Microphones

Here's a good microphone primer from HD Video Pro:

One of the major benefits of the digital revolution compared to production 20 or 30 years ago is that with the proliferation of inexpensive cameras, editing gear and software, there also have been huge strides in the variety and types of microphones available. There’s a microphone for every job, and within each of the most popular categories of mics, there are dozens of choices available. How do you determine which type of microphone to use, and which model to consider buying or renting for your project?

iPhone 4 Video

Here's a video about a motorcycle race up Pike's Peak in Colorado - shot entirely with an iPhone 4, and an article about it...

Day for Night

Jay Holben has a nice article at DV.com on how to use natural lighting and your camera's white balance to achieve a nighttime look while shooting during the day:

That in mind, I decided to challenge myself to create a “night” look utilizing natural daylight — shooting day-for-night — without any augmentation with artificial lighting.
A day-for-night effect is, generally, achieved through gross underexposure. You’re rendering your highlights down to below middle gray and plunging your shadows into the abyssal blackness. Day for night works best when the natural light is backlighting the subjects and when you can keep the sky and the ground out of the shot — two things that will give away the cheat very quickly.

And here's an article on why night is usually colored blue in the movies, from The Academia Dictionary via io9. 

The Purkinje effect (sometimes called the Purkinje shift, or dark adaptation and named after the Czech anatomist Jan Evangelista Purkyně) is the tendency for the peak sensitivity of the human eye to shift toward the blue end of the color spectrum at low illumination levels.
This effect introduces a difference in color contrast under different levels of illumination. For instance, in bright sunlight, geranium flowers appear bright red against the dull green of their leaves, but in the same scene viewed at dusk, the contrast is reversed, with the petals appearing a dull red and the leaves appearing bright green.

Flip Ultra HD camera

Stefan Sargent's column in the back of DV Magazine is always interesting.  Usually he shares a story about one of the unbelievable shoots he's been on, but this month he talks about using his new Flip Ultra HD consumer video cam.  I've read some good things about this camera and have been thinking of picking one up for myself.  Stefan seems to be enjoying his...

While the rest of the world is drooling over the latest fare from RED, Sony, Panasonic, the new HD-capable DSLRs, I’m in love my $150 widescreen HD gizmo. I call her Flipa.

The good thing is I’m using her professionally; I’ll get my return of investment back on day one, which just happens to be yesterday.

He goes on to talk about how he mounted it to a truck, and links to the video of the shoot.  I can think of all kinds of uses for this cam.

Canon 7D

 I'm slowly becoming convinced that my next video camera will be the Canon 7D.  It has quite a few drawbacks, especially for one-person run-and-gun shooting like I do A LOT of, but the video looks fantastic and the price tag looks even better.  I'm sure with all the accolades surrounding it, Canon will come out with a version specifically for video within a year, but I'd really like to upgrade from my PD-150 this summer.
Here's an article from Tubefilter News that lists some pros and cons:

Cons

The biggest negative is that the 7D doesn’t yet have a sensible solution for recording sound directly into camera. This means whoever’s running sound will have to record it into a small digital recorder and then you’ll sync it all up in post. Fear not though, it’s often helpful to not have your sound guy tethered to the camera and there are now programs like Pluralize ($150) that will do the heavy lifting of synchronization.
If you’re dead-set on shooting quick whip pans around a room Office-style, this may not be the camera for you. It has a rolling shutter which will produces jello-y vertical lines on quick movements. It’s also more sensitive than usual to tight patterns, so leave your plaids at home. (Note: The Red One and Sony EX-1 have these same problems)

A Dose of Reality

Here's an entertaining article about life as a Hollywood vfx artist from Cracked.com.  Worthwhile reading for anyone dreaming about life in the Big Leagues...

Everyone assumes VFX happen in an office that looks something like Mythbusters except with excited artistic types gathering around computers, talking about what kind of dinosaurs they want to make today. And for the top ranking people, the ones who get to talk on the DVD special features, it might be.
But several steps down the ladder from those guys, you have an army of peons whose job descriptions seem to have been created as part of some cruel psychological experiment. If you dream of a career making super heroes fly, these jobs are where you'll start, and you may never leave.

 

We Got That B-Roll

From Funny or Die.  Don't judge the B-roll!

WE GOT THAT B ROLL!! - watch more funny videos

Follow Focus for DSLRs

Everyone's talking about the new Canon HD DSLRs, so I'll jump on the bandwagon...
Mark Wilson at Gizmodo has put up a couple of posts about DIY focus rigs for DSLR cameras. This one's ugly, but looks somewhat functional. This one's pretty, simple, and cheap, but probably not very useful as a follow focus. I like this one, posted by a commenter. It seems to be a nice combination of simplicity and usefulness:

"I'm not an experienced cinematographer. But I want to use the Canon 5D Mark II to shoot decent quality video—without expensive rails, follow-focus rigs, matte-boxes, etc.

The solution, for me, needed to be portable/ultralight, SIMPLE, and as cheap as possible. Most often, I’m rack-focusing between preset points. The sample movie shows the rig in action. Remember, I am new at this, so you can probably rack more smoothly and might use a better tripod. The rig itself is very smooth and does not create much vibration. With two people, it should be okay for follow-focus.

Just for fun, I’m calling this “The Scocus Ring”-- for Scott focus ring--but call it what you want! It is essentially an off-the-shelf MegaClamp with foam buffers to protect the lens, a simple picture hook “needle” indicator, and a bag of rubber bands."