Please come join us on one of our two ongoing animation projects. See details at the link above. Deadline is this FRIDAY but the application isn't too onerous.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
A tremendous Prix
Bit Films was born ten years ago this September. Born
from a crazy idea that students could and should work together to make
films that push the medium of computer animation into meatier and more
thoughtful places than Hollywood was willing to attempt. From Displacement (2002) to Catch (2005) to The Incident at Tower 37 (2009) to Caldera (2012) to Tube (upcoming), we've kept on doing it, and today we're especially honored because the venerable Prix Ars Electronica gave one of its two Awards of Distinction to Caldera!
http://www.aec.at/prix/en/gewinner/#computer-animation
This is a terrific acknowledgement of the creative vision and leadership of Evan Viera and Chris Bishop, as well as a wonderful honor to all the crew members who worked to bring this film to life.
But it is also a celebration of the model--radical at times but perhaps not so much any more--that we've been trying to follow for almost a decade: where undergraduate liberal arts students work closely with fellow students and mentors, complementing their individualized, course-based education with hands-on, high-end, collaborative work; where an institution like Hampshire College offers its space and resources to independent artists at no cost because it recognizes the benefits for all involved of having such people around; and where ideas for animated films that certainly don't scream "cartoon!" can take root, mature, and ultimately emerge as fully-formed ideas.
It means all the more to me that Evan and Chris are alums of this program -- they both participated on Bit Films projects when they were students and continued to do so after they graduated. I was pleased to be able to invite them into the Drome when Caldera was still nascent, and now they've come full circle--from students to project supervisors--with distinction, no less!
http://www.aec.at/prix/en/gewinner/#computer-animation
This is a terrific acknowledgement of the creative vision and leadership of Evan Viera and Chris Bishop, as well as a wonderful honor to all the crew members who worked to bring this film to life.
But it is also a celebration of the model--radical at times but perhaps not so much any more--that we've been trying to follow for almost a decade: where undergraduate liberal arts students work closely with fellow students and mentors, complementing their individualized, course-based education with hands-on, high-end, collaborative work; where an institution like Hampshire College offers its space and resources to independent artists at no cost because it recognizes the benefits for all involved of having such people around; and where ideas for animated films that certainly don't scream "cartoon!" can take root, mature, and ultimately emerge as fully-formed ideas.
It means all the more to me that Evan and Chris are alums of this program -- they both participated on Bit Films projects when they were students and continued to do so after they graduated. I was pleased to be able to invite them into the Drome when Caldera was still nascent, and now they've come full circle--from students to project supervisors--with distinction, no less!
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Caldera at SXSW
Bit Films' latest short, CALDERA, had its world premiere at South by Southwest last Sunday! And it continues to screen at SXSW two more times before the festival's out.
I can only share these images and the trailer for now but there will be a host of festival appearances during the coming year that I'll be sure to post about when the time comes.
I can only share these images and the trailer for now but there will be a host of festival appearances during the coming year that I'll be sure to post about when the time comes.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Bit Films spring 2012 internships
I'm happy to announce our new call for spring Bit Films interns! We've got four different roles to fill on the ongoing Tube open movie project being run by Bassam Kurdali.
Click here to read about the opportunities
Applications are due via email on Monday January 30th, 2012 (please read the call for details).
Those of you following along might notice that we don't have any Caldera internships this spring... that's because the film is in its final stages of post-production and will be appearing in festivals soon! Congrats to the entire team on a job very well done.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Caldera grading, Apple Color, and framerates
I'm very happy to report that we've begun color grading on the new short Caldera. It's a real treat to be finessing it at this level, as each shot is absolutely gorgeous. Let me share a still before I get to the geekier point of this post.
Now, Caldera is natively a 24fps production, however, when we dragged our Apple Prores 4444 QT clips into Color it locked the project framerate to 23.98 for no apparent reason. The number appears in what looks like an editable value box, but you just can't edit the value. Of course this throws a wrench into our pipeline, which involves grading and then reconnecting to the graded .mov files inside FCP. FCP doesn't like it (properly so) when the key properties of a .mov file (rate, duration, etc.) change after a reconnect, so it is very unhappy when I try to swap a 23.98 file for a clip it's expecting to be at 24.
What a pain. Luckily, some simple hackery seems to have fixed it. The actual Color project is itself a folder, and one of the items therein is an XML file (in our case, called "calderaGrade.pdl"). The top of the file looks something like this (note I had to paste an image because I can't figure out how to get the XML tags to pass through blogger... sorry!):
As you might guess, changing the tag to 24 and restarting (AND rerendering) seems to make 24fps files just as we hoped. Phew. This narrowly averted my having to take the movies through an extra Compressor pass like I had to do on The Incident at Tower 37 (see here for some of the gory details of that conforming process).
More to come as we push the film through these last phases of production!
Now, Caldera is natively a 24fps production, however, when we dragged our Apple Prores 4444 QT clips into Color it locked the project framerate to 23.98 for no apparent reason. The number appears in what looks like an editable value box, but you just can't edit the value. Of course this throws a wrench into our pipeline, which involves grading and then reconnecting to the graded .mov files inside FCP. FCP doesn't like it (properly so) when the key properties of a .mov file (rate, duration, etc.) change after a reconnect, so it is very unhappy when I try to swap a 23.98 file for a clip it's expecting to be at 24.
What a pain. Luckily, some simple hackery seems to have fixed it. The actual Color project is itself a folder, and one of the items therein is an XML file (in our case, called "calderaGrade.pdl"). The top of the file looks something like this (note I had to paste an image because I can't figure out how to get the XML tags to pass through blogger... sorry!):
 |
| A screengrab showing the XML tags in one of Apple Color's pdl files. Note that the framerate in this image has already been changed from 23.98 to 24 fps. |
More to come as we push the film through these last phases of production!
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