project. I absorbed them and lived with them for a long time.

MP: How do you think your work relates to established thoughts on art and art forms?

Aysegul: Islamic art does not use western three dimensional perspective traditions, so I could use a computer and also get away from using normal western traditions of three-dimensional perspective.

Film Shorts: HATAI KOPYA (COPY) IŞIK (RADIANCE) PROLOGUE/ EPILOGUE THE EXPERIMENT CHRISTMAS PRESENT BUTTERFLY MAKE MINE MILK WEDDING SHOTS

MP: What tools did you use to produce your works?

Aysegul: I use found materials, digital media technology (Digital video camera, Photoshop, Processing, MPEG Streamclip, Apple-QuickTime and Final Cut Pro) to create a new form of design and bring them into a new dimension. The work is displayed using DVD players, Video projectors and surround sound systems.

MP: What are your future plans?

Aysegul: I work intuitively, so I can’t really predict what I will do further in the future.

But if the Hatai project gets good feedback I may produce a second part that focuses only on the Rumi motifs.

The Hatai Project has been accepted for the 2010 Istanbul European City of Culture, You can find out more about Aysegul Epengin’s film shorts at http://www.ad-production. co.uk/hatai.html

By Nada Alshammari

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Super High Definition Camera

There has been much discussion on how to properly light and expose the RED camera sensor.

This article will focus on some of the things you should do and watch out for when you are shooting with the RED camera.

T

he RED camera system uses a proprietary single chip 4K CMOS sensor called the MYSTERIUM. This sensor is the same size as 35mm film so it allows for use of 35mm lenses (PL, NIKON, CANON or IMS mount systems). It is similar to the sensors that are found in Digital SLR still cameras except that it captures at 24 or 30 frames per second, and when cropped to 2K windowed mode, can capture up to 120 frames per second.

is stored in a RAW format so as extraction algorithms improve so does your footage and finally your looks are not ‘baked in’ to the RAW files, they remain separate and may be changed at any point.

When recording, the camera records to either RED DRIVE (320 gig proprietary raid drive) or to Compact Flash card (currently 16 or 8 GB). The RED records 4K raw data to these drives using a wavelet based compression scheme.

Remember though that RED is not HD. Nor is it film. It might be best described as a SUPER HIGH Definition digital cinema camera. I like to call it a portable 4K telecine machine myself. RED seems to be a blend of using what you know, seeing how it responds and coming up with the correct strategies for exposure.

However, the big advantages of shooting RED are the 35mm depth of field to your image, a 4K (4096 pixel wide) image is recorded (4 times the size of a 2k film scan), the image

RED has also recently introduced Build 16 of the camera firmware. This is significant because this build makes some firmware improvement to the camera’s imager and

You should always add some blue to at least one of your light sources to activate the blue channel in the sensor.

also introduced the REDspace color space.

Many of the principles discussed in this article apply to Build 15 and Build 16 but some things are improved in BUILD 16.

It is also important to note that RED has not changed the rating of the sensor. This remains constant at 320 ASA. It is also important to know that the RED camera’s sensor is also DAYLIGHT balanced at 5000 Kelvin. This is significant because it means that the camera prefers daylight sources and will yield the sharpest images with daylight balanced sources like LED and daylight balanced fluorescent sources. This is not to say that you can not shoot with RED in tungsten light, but you should always add some blue to at least one of your light sources to activate the blue channel in the sensor. This will help to reduce the overall noise of the image. For example you might use a quarter blue on the backlight and keep the key at a warmer color temperature.

Generally, I have found that all cameras with CCD chips perform better (slightly sharper images) under daylight lighting conditions. The RED is no exception.

The RED also offers many digital tools to help you nail exposure. There are several assists build into the camera to help you along with your light meter. I still use an

old dial-up light meter and it is a great tool, but I like to combine it with some of the tools built into the RED. The image histogram is a great tool for anyone who is really comfortable with DSLR imaging, to help you understand where your exposure is. You generally want a nice wide histogram when you are exposing because this gives you the most amount of room to maneuver in post. I use the histogram in conjunction with the RED stop lights, an RGB representation of which color channels are clipping. The highlight focus assist is also a great tool because it gives you a monochrome image which is a really nice way to see the latitude of the scene. RED’s spot meter is always rated at 320 ASA (the sensor’s rating) and it gives a reading from one to 100 IRE anywhere in the frame. This is a nice way to check for the amount of latitude you are getting in the image.

