In the 1950s, as a direct reaction to the film industry’s perceived threat from television, Hollywood invented a number of large-format processes designed to make the big screen even bigger. VistaVision, which was developed by Paramount in 1954, involved a camera system that involved transported 35mm  motion-picture film horizontally through the camera, exposing 24 8-perf frames per second, rather than the standard vertical 4-perf configuration of traditional movie cameras. VistaVision was used on a few features, including John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), but by the 1970s, VistaVision had largely been relegated to background-plate work ad in recent decades, barely even for that.

Recently,  VistaVision has been used in different commercials and short films, mainly because the large frame offers advantages even for projects finished in high definition by delivering to the telecine bay a negative with greater resolution and more color information, than images shot with a standard 35mm camera.

Producers have combined VistaVision’s significantly larger negative area with Vivid’s properties to manipulate the colors individually or collectively without building in noise.

What shape is your business in? Has it traced the arc of the wider economy and spiraled down? Or have you taken these unsteady times as an opportunity to develop new relationships with clients who may not have  considered working with you in the past? If you are an audio post pro working out of a project studio, you may feel that you have little in common with major industry players. If so, you might be surprised to find that some of the most well-known mix topic engineers in the industry are taking advantage of relatively inexpensive tools, such as Steinberg Nuendo 4, operating out of their home studios just as you do.  So for smaller shops, this economic downturn might be the perfect time to start thinking bigger.

Nuendo is a fully mature product capable of handling any assignment you’re likely to throw at it. Installation on either Mac or Windows machine is straight-forward, and the authorization process -which, uses a dongle, just like Avid is painless. Nuendo 4 can handle QuickTime movies on both the Mac and PC, and DirectShow and DirectX Video on Windows machines only. A variety of codec’s, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and WMV, are supported. Nuendo 4 shines when it comes to synchronizing external playback devices.

Nuendo 4 handles surround-sound flexibly. Hit the Input tab and you’ll see the options laid out.  Multiples surround formats, with a maximum of 12 loudspeaker outputs, are supported.

In these times you have to be able to work fast if you want to make money. Nuendo 4 is extremely well laid out and its many features are easy to get at. The workflow is very good. “I don’t think that this platform has any real competition, particularly in its price range.”

Today home video penetration is huge and reaches out to a larger set of audience. Also, with increase in the standard of living along with awareness, the indulgence element is getting diversified. People are not interested in watching only films. Shemaroo Entertainment Pvt Ltd decided to launch an alternative content division which will cater to various kinds of audiences ranging from children, philosophy, and literature to fitness and health, and is kick-starting it with The Osho Talks series.
Shemaroo has signed a multi-year license deal with The Osho International Foundation under its alternative content segment “to bring to today’s generation Osho discourses” through the home video format of VCDs and DVDs titled Osho Talks on the Shemaroo label.
”We are thrilled with the response we have got for our new division of Alternative Content and after the success of great videos like Shilpa’s Yoga and The Secret DVD, we promise to provide much more best selling content in these genres,” said Hiren Gada, director, Shemaroo.
Watching these talks in the comforts of your home, at your time and will, makes OSHO TALK Titles more appealing. Shemaroo has treated this whole series of OSHO TALKS with lot of care and considered packaging, presentation and execution so as to bring it out in the right manner to its audiences.
The business of alternative content is an unexplored territory and Shemaroo aims to make it big in this area. He intends to expand the market itself by creating newer avenues to explore and lead the industry to newer horizons.

Democrat Barak Obama is the first African-American president of the United States of America and the 44th commander in chief. On Tuesday November 4th Americans demonstrated that they can change the direction that their country has been taken in the past 8 years.
Barak Obama is the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a majority of the popular vote, a vindication of his “50-state strategy” that even members of his own party once viewed as quixotic. Before the end of Tuesday, America that had been solid red in the recent elections has undergone a dramatic change where all 50 states have become one, where it has become the true United States of America!
Today, there are more democrats registered than Republicans.  Republicans have dropped from 37 percent of the electorate in 2004 to 32 percent today, as the number of Democrats and independent has increased.

