Sunday, January 30, 2005

Your Home Theatre

Home theater, seeks to reproduce cinema quality video and audio in the home.
The video aspect usually involves a large-screen and/or high definition television or a projection system. Quality audio reproduction is usually achieved with a high fidelity surround sound system.
"Home cinema" has become something of a buzzword. Technically, a home cinema could be as basic as a simple arrangement of a Television, VCR, and a set of speakers. It is therefore difficult to specify exactly what distinguishes a "home cinema" from a "television and stereo".
However, "home cinema" implies a real "cinema experience" and therefore a higher quality set of components. A typical home theater would include the following:
A large, prominent, display--generally a big-screen television (see Liquid crystal display television) or possibly a projector, often HDTV capable.
One or more audio/video sources. High quality formats such as DVD or Laserdisc are preferred, though old home cinema setups use VHS.
An audio system that is capable of surround sound (at least 5.1). This usually consists of several speakers and a subwoofer. Sometimes a specialized decoder is used to allow the playback of newer surround-sound formats.
Comfortable seating and organization to improve the cinema feel. This might include several comfortable recliners and curtains or subdued room lighting to enhance the experience.
Some home cinema enthusiasts will go so far as to build a dedicated room in the home for the theater. Such a room is often decorated to resemble an actual cinema, with specialized furniture, movie posters, or a popcorn or snack machine. These more advanced installations often include sophisticated acoustic design elements, including "room-in-a-room" construction that isolates sound and provides the potential for a near ideal listening environment. These installations are often designated as "screening rooms" to differentiate from simpler installations.
These days it is possible to purchase "home theater in a box" kits from various promiment electronics companies. These kits include a set of speakers for surround sound, an amplifier/tuner for adjusting volume and selecting video sources, and sometimes a DVD player or VCR. Though these kits pale in comparison to a true custom built home cinema, these kits are attractively priced. One needs only to add a television and some movies in order to create a simple home theater.

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Saturday, January 29, 2005

Toronto video editing services- Hong Luck Video

Azure is will be covering the opening of the new Hong Luck school in Hamilton, Ontario. We will be covering the entire event, there will be many performers and activities that many of us has never seen before. Stay tuned to see the coverage that will be posted up online.

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Thursday, January 27, 2005

History of Cinema

The earliest use of moving pictures was an outgrowth of simple optical devices (such as magic lanterns) which display still images in a rapid sequence. By using pictures that were largely similar, but with slight differences, the presenter could communicate the effect of motion to the viewer. Naturally, the images used in these devices need to be carefully designed to achieve the desired effect. The underlying principle remains the basis for the cinematic genre known as animation.

With the development of photography, and particularly of celluloid film, it became possible to directly capture motion in the real world. Previous techniques sometimes required individuals to look into a special device to see the pictures, but translucent film made it feasible to use a projection system to display images for an entire audience. These "moving picture shows" came to be known colloquially as movies.

The cinema was initially purely a visual art, and many silent films were created. Presenters soon found it useful to provide a commentator who could narrate the action and fill in dialogue between characters. Within a few years, films began to include subtitles that could display dialogue when the actors on screen "spoke." This rendered the function of a commentator largely unnecessary.

Rather than leave the audience in silence, theater owners often replaced the commentator by hiring musicians to accompany the presentation. The most common approach was to hire a pianist or organist if the theater had an instrument available. The music to be played was supposed to fit the mood of the film at any given moment. Later technological improvements allowed filmmakers to create soundtracks synchronized with the action on the screen. Sound films were initially known as "talking pictures", or talkies. From the beginning, however, they included music as well as speech, and specialist composers of film scores soon emerged.

The final major step in the development of cinema was the introduction of color. While the addition of sound to film revolutionized the medium, quickly driving out silent movies and theater musicians, color was adopted more gradually. As color processes improved, more and more movies were filmed in color, and today the use of color is virtually universal. Unlike photography, where black-and-white film is still preferred for some purposes, there is little reason not to use color in movies. In the rare exceptions, such as the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler's List, the choice usually has to do with other artistic reasons.

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Monday, January 24, 2005

Toronto video editing services- Hong Luck Slide Show



Azure Production is currently working on a slide show for Hong Luck Kung fu Club. This will be played at their new school that they will open in Ontario, Hamilton on January 29th. There will be many performances done by the students, from sparring to forms.

posted by Azure Production @ 9:05 PM 0 comments

More About Film



Motion pictures are an art form, a popular form of entertainment, and a business. Film is produced by recording "real" people and objects (including played-out fantasy and fakes) with cameras, and/or by animation.

The word film also often refers to photographic film used to make still photographs, or to the flexible strip of plastic covered in a light-sensitive silver halide solution, also called filmstock, on which motion pictures have historically been made.

The images that make up a motion picture are all individual photographs. But when they appear rapidly in succession, the human eye does not detect that they are separate images. This results from persistence of vision, a phenomenon whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Although we do not experience the images as individual photographs, we do notice the differences between them. The brain then perceives these differences as motion.

Today, many motion pictures are still recorded using specially designed cameras that capture the images on rolls of film. After being processed and printed, the film is run through a projector, which shines light through the film so that the images are displayed on a screen. Most movies have accompanying sound. The soundtrack can be recorded separately from shooting the film, but for live-action pictures many parts of the soundtrack are usually recorded simultaneously.

Some films in recent decades have been recorded using analog video technology similar to that used in television production. More recently, many films are being recorded with a digital video camera and later projected using digital projectors and/or transferred to film. One of the major benefits of shooting digitally is that decisions can be made without waiting for the film stock to be processed.