When the false color mode is activated, it looks like you are looking through the eyes of The Predator from the Predator movie.

It’s a zone color system superimposed over the image. If you are in the pink, you are overexposing the sensor.

But what about image aesthetics? This is a very important point. We all have used

various terms to describe motion picture images, perhaps the favourite being “filmic.”

For ages we hated or loved the “video look”, but where does RED fit in? It’s a digital sensor, which technically makes it “video”, but with the compression schemes and good lighting techniques the RED images can be very filmic. I have noticed that the RED rolls of the highlights more the way a film stock does. In REDSpace, the dark to shadow or highlight detail is more like film in how it blows out. The sensor itself captures linier data but it might be the wavelet compression that helps “draw” an image that feels right.

People have made the RED look like a tack sharp regular old video camera as well, so what is the trick to getting that “film look” with RED? There is simply no particular aesthetic to RED. It looks most like 35mm film, but not identical. It’s a digital format that has a very organic look to it.

Perhaps the most important thing to do with the RED when you first get your hands on it is TEST. I can say that I did not take the RED out on any shoots without going over it with a fine-toothed comb. The menus are deep and the combination of settings and the language can be mesmerizing. RED has made a tool that is very customizable with access to ALL LEVELS of menu. There is no “safe mode” so how things are configured is very important. This is what makes testing so important. While it can be configured to be “run and gun,” the RED is a sophisticated tool, with many film-style dialogs. If you are not a DP who is used to this, it can be daunting but also very exciting!

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Code my what?!

Codecs will never leave you alone.

Codecs will haunt you for life if they had the chance to.

I KNOW THEY HAUNT MINE.

I

indulged in a self-pampering dive session last weekend and emerged from the water thinking “ah, this is life”. But my joyous moment was short-lived since there it was ‘a codec in waiting’. I had offered to help the diving instructor’s friend with some video editing consultation. He had a strange file format, with multiple encodings and had already switched three editing applications.

So much for the weekend!

Luckily, Apple had in fact found us all disgruntled editors a solution in April 2007 with the launch of the Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 422 (HQ). The two in a nutshell are standard and high definition lossy video compression formats respectively for use in post-production. What makes them so desirable is that they are intraframe only codecs and offer superior quality at a relatively low bandwidth.

Better yet, in 2008, Apple released a free ProRes Quicktime Decoder for both Mac and Windows that allows playback of ProRes files on Quicktime player. Simply put, you could test fire videos with clients without going through the dirty business of explaining why on earth they called it a ‘quicktime movie yadiya’.

But what if some more codecs, such as these, joined the family and catered to specific editorial needs? Well, that is precisely what happened with the new Final Cut Studio release.

Apple introduced three codecs for the ProRes Family (and yes this is how they are to be referred to - like a cult with a predesigned following): Apple ProRes (Proxy), Apple ProRes (LT) and Apple ProRes 4444. We will discuss these codecs in detail in this article, however I will avoid being too technical as the entire purpose is to be able to understand the codec well enough before you read the white paper. And yes, please do read the white paper even though I will be referring to it regularly.

So What Does the Family Offer?

You are already aware that you are an individual with strengths different from your parents and your children. However, in all its grandeur, the uniqueness does have a vertex point where similarities between members becomes supremely evident. Such is the same with the ProRes Family. They have a very specific purpose and are not afraid to tell you so.

Referring to the white paper, all members of the family provide a combination of multistream, real time editiing performance with stunning visual quality at reduced data rates. More importantly so, the videos can be encoded in any of these formats whilst maintaining their full resolution whether it be SD, HD or 2K. Now that is super cool!

In an extremely simple example, if you’re working on offline files and keyframe some motion properties, you can be assured that the animation will not go berserk on you once you work with the real files. Again, this is just one possibility with many more others.