“Change has come to America” said Obama in this acceptance speech last night! But he also acknowledged the tough climate of the task he faces. “For even as we celebrate tonight,” Obama utters,  “we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”
Obama is a charismatic leader whose appeal transcends partisan politics. Obama has built his support on a “three-legged stool” made up of African-Americans, Hispanics, and young voters of all races.  In North Carolina polls show 73 percent of 18-29 year olds voted for Obama, even though McCain was stronger among every other age group. In Virginia, too, Obama was ahead with every age group except those 65 and older.  There are 1.6 million more Hispanic voters this year, including a half-million newly naturalized citizens and they chose Obama over McCain by a margin of 2 to 1. And so New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, Ohio, and Iowa voted for Obama. States like Virginia and Indiana had not voted for a Democratic president since 1964, which means that Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 has become a Moment in History!
In his speech, Obama also reached out to McCain’s supporters: “I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too!”
The Election 2008 embodies the American dream! In his acceptance speech, Obama mentioned 106 year old Ann Nixon Cooper from Atlanta, born a generation past slavery, at a a time when she could not vote because she was black and woman.  Ann Nixon “through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.”

The theme for this year’s Channel O Music Video Awards was “Uniting Africa Through Music” and Africa’s leading music channel has gone to extra lengths to ensure that this year’s event was bigger, better, and more spectacular than ever.
And it really was a spectacular show on October 9 at the Big Top Arena, Carnival City, Johannesburg! Performers from all around Africa came together to entertain the continent and they were duly rewarded! The Channel O MVAs recognizes excellence and contributions towards developing music on the continent.
Top Nigerian artistes who won laurels at the event include: Ikechukwu (Best Male Video), P Square (Best Duo or Group) and (Video of the Year), M-Trill (Best African West), and KC Presh (Best Hip Hop Video), Lizha James (Mozambique) – Best Female Video; Buffalo Souljah (Zimbabwe) – Best Newcomer and Best Ragga Dancehall Video; Lady May (Namibia) – Best Dance; Gal Level (Namibia) – Best R & B Video; The Dogg (Namibia) – Best Kwaito; Freshly Ground (South Africa) – Best African Southern; and Witness ft Fid Q (Tanzania) – Best African East.
The two VJs’ that hosted the big event are the effervescent Kabelo “KB” Ngakane, who has been with Channel O since 1998, and his chic co-host Nonhle “Diva” Thema.
The Channel O music Video Awards are distinctly African and the winners are entirely chosen by the viewing public across the continent and not by a panel of judges. This means that fans really can make a difference between artists being a nominee or a winner and give countries the chance to fly the flag high for their own nominees.
The Channel O Music Video Awards are also the first Pan-African television awards ceremony to celebrate distinctly African music.
Jimmy Dludlu paid tribute to his friend and mentor, George Lee Larnyoh, who received the 2008 Special Recognition Award on September 16th.

The electronics powerhouse NEC Corp. has introduced NEC MultiSync E221W,  the first model in a new series of displays for small businesses, designed to perfectly meet the needs of the home office and SMB sectors.

The 22″ display equipped with a high quality TN panel that offers unusually high viewing angles also features an ergonomic design and multiple interfaces, such as DVI-D with HDCP. Equipped with an integrated Carbon Footprint meter that shows the quantity of CO2 emissions that can be saved over the running time of the device, the NEC MultiSync® E221W offers an extensive range of features at a good cost-performance ratio whether for traditional office applications or for internet use.

In order to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the monitor’s power consumption might be reduced by switching to EcoMode, where the brightness of the display is limited to no greater than 60 per cent of its maximum, and power consumption falls from a typical 40W to 28W.

With a modern and elegant design, the NEC MultiSync® E221W features clear lines and rounded edging. The narrow bezel, another features of the display, is advantageous for multi-monitor applications, as several displays can be perfectly aligned alongside each other without any distracting gaps appearing between the displays.

With its high viewing angles, an excellent view of the screen is guaranteed from almost any perspective, even for multi-monitor solutions, the ergonomic features, such as the flexible positioning of the display with height adjustment of up to 50 mm, ensure a productive working environment. 

In the mists of a global economic crisis, technology continues to evolve, and here we are projecting images through a wall of water. 

The technology that uses water to create a thin, suspended layer of dry fog that enables projection of images that appear to float is gaining rapid acceptance in the live-productions industry because it offers an interesting alternative to high-resolution projection and display to staging designers and event organizers.

Using a laser, a video projector, or lighting fixtures with gobos as a projection source, makes images appear to float in front of the audience. The water screens are creating a thin film of water ideal for rear projection of video, lasers, gobos, and other lighting effects.

The system utilizes a combined water collection trough and nozzle system to create the water screen that can display high-resolution projected imagery. Water is recycled via pumps from the ground-level channel to an extruded aluminum box section “nozzle,” through which the water drops under little or no pressure from a series of small holes in the nozzle’s bottom surface.

Basically this technology is reconstituting a virtual image using an array of hundreds of thousands of tiny point sources. This unique projection surface also gives the illusion that the image is floating in mid-air. It’s actually a very high-resolution playback system. There are 1,700 jets per every 10ft. section of screen. To scale, then, there are actually more ‘pixels’ than in any high-resolution monitor.

