The new OpenSourceCinema.org is building a collective documentary about copyright in the digital age. They’ve gathered tons of great footage for people to download, edit, and upload back to their site. The script is also completely editable by users. The film is currently titled “Basement Tapes”, but this will probably change once complete and in theaters.

More from NAB 2007 in Las Vegas, the unleashing of the exciting Red One camera, a project from the founder of Oakley glasses. In the video below, Apple shows off the latest Final Cut Pro software editing clips shot using the Red One. The base price for this baby is $17,500. Red.com

This actually seems pretty cool for those of us into 3D using any of the Autodesk products, which now include Maya, 3DStudio Max, MotionBuilder, and VIZ 3D. The site will include searchable tips and tutorials, textures, shaders, plugins, scripts, etc. This is nice in itself. On top of this incredibly useful and fun search engine there are forums, blogs from the Autodesk development teams, member portfolios/galleries, and a super cool “Behind the Screenz” section that contains exposés on artists and developers. It would really be awesome if this site takes off. Having a megalith like Autodesk behind a community site like this will be really nice for everyone who wishes to collaborate an learn. You can start contributing here at The AREA

Sony Pictures has acquired online video-sharing site Grouper Networks Inc. for $65 million, giving the movie studio a foothold in the fast-growing world of user-generated video.Sony does not immediately plan to sell its movies or TV shows on the Grouper site, it may in the future. Media companies, including Sony, have begun to offer content side by side with videos shot by amateurs on sites such as MySpace, Guba and BitTorrent. Grouper will remain an independent company based in Sausalito and will retain its current management team, the companies said.

“Consumers are spending more and more time on sites like Grouper, and as one of the world’s largest creators of entertainment, we want to be where the audiences are,” Michael Lynton, CEO, Sony Pictures.

In addition to featuring short videos uploaded to the site by users, Grouper also provides software that allows people to place those videos on social networking sites. The software also allows others to e-mail the videos to friends and to download them to portable devices.

Lynton said Sony views Grouper as a profitable stand-alone business that could boost revenue in the future by selling ads. Big media companies are searching for ways to profit as advertisers move dollars online, away from traditional broadcast outlets. Sony could also discover new talent on the site, Lynton said. “If we can find great talent on Grouper, it would be an added benefit,” Lynton said.

One of the most popular features on Grouper is “mashups,” which encourage users to create new videos from snippets of other videos. Sony was a pioneer in that area, offering its own Web-based video creation tools in 2001 on a service called Screenblast. The site allowed users to combine clips from Sony movies and tracks from Sony recording artists to create new videos.

LYCOS and PermissionTV, a rapidly growing Internet television platform, today announced the launch of Update Hollywood now available on LYCOS Entertainment. Update Hollywood gives LYCOS viewers free access to the latest movie trailers, film clips, behind the scenes footage, DVD releases and exclusive celebrity interviews hosted by legendary Hollywood insider, Martin Grove.

In June, LYCOS launched a platform to offer a variety of video programming to the LYCOS audience, reinforcing LYCOS’s core strategy to provide consumers with high quality broadband video programming and entertainment with the look and feel of TV. “We are very pleased to offer our millions of LYCOS visitors high quality video content like Update Hollywood, providing a controllable on-demand viewing experience that feels like TV,” said Alfred Tolle, CEO of LYCOS, Inc. “We will continue to acquire a wide range of on-demand content from episodic television, to independent films and programming, to long-form films, providing a totally unique broadband based video experience.”

PermissionTV is based in Waltham, Massachusetts and is a system for media companies and content
owners to distribute high quality television programming via the Internet. Founded by seasoned television, media and technology veterans, PermissionTV is the first solution to combine the high-quality television viewing experience with the interactivity and permission marketing aspects of the Web.

Dolby Laboratories, best known for its movie theater surround-sound systems, on Monday said it has teamed up with German virtual reality company Infitec GmbH to develop a three-dimensional theater projection system for theaters. Dolby will integrate Infitec’s 3-D technology, designed by Daimler Chrysler for automotive design, with the digital cinema playback system it developed for movie theaters converting to digital projection systems from 35-millimeter film projectors.

Digital 3-D systems are one tool Hollywood is using to staunch competition from DVDs, the Internet and video games to bring consumers back to theaters.
Dolby says its Infitec-based system would be cheaper and more flexible than that of the leading 3-D cinema company, Real D, because it allows a 3-D image to be projected directly onto standard white screens.

Real D’s system requires silver screens to boost light on the image. Real D has installed more than 200 screens worldwide and has led the two largest digital 3-D film debuts ever — the Walt Disney Co’s “Chicken Little” and “Monster House”. Source: Reuters

This is just so cool. I have to post a quick one about it. Most people hear visual effects and think giant explosions and light sabres. The truth of the matter is that most visual effects are things you’d never notice unless it was shown to you that it was actually a special effect. On this latest X-Men movie, visual effects were used to make certain characters look far younger than they actually do. X-Men is not the first movie this technique has been used on. During the post-production (the stage in the production pipeline of a movie where all digitally created visual effects are completed) of Terminator III and Mission Impossible III, “digital cosmetics” were used as well. Autodesk’s Flame and Inferno systems were used to create these visual effects. Flame and Inferno are #1 when it comes to computer systems for high-end visual effects work. Don’t think Apple’s Motion or Adobe After Effects. A flame system starts around $300,000US while the inferno is going for right around half a million dollars. These systems have traditionally been based on Silicon Graphics supercomputers (think NASA and Military) for their supreme graphics hardware. Silicon Graphics computers have provided the high-end cinema and TV post-production markets with computers that are capable of real-time interactivity with extemely high resolution images (think HD video and 35mm film scans). So I realize some of you may think that you can interact responsively with highres images from your digital camera in Photoshop on your Powerbook, but imagine trying to interact with one-hundred or more highres layers all at the same time. Now, Autodesk has moved flame and inferno to multi-cpu, multi-core, and clustered Nvidia based IBM Linux systems. Looks like desktop based graphics hardware is finally catching up. SGI recently filed for bankruptcy.
This is the first of many posts to come in the TV Tech catagory. I hope to post lots more on the latest technology behind the scenes in cinema and TV. Full article via FXGuide.

Image courtesy of Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Screen image courtesy of Aechelon Technology.