The reason the ProRes codecs give us the reduced data rates is simple: Utilization of the Variable Bit Rate encoder - using fewer bits on frames that would not benefit from encoding at a higher data rate. My favourite way of explaining this is: If you are running up and downhill, you are likely to cut down your physical speed when running downhill because you don’t need as much speed. Similarly, when running uphill (a frame that absolutely needs higher encoding) you will increase your speed. As a result, you do not use up al your energy and hence ready for another lap! - think good visual quality and small file size.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, you must understand that ProRes codecs offer intra-frame encoding, as mentioned earlier.

This is essential because several other codecs offer the Variable Bit Rate option however most resort to temporal compression (for detailed discussion check this magazine’s archive on the web) which in simple words can make editing a living hell - if not for you then at the very least your process that has to generate i and b predictive frames each-time a cut lands on a non-full frame.

Cutting to the chase, this means that with ProRes, each frame is encoded and decoded independently, allowing the processor to use or discard frames as per your editing decision. It is like having a series of recycle bins and tossing plastic, paper and glass into respective bins as opposed to dumping all sorts of junk in one place and having some poor machine operator in Al Ain and Fujairah do the sorting.

In summary, the ProRes family is cool and you should socialize with them often because they offer superior image quality at reduced data rates by use of variable bit rates. Additionally, your video will retain its full resolution and each frame with function independently.

Why Are these Properties Important?

Ever had a smart salesman almost convince you to buy “DVD quality” camera? Oh yea, well alert alert, DVD is compressed and that’s not it. It is very very compressed so you’re losing information even before you have started. Even funnier is when they try selling you those phones that record “Full HD” and you’re thinking “Wow so I don’t need to shell out more tan 5 grand to get awesome images”. Alarms BELLS! I am all out for new media and the use of the smallest piece of gadget to create a stunning masterpiece so don’t get me wrong. All I am saying is “Be Aware”. Do not fall for the taglines developed by fat marketing gurus who were paid in cash and luxuries to make it all happen in the first place.

So, be aware of what determines a digital picture’s image quality. Now at this point, I must point out that this can be regarded as a separate article in itself however it is of acute value to the ProRes discussion to be left out.

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Camcorders will not always record images with Full HD width frames (despite their life-sworn claims). How this works is that they store partial width and then upon display are upscale to give us the impression of 1920 pixels.

“The technical properties of digital images correspond to different aspects of image quality” (ProRes White Paper, 2009). As an example, HD carries more detail than SD and yet an SD 8 bit image can result in undesirable color banding compared to 10 bit images. This is why a codec must be able to retain good visual quality and a particular data rate whilst allowing the encoder and decoder to function quickly. With this in mind, the ProRes codecs give substantial respect to the three key properties which determine what the encoded image quality will look like - frame size, chroma sampling and bit depth (ProRes White Paper, 2009)

Frame Size Camcorders will not always record images with Full HD width frames (despite their lifesworn claims). How this works is that they store partial width and then upon display are upscale to give us the impression of 1920 pixels. Unfortunately what this also means is that you give up a good chunk of detail in the pixels that are foregone. In short, this happens because the encoder on the camera chooses to do so, and a lot of encoders do this, without naming names. If you have full width footage that must be compressed

for a post-production workflow, a ProRes family member will be able to encode it while preserving maximum possible detail. If for any reason, you want to encode partial width sources, that too is possible.

Chroma Sampling We all know that in color digital images, pixels are made up of three channels RGB. In traditional digital video, a pixel is represented by Y’, CB and CR values where Y is the Luma (the luminance of the video in grayscale values) and CB and CR contain the chroma information - in other words the color. It was discovered very early on that if an image is to be compressed, the human eye will be sensitive to any luminance changes however, any color compression will almost entirely be missed by the eye. Since the eye is less sensitive to fine chroma detail, it is possible to average out nearby samples of CB and CR without visual loss of information.

This entire process is known as Chroma Sub Sampling. You have to be careful though because excessive subsampling can lead to undesirable loss of color when you least want it - This is why you have to be careful in choosing codecs when you are likely to be involved in heavy compositing work.

