Fujinon lenses aid in documentary filmmaking
Two Fujinon lenses, an A36×10.5 ERD telephoto and an HA15×8BEVM HD ENG lens, mounted on two Sony high-definition cameras, were recently utilized for production on a program for Montana State University entitled “The Search for Lewis and Clark.”
Ronald Tobias, head of MSU's graduate program in filmmaking, directed and produced the hour-long special, which will air on the Discovery Channel in April 2002.
The program retraces the route of the famous expedition through Montana, the Dakotas and Oregon. A hailstorm at one site briefly threatened production, but Tobias used it to recreate a hailstorm the explorers described facing in their journals.
The lenses are utilized for all imaging applications in MSU's new graduate program in Science and Natural History Filmmaking. The three-year program is run in conjunction with Discovery Communications and allows students to produce broadcast-quality films ranging from 15 minutes to an hour.
SGI lends processing power for CGI films
Tippet Studio used SGI workstations, servers and storage for production on two films, Warner Brothers' Cats and Dogs and Dreamworks SKG's Evolution.
The studio used SGI systems to create more than 60 3D-animated shots for Cats and Dogs. The systems were also used to create more than 150 shots and 15 CGI creatures for Evolution. Maquettes of the creatures were sculpted and scanned into O2 and Octane2 visual workstations for manipulation by character animators.