Thanks to the unique visual experience of glimmering, rushing cascades, along with the rippling sounds of falling water, water walls can be used onstage, mid-room, or on a back wall as projection screens, or in a trade show booth. This way you can easily have a waterfall dumping 200 to 300 gallons per minute from the ceiling.

One live-event application of the water screens is at corporate functions where executives wish to make a dramatic entrance. For example, lets create a 30-ft. water curtain, by linking three 10-ft. nozzle sections together, each with its own pump supplying water. When operating together, the water appears to fall as a single uniform water curtain. One nozzle, however (the center one, for example), can be shut off independently, revealing a product or person behind, while the water continues to fall on either side of him.

But, doesn’t technology cost? So are the water screens, a seven-foot section with a screen, ejector, tank, hose, water pumps, and filtration system can add up to nearly  $20,000 or more. Nonetheless, water screens are becoming increasingly popular at corporate meetings, church services, and orchestra performances.

Whenever we think of Hollywood, we think of money and glamour unseen anywhere else. But in the future things may change.

While Hollywood has long been an expensive business, Bollywood, the nickname for the Indian film industry, is just emerging from its humble roots as a kind of a small industry. For many years Hollywood has benefitted tremendously from the film and entertainment industry, but in the past few years all this has changed as Bollywood started to attract more and more viewers around the world.

If you compare Hollywood to Bollywood you will see more differences than similarities. While Bollywood consists mainly of people of Indian descendant, Hollywood consists of people from different ethnicities and cultures. On one hand, there is Bollywood known for its rich Hindu language and culture, portraying a constant celebration of its traditions, and on the other hand, there is Hollywood, known for its integrated entity of various cultures and languages. “Hollywood’s movies are plot-oriented, while Bollywood’s are meandering melodramas stuffed with music, dance and colour.” One thing is clear, though, Bollywood has strict and clear ways in defining Indian relationships, beauty, and culture with its morals and values. Hollywood on the other hand, portrays all this based on what is in fashion. Bollywood produces more than 800 movies a year, with revenues increasing strongly worldwide, while the United States produces half as many.

One reason Bollywood is becoming more popular around the world is that Indian culture is more accessible than others. However, Bollywood cannot be considered a rival to the American movie industry unless, there is foreign input on the scriptwriting, to iron out details such as in-jokes that would be lost on foreign audiences.

If Bollywood will ever want to compete with Hollywood on an equal level, then it will have to learn the tricks of the trade. When this will happen, the name Bollywood will become synonymous to the word “exquisite”.

What a world we live in! Are we really going down the drain? It certainly looks like it with both Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch vanished and AIG under the patronage of the US government. The good news is that corporate video production can still be green.

If times are going to be tough, video productions should stay within budget. Even ambitious occasions like product launches can be broadly shared without requiring expensive travel. Employees can access training programs in the most convenient setting instead of their time being consumed by scheduled on-premises programs. A video production can communicate only some of the messages. It should not present a large number of ideas and concepts.  Keep the program short and only long enough to carry the message. A shorter program will be more widely accepted and certainly will cost less.

One of the best decisions that you should take is to choose carefully a video company turnkey production early in the process. A company full service should be power, which may carry higher performance in all three phases of the production process: preproduction (scripting), production (shooting) and post-production (published). Ask three companies for proposals and provide the same information to all three. Listen to their explanations of how they generate the productions. It is crucial to have creative and enthusiastic people on your team. Use real people to tell the story. This is important because people like to see and hear real people, not actors. And it is cost effective, too, because usually you don’t pay them where as actors can be quite expensive.

The intranet can be your primary delivery system. Podcasts, and blogosphere are booming and  are all worthy learn about and explore. Apparently, the video is everywhere: in stores, on gas pumps, grocery carts, on planes, in mini-vans, on Segways, and even on iPods and cellphones. So no matter where you are, no matter how you feel, you can still watch a video. And the message, regardless of the medium, is always the same!

The gay community will have its own online TV channel, dedicated to “the life and problems of the gay community” in Romania, on October 1^st, 2008.

The channel is launched by the “Be An Angel” group in Cluj and it will include gay news, gay music, entertainment, and films. The anti-discrimination group “Be an Angel” already runs a co

mprehensive website focusing on entertainment and political issues in Romania. The founders assure its audience that homosexuality is not contagious. It says viewers will be informed but “nobody will become homosexual if you look at our programs.”

Lucian Dunareanu, the president of Angelicus, hopes that the audience will be quite responsive to the programming, hitting 100 visitors by next year.