Without going into too much detail, the color sampling in any given video will be represented by the ratio Y’ : CB : CR. There is 4:2:0 and 4:2:1 with the least chroma resolution. While images recorded with this can be visually great, they are not so cool when keying as you just don’t have enough colour information in the channels to conduct the process. Popular formats that use this sampling are HDV (we talked about this!), XHCAM HD others.

Then of course there is 4:2:2, a high-quality professional video format in which the minimal chroma calculation allows you to use it for adequate high-quality compositing and color correction. Popular codec that supports this sampling is DVCPRO HD. Of course, the best option for high end compositing and color correction would be something that offers full information in luminnance and color channels. Additionally, if the footage has an alpha channel, the Apple ProRes 4444 will retain this whilst compression giving you an astonishing full res image with complete channels to cater to your post-production needs. Seriously, how cool is that!

Sample Bit Depth Ah finally. The number of bits contained in an image basically determines the number of possible colors in each pixel location.

A higher bit depth will give you a greater range of colors and hence will avoid the artifacts that result from banding (looks like bands of color shades run across your footage - eeky!)

As an industry standard, digital images must be of 8 bit samples. However, us being human wanting more and more, have developed methods of storing footage with greater bit depth. It thus only makes sense that the codecs to transcode to supports this bit depth value otherwise essentially the acquisition in such quality is of no use.

Apple ProRes 4444 supports images up to 12 bits and preserves alpha depths to 16 bits.

Better yet, all of the other family members support up to 10 bits so you can be assured of enough color regardless of which codec you use and for what purpose. Again, with the offline example, you can test your keying and other composite plugins to see how well footage responds before you work on the online.

In relation to the ProRes Family This is when we take a look at each family member individually taking into account the information above.

Starting at the bottom, I begin with Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy). This is the third new member of the ProRes family. This codec maintains HD data rates below 36Mbps and still retains the full frame size of the source footage at an astonishing 10 bits like all other members. What this essentially means is that it’s low data rate makes it ideal for offline workflows such as when working on Final Cut Server, whilst retaining the frame size ad aspect ratio all so that you are not dogged by technical issues when really a good chunk of your brain should be concentrating on the creative aspect. Any key-framable effects will render accurately so again, you are not putting off the creativity for later.

Apple ProRes 422 (LT) lies just in between ProRes 422 and the Proxy, so essentially it is higher data rate than the proxy and yet lower than the ProRes making it ideal for server based editing and at the same time utilizing multistreams. It gives incredible visual quality with data rates as low as 100Mbps (depending on source footage) giving the end result of low space usage at respectable bandwidths, making it ideal for the broadcast scenario.

Apple ProRes 422 (LT) is ideal for live multi-camera and on location productions where large amounts of data is consistently transferred to disk.

Apple ProRes 4444 preserves full luminance and chrominance remember this is despite up compressing it to a smaller size than the original footage.

Apple ProRes 422 is one of the two original family members (dare say ancestor?) that has the advantages of the other member Apple ProRes 422 (HQ)- see below. In simple terms, the HQ is more suited for HD streams while this one is appropriate for SD footage. It is also best used when utilizing multi stream real time editing as compared to the HQ it has a significantly low data rate.

Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) is what took the post production encoding world (wow we are sad creatures eh?) by surprise. It offers visually lossless high quality HD video with all the other benefits of the ProRes family discussed earlier. What’s really awesome is that it is a complete alternate workflow to uncompressed 4:2:2 footage because not only is it visually impossible to tell and I’m being serious, it also accelerates the workflow. Perhaps most importantly, this visual quality can be retained through generations of compression (compressing over and over again) although I have to admit, that is bit of a lame thing to do.

General rule is don’t compress more than twice - once when transcoding and second time around exporting.

My favourite of the lot is the Apple ProRes 4444 and the reason lies in its name. It preserves full luminance and chrominance remember this is despite up compressing it to a smaller size than the original footage.

