Sitting down at the cinema to enjoy the latest release is a lot of people’s favourite way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
This age-old tradition stretches back to the birth of movies themselves when most of the population didn’t have the power to view things at home. Nowadays, though, this sort of day out is purely recreational, and most people don’t even consider what goes on behind the scenes. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the different machines used to make the masterpieces you enjoy at the cinema.
The Cameras
Over the last few years, loads of major steps have been made in the world of digital film. With the help of companies like Red and their 8K cameras, movie producers are able to create videos which have loads of room more manipulation, as they can be downsampled and resized as the editor wishes. Of course, though, most directors are more creative than this and will use some handy DSLRs to help them along the way, as well. Modern video editing can make two very different cameras look the same. So, it doesn’t matter if stand-ins have to be used from time to time, as the footage can be changed.
The Drones
In the past, taking to the sky to record footage always required the help of a helicopter to get the job done. Nowadays, though, companies like http://www.rotorcopters.com/ are working hard to make the old methods a thing of the past. This saves loads of money when it comes to fueling and staffing filming days. Along with this, though, it also makes it easy to go out and take additional video if more is required, without the help of a pilot.
The Supports
Making transitions, sweeps, and other camera movements nice and smooth used to take a lot of patience on the part of camera operators. With modern tools, this sort of work doesn’t have to be handled by people anymore, as electronic supports can do it all for you. Sliders, for example, almost always have a motor on them, at the moment. Using a device like this makes the camera movement much smoother, while also getting the timing just right.
The Servers
Finally, as the last machine to consider, it’s time to think about something most people don’t associate with movies; servers. With so many modern titles including heavy CGI and large resolutions, it can take many weeks just to get all of the frames rendered properly. To make this easier, companies will often use large server farms to handle it for them. In some cases, the combined operation time of entire movie will be going into thousands of years. Thankfully, computers can handle more than one operation at a time. The world of modern filmmaking has changed loads over the last decade or so. With so many new standards emerging, it can be easy to see why people would get confused about how things are done. Of course, though, there is more to a film than the tech behind it, and it takes a lot of work to make sure everything goes together.