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Thursday, January 20, 2005

Special Effects

Weta Digital is a digital special effects company based in Wellington, New Zealand, an offshoot of the Weta Workshop physical effects company. Director Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and others founded Weta Digital in 1993 to produce the digital special effects for Heavenly Creatures, working with just one computer on that film. The company has grown immensely in size and complexity since then.
The American film industry recognised Weta Digital for its outstanding effects for the film trilogy based on The Lord of the Rings by presenting it with Academy Awards for visual effects for its work on The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003).
Much of the success was due to the creation of MASSIVE, a program which allows the animation of large numbers of agents, independent characters which act according to pre-set rules. This can be seen in the prologue to The Fellowship Of The Ring, the Helm's Deep battle sequence in The Two Towers, and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in The Return Of The King. Another significant contribution to the trilogy was the effort and technology applied to render Gollum, a hobbit-related creature corrupted and deformed by the power of the One Ring, very realistically using a combination of motion capture and key frame animation.
Other movies that were worked on by Weta Digital were Robert Zemeckis's Contact (1997), starring Jodie Foster, and Alex Proyas's I, Robot (2004), starring Will Smith.

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Monday, January 17, 2005

Interesting Fact



A camcorder is a portable electronic device (generally a digital camera) for recording images and audio onto a storage device. The camcorder contains both camera and recorder in one unit, hence the name. This compares to previous technology where they would be separate.
Video cameras were originally designed for broadcasting television images--see television camera.

Video is captured by way of the camera lens, and is sent to a CCD (charge-coupled device), possibly processed, compressed, and then to final storage.

We can generally distinguish between digital and analog camcorders. The market share for digital models is continually increasing, as models become cheaper and better quality. Any recent Personal Computer can be made into a digital video editing machine with the use of digital editing software - a light version with limited features is often included with digital cameras.

There are various storage devices and respective formats for camcorders, please see the video page for details. The latest camcorders also record on a flash memory device (in MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4) or directly on DVD (either DVD-RAM or DVD-R) in MPEG-2 format. Other digital tape recorders transfer their video content in DV format over a IEEE 1394 connection to a computer, where the huge files (approx. 2GB for 5 minutes on PAL DVD resolution) need to be edited and compressed or played back on tape. The transfer speed is currently 1x, which means one hour footage needs one hour to transfer.

Besides classification in analog and digital camcorders, they can also be classified by consumer products, semi-professional products and broadcast quality products. Product cycles are 6-12 months, 2-4 years and 5+ years respectively.

They can also be used to record personal events for future reminiscing, or even as an artistic tool.

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posted by Azure Production @ 8:04 PM 0 comments

Toronto independent films - Offcenter Crew

Offcenter crew is a place where independent artists can talk about their art. Whether you are a filmmaker, photographer or a musician. Offcenter crew is a place where you can share your talents with others and also obtain more knowledge from other people like you. Check out their community here!

They also helped out with CCFilms - Toronto independent films - with making some of their movies

posted by Azure Production @ 1:28 PM 0 comments

Friday, January 14, 2005

Toronto independent films - Vai's Art



Spend some time and view Vai Yu's Art at Deviant Art. She is a freelance photographer and has spent many hours producing these pictures. She is also part of our crew as a unit photographer and camera operator. Some of her work are also posted at CCFilms.

posted by Azure Production @ 3:22 PM 0 comments

Toronto independent films - Upcoming Summer Movies

Terror Creek II is in progress. The story will continue from where Terror Creek I last left off. The film hopes to start production next year. Most of the main characters will return. It will be exciting to reunite everyone again.

Another project for this coming summer would be a drama film with a new cast and crew. Ideas are being developed this month. The writing of the script will begin soon. This short film will begin production in the summer and hopfully be released this winter.

posted by Azure Production @ 3:03 PM 0 comments

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Making in Progress

The making of "The Exchange" has begun. The post-production crew is currently assembling all the "behind the scenes" footage and arranging it into a "video diary". These footages will be in the DVD. The "video diary" will cover the progress of the production over the two years of filming. All the clips will be edited into chronological order so you can see how we went from the choreography of the fight scenes to the final product.

posted by Azure Production @ 4:26 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Grandmother's Birthday



A couple of months ago was Mrs Yuen Ngan Chow's birthday. Our family decided to create a video for her, Mike filmed and edited the entire event. He spend a lot of time assembling the video. You can check out the site and view the video here. The site is hosted up by Webado.

posted by Azure Production @ 5:15 PM 0 comments

Toronto independent films - Exchange Release

We are currently still in production for the upcoming film The Exchange, produced by Azure Production and OffCenterCrew.

The film has been in production for almost two years, due to everyone's schedule conflict, but we've pulled it through. We've been through the rain, cold, and got bruses from the stunts and fight scenes. We've also laughed and joked about each other. I hope everyone enjoyed working with each other as much as I have enjoyed workinng with you guys. All these events were captured on tape and will be released onto DVD.

The film is scheduled to be released somtime at the end of this month. Check out CCFilms site and view the trailers.

posted by Azure Production @ 2:24 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Toronto video editing services - Ralph Thorton



Azure Production is currently working on a documentary with the Ralph Thorton Centre here at Toronto, Queen St. E and Broadview. The documentary will be covering the activities that Ralph Thorton offers to the community. Check out there website to find out how you and the community can benefit from each other.

posted by Azure Production @ 3:29 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Toronto independent films - Update

Toronto independent films - We updated the site at CCFilms. Check out the new posters at the site provided by Vai. Leave a messge, quote, or a question with us and we'll post the most interesting one up every month.

posted by Azure Production @ 8:01 AM 0 comments