This means that the data rate is much much lower compared to uncompressed HD yet we enjoy all the benefits of the uncompressed signal. Pure genius. What’s more is that it

preserves the alpha channel making it super easy to transfer between motion graphics and editing applications. With the highest possible color detail, this codec totally rocks when it comes to compositing and color grading. Well done Apple! So go ahead, hook up your I/O device and capture straight to Final Cut without giving your hard disk a heart attack and still key out, composite and grade some breathtaking footage. This is what I really meant when I said I am all out for new media.

As I said at the beginning of this article, codecs will not leave you alone. They may strangle you, stress you, kill you but every so often there will be a set of codecs that will be life savers. For obvious reasons, the ProRes family codecs will make the life of editors, compositors and motion graphics artists much much easier whilst at the same time, iron out the kinks in the Final Cut Studio integration and workflow.

The two codecs that were launched in 2007 have now been expanded to a family of five that meet tailor made requirements quite easily. This article meant to give you an overview into the purpose of each and define their hierarchical use. Having said that, I still stress the importance of reading the White Paper that I have referred to heavily in this article (so Thank You White Paper).

There is nothing quite like staying on top of the game.

Good night and good luck!

By Areeba Hanif

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Creative Communities: Do you Vimeo?

Vimeo is an online community for creative’s that allows you to share, research and discuss your film/video with a friendly and productive community. Vimeo is a tool for film and video makers from all of the world and features works with wide ranging themes.

Vimeo: Not just a pretty face This video sharing site is captivating at first sight. Its clever design and user-friendly tools make it easier than ever to upload your work and be inspired by the work of the ‘local’ creative community.

There are numerous tools for video sharing available on the Internet; speeds are getting faster and quality is getting higher. So what makes Vimeo so special anyway?

Vimeo provides 500mb per week uploading for free. For a small yearly subscription, you can have unlimited HD uploading.

Let’s face it; most video sharing sites generally accept the same file formats. So you have to ask yourself what you want to do with your video content. If you are reading this article we’ll assume that you’re serious about your video production.

First things first, if you want the best outlet for your video content, Vimeo is the way to go. Vimeo allows users to upload in High Definition video; this makes it the best that’s out there for quality. All the rest is subjective.

The player interface is discreet and simple, without the usual bells and whistles found elsewhere (we won’t mention names You…).

The privacy feature allows you to choose who you want to share your videos with. You can also join like-minded video/film makers to focus on any particular creative theme that interests you. Another advantage is this online community is not the virtual space for commercial videos, but is dedicated to original works by serious artists and filmmakers.

Vimeo provides 500mb per week uploading for free. For a small yearly subscription, you can have unlimited HD uploading. This makes it miles ahead of mainstream video hosting sites like Youtube or Metacafe.

Vimeo handles your videos/films in 3g2, 3gp, 3gp2, 3gpp, asf, asx, avi, divx, m2t, m2ts, m2v, m4v, mkv, mov, mp4, mpe, mpeg, mpg, ogg, wmv and has moved ahead of the usual suspects by developing the soon available desktop uploader, which will let users batch upload, or upload without the need to use a web browser. You can even upload via email to cofip70461@up.vimeo.com Vimeo is nominated for .net magazine 2009 “Best Community Site”award. For more information go to http://www.vimeo.com By: N.Alshammari

What to think about: Internet Bandwidth ‘Bandwidth’ defines how fast files can be transferred from your computer to the Internet server- or visa versa. If you have a fast connection (around 700 kbps), you will be able to upload/ download video very easily.

Video compression: the basics

Custom Exports • • • • • • •

Go to iMovie menu ‘share’ Choose export with quicktime Choose Compression type H264 Make the dimensions 480 by 360 and click ok Save Locate your movie and check it before going on to upload to Vimeo )

To upload your video content you need to compress your video file.

Compressing video is using software to reduce similar pixels in each frame of your video so that they are bunched up as ‘like-blocks’.

Bad compression results in poorly defined videos, which are hard to watch. The more you compress (the smaller the files size), the lower the quality of your final video output.

Export Video content From iMovie to the Internet: a quick guide Apple OS tools have been moving forward to make the once laborious tasks into quick click moves.

If you are editing your video in iMovie, or have imported your film into iMovie from any other video editing application, follow these simple steps to get your video Web ready, and upload to the Internet.

Uploading to Vimeo • Go to http://www.vimeo.com/upload/video • Click on ‘choose file to upload’ • Locate your video on your computer • Select your video • Click upload and Vimeo takes care of everything else = )

Go to the iMovie menu ‘share’ Choose ‘export’ A window will open with several choices- it’s never been easier for you to save your video to any of a number of choices for output.

If you want to choose any of the presets, notice that if you hover over each choice as you click it, the application provides you with the size and downloading/uploading speed information.

Export in your chosen format and the application will do all the hard work for you.

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Software is becoming more sophisticated, computer are delivering a higher performance and technology gives you all the creative space to create anything you can imagine. All this progress leads to one thing: LARGE FILE SIZES.

I

Drobo and DroboPro are availabe at: Intuit www.intuitme.com Tel: +971 4 3931799

f you work as a filmmaker or any other creative using computer technology to create your work you will find yourself buying one external hard drive after the other, and soon you have gathered an array of hard drives of all kind of shapes, forms and most importantly formats.

I always had the dream of having a station, where I can get the maximum storage space, with the least mess on my desk as possible.

After an online research I discovered a storage system called Drobo and Drobo Pro, which was provided to us by the local distributer Intuit.

A couple of days ago I received Drobo Pro, the larger model with eight bays that you simply slot bare 3.5” SATA HDDs into.

First impression When I opened the DroboPro box, the first thing I realised was that Data Robotics, knows how to design packaging that makes you feel like you bought something special and beautifully crafted. The slogan “Welcome to the World of...” invited me to explore the inside of the box right away.

The design is very futuristic and yet very chic and elegant. It definitely has an air of the japanese robotic industry about it. For those who don’t want to put the DroboPro in server room rather than on their desks, Data Robotics included in the accesories option rack mounts in the same solid design as the DroboPro to pimp your rack.

REVIEW DroboPro

Flexibility When it comes to storage space, Drobo gives you all the flexibility you need. Whether you have Drobo, with four bays or DroboPro with eight bays, any regular 3.5” hard disk can be inserted and used as a storage. To add or upgrade your DroboPro simply buy a new HDD, or grab an old one you already have and carefully slot it into on of the bays.

With Drobo’s flexible engine you can combine any HDD drives without reformatting anything.

Combine different HDD capacities from different manufacturers, insert them and DroboPro will do the rest. Isn’t this the most convenient way to enhance storage space?

The version we received supports HDDs with a capacity of upto 4 TB which gives you a storage space of 32 TB when all slots are loaded.

Especially for the filmmakers and 3D animators amongst us, this is could be your treasure box, to backup footage and have access to entire project files, without copying and moving files from one harddisk to the other.

User-friendliness Drobo was designed with a clever and intuitive user interface, that gives you updates on the status of drive health, available disk space and available hard drives without you having to launch all you have to launch any application software on your computer. All updates you need from DroboPro in regards of you storage can be read form Drobo’s front panel directly.

The drive lights and the capacity gauge give the information needed.

Reading the drive lights is very simple Green: No action required, all drives are healthy Solid Yellow: Add a driver or replace the current drive with a larger drive soon, Drobo is running out of disk space Blinking yellow & green: Don’t remove these drives: Drobo is working on protecting your data.

Connecting DroboPro If you are familiar with connecting an USB stick to your PC or Mac, then you will be most probably able to connect DroboPro to your computer. Seriously, DroboPro is designed to be a straight forward plug an play device.

There are several ways to connect Drobo to your computer. Looking at the back panel, you find an USB 2.x connector, two FireWire 800 connector and an Ethernet (iSCSI) connector.

Where USB is the slowest connection and can limit Drobo’s performance, I would recommend to use on the the two other, faster connections, FireWire800 or even better Ethernet (iSCSI).

Although the iSCSI looks like an ethernet connection, it cannot be connected to a network. However you can activate file share and use DroboPro through any computer in you local network as a storage device.

Auto Backup

Conclusion

To be on the safe side, Drobo is organized in a way that it creates a file backup system automatically, if you have more than one hard drive inserted. This means of course, that the total disk space available will be smaller than the hard disk capacity used, but you will have all your files backed up, in case one of the hard drives gets damaged or erased. For me, this means no more lost song files or illustrations after a crash of one of my external hard drives (I lOVE IT).

With 8 bays that can accommodate almost 32 of storage space and a true plug and play engine, Data Robotics offer a system that grows with your needs.

DroboPro is a storage system that delivers performance, flexibility and quality. Using standard internal hard disks makes upgrading the storage space easy and foremost affordable.

To calculate the actual capacity, based on any selected combination of drives, please visit www.drobo.com/drobolator.

I already have plans on how to use DroboPro to organize and back up my files for Media Production and my creative work.

Media Production

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Compiling Tracks in Pro Tools 8 Play it again, Sam – this time with feeling!!! When recording it’s pretty rare that musicians will be able to perform the ‘magic’ in one glorious take.

S

o fear not Pro Tools geeks because piecing together the perfect musical performance is now incredibly easy with Pro Tools 8 and its new Track Compositing feature.

In short, this groovy feature allows you to record multiple takes of a performance and then quickly edit sections of each take together to create the ultimate piece. With previous versions of Pro Tools you could also do this but the process was pretty clunky and laborious.

Version 8 has made it far simpler!

This whole process uses the concept of Playlists.

When you create a new track, it contains a single empty playlist until you record, import or drag and drop material onto it. New playlists can be created that are empty or duplicates of the current playlist. Once created, you can

The Playlist Selector recall, rename and delete playlists as needed by using the Playlist selector.

The Playlist Selector By creating new playlists, and then re-recording a part, you can build up a variety of takes of each musical performance. By using playlists, you can select the best parts from each playlist and copy them to the main playlist, creating the ‘perfect take’. This is called Track Compositing or Comping.

To demonstrate this feature, I’ll use an example of a session I was working on a few weeks ago.

The session involved recording drums for a new album I am producing here in Sydney.

We had a song loaded up in Pro Tools 8 with a couple of guide tracks and a ‘click’ already recorded. Each of the drums were of course going to their own individual tracks in Pro Tools - kick, snare, hi hat, cymbals and so on.

KNOW HOW Pro Tools 8

Pro Tools with individual drum tracks

The new Playlists View in Pro Tools 8. The larger lane is the main playlist and the additional lanes are other playlists that are associated with that track.

Once the sounds were set up, the drummer played the song in its entirety and I recorded the performance. After listening back, we were pretty happy with it and I wanted to keep this take but the drummer wanted to have another try. So I created a new playlist for each drum track by clicking on the Playlist Selector and choosing ‘New’. You can do this on each track one by one but it is better to group all the tracks together so that when you choose a new playlist on one track it creates new playlists for all the other tracks as well.

We then recorded another take and had a listen to that performance. We then created yet another new playlist for each drum track and the drummer performed another version again.

Pro Tools with individual drum tracks

We repeated this process until the drummer had played the song 4 times and we had recorded each performance on separate playlists. These could be loaded in at will by using the list on the Playlist Selector.

Now, it came to compiling these takes to create the best performance. On Pro Tools 8 you can now view all the takes simultaneously by choosing ‘Playlists’ from the Track View button. All of the takes are revealed below the main playlist.

Create a blank playlist that will ultimately contain your final version

This is excellent because you can make direct comparisons from one take to another.

The new Playlists View in Pro Tools 8.

The larger lane is the main playlist and the additional lanes are other playlists that are associated with that track.

Notice that the last take is the one that is loaded into the main playlist. At this stage I normally create yet another blank playlist which will ultimately contain the final compiled version of all the other takes.

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KNOW HOW Pro Tools 8

The button with the arrow in it is the Copy To Main Playlist button

Create a blank playlist that will ultimately contain your final version It was now a case of checking which take was best for each part of the song. I would make a selection across Verse 1 for example and then solo each take to listen for the best version. Note you can only monitor one take

Individual selections are copied up to the main playlist to create the final version

The final compiled version of the drum tracks

and once you stop Loop Recording all the takes are available to you in Playlist View.

This way of compiling the perfect version of a performance is fun, fast and creative. And of course you can do this with any recording. It works well on Loop Recording Mode too, where a selection is looped continuously, whilst remaining in record mode. New takes are recorded each time the selection starts again

Pro Tools 8 had many enhancements when it was released but the ability to view Playlists simultaneously is one of its best features. Give it a try and it will change the way you look at recording.

By Jason De Wilde

at a time. Once deciding which take is the best, it takes one button click to copy it up to the main playlist.

The button with the arrow in it is the Copy To Main Playlist button. Whatever you have selected will be copied to the Main Playlist.

This makes it so very, very quick. Of course, you can try as many different arrangements as you like.

Individual selections are copied up to the main playlist to create the final version As a final step, it is usually wise to do some simple cross fading so that your edit points are seamless. You can also trim the start/end points of regions to allow for a smoother sound.

The final compiled version of the drum tracks

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REVIEW TC Level Pilot ‘innovative’ in inverted commas is because, well, TC didn’t invent the potentiometer, which is essentially what the Level Pilot is.

But they did come up with the idea of making all our home-studio lives easier by creating it for us to own. That is, if we weren’t all electronic engineers who could easily make their own level-control unit with carbon, paste, and some metal, or if we didn’t own the TC Konnekt 48 that already comes with its own level control. I don’t think I would be far wrong in saying that TC Electronic created the Level Pilot after realizing how cool the remote control on the K48 is. Of course, the Level Pilot is not like the K48 remote control (if you own/have owned a K48, you’ll know why), it is just a potentiometer that has made my working life a helluvalot easier.

The best part of this little knob is that it works with every setup out there.

It is a bit like your desktop mount soundcards that have the level AND gain knobs next to each other and yet they are so close your forefinger doesn’t fit in between them!

TC Level Pilot So you’ve got your home studio set up with your super-cool DAW and audio interface all up and running, only that over time, you find that you wish you had a separate volumecontroller sitting on your desk, easily accessible.

I’ve had my setup for a good 5 years. I run the latest Sonar 8 PE DAW, the brand new Focusrite Sapphire Pro40, with all the greatest plug-ins from Cakewalk, Waves and my faithful TC Powercore. I have a great set of DAS Monitor 8’s giving me the sound I want, a DynAudio BX30 subwoofer for mastering and the excellent Shure KSM27 microphone for recording vocals and instruments.

The problem with my setup though is the fact that every time I wanted to reduce the output level of the Pro40, I either had to go to my rack unit underneath my desk (I work under ambient lighting, so you can imagine it’s pretty dark under the desk!) and tweak the main output pot, after spending some time looking for it!

Alternatively I would to go into the Pro40 interface, turn off the hardware control option and use the mouse to tweak the large virtual-pot on my screen. Not very practical and darn-right annoying!

The TC Level Pilot is another one of the ‘innovative’ products to come out of TC Electronic, and the reason I place

Hooking it up is ultra-easy. Four cables split from the one connected into the unit, two mono outputs and two mono inputs, all three-pin XLR connectors. From the audio interface connect the output connectors to the main outs (duh), and hook the input connectors into the inputs of the monitors or amplifier (if you own passive monitors). Set your interface levels and hey presto! No more headaches! It really does feel like an achievement once it’s done.

It comes in nice packaging...a big knob in silver plastic with a solid-base and cables all wrapped up nicely. At just under $130 retail, though to some it may be a bit pricey, you have to remember you’re buying a product from a world-renowned brand, and in all seriousness, unless you really are an electronics major who has all the parts available, I don’t think you’ll want to sit around at home figuring out how to make your own potentiometer to ‘save’ some money.

No, you can’t use pencils or toothpaste.

If you own a pro-home studio and can afford your own equipment, this is a must have.

If you’re a kid who aspires to become a producer from the bedroom, ask daddy to buy one for you. available at: Telephone: +971-4-2665244 Email : info @ nmkelectronics.com www.nmkelectronics.com

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